Space security: the impossible consensus between powers

In pre­vi­ous dec­ades, space was a domain handled among a mere hand­ful of key play­ers such as the United States and the Soviet Uni­on. But this is no longer the case; mul­ti­pli­city of act­ors in out­er space (private com­pan­ies, new states), both in num­ber and diversity, has accen­tu­ated the chal­lenge of glob­al gov­ernance. What are the rules? And how can we enforce them?

Find­ing a con­sensus among the many stake­hold­ers in the cur­rent cli­mate has become nearly impossible. Moreover, we are see­ing increased use of space assets in con­ven­tion­al mil­it­ary oper­a­tions for com­mu­nic­a­tions, as well as pos­i­tion, nav­ig­a­tion, tim­ing func­tions, to name a few. In earli­er dec­ades, use of space by mil­it­ar­ies was primar­ily for stra­tegic func­tions¹ such as arms con­trol and treaty veri­fic­a­tion, and early warn­ing. Add to that the arrival of new tech­no­lo­gies such as on-orbit satel­lite ser­vi­cing² that are typ­ic­ally used for remote satel­lite inspec­tion, refuel­ling and repair – meant to extend the life of a satel­lite or to clean up junk in space. Even though these belong to the cat­egory of peace­ful use of space, ten­sions in glob­al geo­pol­it­ics and intens­i­fic­a­tion of com­pet­i­tion among major powers have driv­en sus­pi­cions about their use. 

Still, reg­u­la­tion³ of these new tech­no­lo­gies⁴ and activ­it­ies have not been developed and giv­en the state of major power rela­tions, it is unlikely that there will be much pro­gress on this in the imme­di­ate future. Even though the US con­tin­ues to main­tain the lead in almost all aspects of space tech­no­logy and com­pet­i­tion, China’s grow­ing capa­cit­ies and its desire to rewrite the rules and norms in space has made space gov­ernance more difficult.

The glob­al rule-mak­ing exer­cise has become chal­len­ging for sev­er­al import­ant reas­ons. That the major powers can­not agree on what the most import­ant chal­lenges are in the space secur­ity domain is a major imped­i­ment in devel­op­ing con­sensus on the next steps. Coun­tries like China and Rus­sia argue that the arms race and place­ment of weapons in out­er space are urgent issues. Where­as the US and sev­er­al oth­er coun­tries per­ceive the grow­ing devel­op­ment and deploy­ment of coun­ter­space capabilities—technologies that can deny advant­ages that come from the use of space—as a more ser­i­ous danger. 

Hence, space is no longer “a sanc­tu­ary⁵ from attack and space sys­tems are poten­tial tar­gets at all levels of conflict.” 

It could also be said that there is a philo­soph­ic­al dif­fer­ence between these two groups of states about future gov­ernance of space. West­ern states per­ceive enorm­ous bene­fits in pur­su­ing polit­ic­al but non-leg­al instru­ments. They do not have suf­fi­cient con­fid­ence in oth­er powers to pur­sue leg­ally bind­ing meas­ures giv­en the state of mul­ti­lat­er­al nego­ti­ations⁶ and so they argue that less bind­ing agree­ments may be the first step in build­ing trust and con­fid­ence in each oth­er. But coun­tries such as China and Rus­sia con­tin­ue to reit­er­ate that leg­ally bind­ing meas­ures are the only means to secure space.

The world is mov­ing away from a “sanc­tu­ary” view of out­er space towards the “space con­trol” or even the “space high ground” schools of think­ing. The lat­ter con­siders that “space has the abil­ity to be the crit­ic­al factor⁷ in determ­in­ing the out­come of a battle.” 

Some of the recent glob­al pro­pos­als for space gov­ernance include the draft Treaty on the Pre­ven­tion of the Place­ment of Weapons in Out­er Space sponsored by Rus­sia and China; the Threat or Use of Force against Out­er Space Objects (PPWT), ori­gin­ally pro­posed in 2008; the EU-ini­ti­ated Inter­na­tion­al Code of Con­duct for Out­er Space Activ­it­ies (2010); the 2013 UN Group of Gov­ern­ment­al Experts on Trans­par­ency and Con­fid­ence Build­ing Meas­ures (TCBMs); the 2018–19 GGE on fur­ther prac­tic­al meas­ures for the pre­ven­tion of an arms race in out­er space (PAROS) and a more recent UK pro­pos­al on space secur­ity. But there has been no pro­gress on any of these ini­ti­at­ives. The First Com­mit­tee of the UN Gen­er­al Assembly voted in early Novem­ber to estab­lish an open-ended work­ing group on safe space stand­ards⁸. The form­a­tion of this group, sched­uled for 2022, is worth watching.

Why do we need new meas­ures urgently?  The exist­ing leg­al meas­ures, espe­cially the Out­er Space Treaty (OST) of 1967 have been use­ful in main­tain­ing the sanc­tity of out­er space but the Treaty and the asso­ci­ated agree­ments includ­ing the Regis­tra­tion Con­ven­tion, Res­cue Agree­ment and Liab­il­ity Con­ven­tion have many gaps and ambi­gu­ities. For instance, the OST is silent on weapons oth­er than weapons of mass destruc­tion (WMD). The fact that only the place­ment of WMD is pro­hib­ited by the Treaty is a big lacuna and the treaty can­not address con­tem­por­ary chal­lenges such as those presen­ted by coun­ter­space capabilities.

Recent devel­op­ments should bring some urgency to the glob­al gov­ernance debates.  Russia’s ASAT⁹ test, France’s¹⁰ Space Force Com­mand, Germany’s¹¹ mil­it­ary space com­mand­er cen­ter, Australia’s¹² own ver­sion of a space com­mand¹³, and India’s Defence Space Agency are all a recog­ni­tion of the grow­ing secur­ity-dom­in­a­tion of out­er space, and the chan­ging dynam­ics of space secur­ity. Rus­sia came up with its own Rus­si­an Space Forces even earli­er in 2011 and China estab­lished the Stra­tegic Sup­port Force (PLASSF) in 2015, integ­rat­ing the People’s Lib­er­a­tion Army (PLA) space, cyber and elec­tron­ic war­fare cap­ab­il­it­ies, mak­ing a more potent force to deal with. 

The crit­ic­al point here is to note that without mul­ti­lat­er­al nego­ti­ations, states will be com­pelled to pur­sue their own means of secur­ing their interests in space, by demon­strat­ing their coun­ter­space cap­ab­il­it­ies includ­ing anti-satel­lite (ASAT) weapons to devel­op­ing ded­ic­ated mil­it­ary space insti­tu­tions, all of which could only height­en the poten­tial for con­flicts in space.