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.