US CONTINUES TO BLOCK CHINESE-RUSSIAN PROPOSAL TO
NEGOTIATE TREATY TO BAN WEAPONS IN SPACE
What is it about the rule of law that the US government
doesn’t like? The US is still holding
out on signing the treaty to Ban Land Mines Ban, adopted in 1997,[i]
and has managed to avoid joining the Law of the Seas Treaty which was
negotiated in 1982.[ii]
Isn’t it time for Civil Society to mobilize for putting a treaty to
ban weapons in space on the negotiating table if we’re to have any hope of
truly banning the bomb? After all, the Non-Proliferation Treaty calls for
the elimination of nuclear weapons “and their delivery systems”.
Aren’t we leaving a lot out when we don’t address this issue? And
will any country be willing to negotiate for nuclear disarmament when the US
blatantly proclaims its intention for full spectrum dominance and global strike
capacity?
China and Russia have been proposing a joint draft treaty
for the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space (PPWT) since
2008, at the UN’s Conference on Disarmament. [iii]
The United States has repeatedly blocked consensus in the CD to move forward on
negotiating a treaty to ban weapons in space, saying, at one point, that the proposal was “a diplomatic ploy by the
two nations to gain a military advantage”.[iv]
In June 2014, Russia and China submitted
an updated draft treaty, with an accompanying paper explaining what changes
they had made since the 2008 draft. Both
the Chinese and Russian Ambassadors invited further comment and feedback. [v]
The US objected again, stating that the new draft “does not address the
significant flaws” in the older version such as including provisions for
effective verification or for dealing with land-based anti-satellite
systems. As to a legally binding treaty,
the US stated that while it would consider proposals that are “equitable,
effectively reliable, and enhance the national security of international
participants”, the US has yet to see “any legally binding proposals that meet
these criteria” and wants to focus on non-legally binding efforts such as the
Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities, and some other recent UN
initiatives for transparency and confidence building that will not have the
force of law.[vi]
The US has been
participating since 2008 with a European Union initiative proposing a “Code of
Conduct for Outer Space Activities to provide a non-binding set of rules of the
road for a safer environment in space.
But it recently threw up new roadblocks against even that toothless effort.
The US now insists that the Codes’ voluntary
promise to “refrain from any action which brings about, directly or indirectly,
damage, or to destruction, of space objects”, be qualified with the language “unless
such action is justified”. One
justification given for destructive action is the UN Charter’s right to
individual or collective self-defense, thus lending legitimacy and codifying
the possibility for warfare in space as part of the Code’s established
norm. Although the UN Charter prohibits
aggressive action by any nation without Security Council approval, it makes an
exception when a nation acts in self-defense.
There have been numerous occasions where nations by-passed the Security
Council to take aggressive action in the name of self-defense. Instead of banning anti-satellite weapons
development and space warfare, this US proposal for the Code would justify such
warfare as long as it’s done, individually and collectively, under the guise of
“self-defense”. Thus despite lacking
the force of law that would be established with a legally binding treaty, this
new US proposal for the Code would create the possibility for space warfare
rather than its prohibition. Because of
these new blocks, the negotiations on the Code are now stalled[vii] while at the same time
the US puts up new resistance to a reasonable proposal from Russia and China to
legally ban weapons in space. In the
words of Pogo, a popular US comic strip, published in the 1970s by Walt Kelly, and
satirized by many, “We have met the enemy and he is us!” [viii]
