Abstract
President Franklin Roosevelt was the prime mover behind the creation of the United Nations. He told Congress, shortly before his death, that the new organization would “determine the fate of the United States–and of the world…. We shall have to take the responsibility for world collaboration, or we shall have to bear the responsibility for another world conflict.”
Fine words, quickly forgotten. The Cold War pattern quickly emerged. The United States used the United Nations whenever it served American interests; the Soviet Union whenever it served Soviet interests. Otherwise, the United Nations generally languished in bureaucratic obscurity and irrelevance.
That's old news, isn't it? The Cold War is now the stuff of Recent World History 101. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was commonly said that the end of the Cold War meant that the United Nations could finally come into its own.
But that didn't happen. The United Nations proved spectacularly inept on many fronts, particularly in the realm of peacemaking and “nation building.” Beyond that, it seldom had a chance to be useful. In the post-Cold War world, it was still treated with cavalier disregard and even contempt by the major powers, especially the lone remaining superpower.
A case in point: the possible weaponization of space.
For more than 40 years, delegates to the United Nations have said time and again through resolutions and treaties that near-Earth space should be kept free of weapons. But in the end, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 simply prohibited nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.
For the past two decades, the General Assembly has been keen to get the ball rolling on a new treaty that would ban all weapons in space, not just weapons of mass destruction. The forum for such a discussion is the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, which operates by consensus, thus giving every member a de facto veto.
Just as surely as the space-weapons matter is brought up in Geneva year after year under the rubric of PAROS (Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space), the United States blocks discussion. The conversation, the U.S. representative explains, would be a time waster.
“The United States agrees that it is appropriate to keep this topic [paros] under review,” Amb. Robert T. Grey, Jr. said in Geneva on September 14. “On the other hand, we have repeatedly pointed out that there is no arms race in outer space–nor any prospect of an arms race in outer space, for as far down the road as anyone can see.”
That is a Clintonesque construction. What is meant by an “arms race in outer space”? Grey is right, of course. There is no arms race today. But the United States is behaving as if one looms dead ahead. “Early in the twenty-first century,” says U.S. Space Command in its “Long Range Plan,” issued in April 1998, “space will become another medium of warfare.”
Space Command, created in 1985, is charged with coordinating army, navy, and air force space commands as they prepare to achieve–in the words of the plan–“full spectrum dominance of the battlespace.” In other words, the whole ball of wax–ground, water, air, and space.
Space Command's mission is “defensive”–defined as developing the capability to protect space-based assets, military and commercial, that belong either to the United States or its allies. Achieving “control of space”–the ability to ensure access to space by the United States and its allies and to deny access to others–lies at the heart of the mission.
Space Command envisions a future in which the United States may need to shoot down ballistic missiles in their ascent phase, destroy or disable enemy satellites in orbit, and even attack targets on the Earth's surface. To accomplish these tasks, Space Command promotes research and development of an array of directed energy and kinetic weapons.
A DIFFERENT TAKE
Kevin J. Sweeney, one-time press secretary to former Sen. Gary Hart, on Salon.com
While Space Command ritually notes that “at present, the notion of weapons in space is not consistent with U.S. national policy,” its partisans have adopted the Boy Scout motto, “Be prepared.”
“The American military is built to dominate all phases and mediums of combat,” said Gen. Richard B. Myers, chief of Space Command, shortly before being promoted last year to vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “We must acknowledge that our way of war requires superiority in all mediums of conflict, including space. Thus, we must plan for, and execute to win, space superiority.”
The unhappy fate of Melos, an island in the Aegean Sea, is known to us mainly through the Melian Dialogue in Thucydides' History.
In 416 B.C., in the sixteenth year of the Peloponnesian War, imperial Athens sought to take over tiny Melos. Thucydides tells us that Athens, which liked to describe itself as “master of the seas,” sent a large force to Melos. But the Athenians, being reasonable men, wanted to get the job done without much muss and fuss. Before commencing hostilities, they sent envoys ahead to persuade the Melians to surrender without a fight, thus sparing Melian lives at the expense of their freedom.
The Melians demurred. They spoke of the shame of submitting to another state without battle, even if the other state was as powerful as Athens. The Athenian envoys had no patience for such nonsense. “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
Although faced with near-certain defeat, the Melians fought for their independence. The men of Melos were eventually killed, the women and children sold into slavery, and the island repopulated by Athenians. Today, we think of Melos, if we think of it at all, in connection with the discovery in 1820 of the Aphrodite of Melos, a.k.a., the Venus de Milo.
Perhaps we should think of Melos more often. Especially the new president. The fate of Melos is more than a lesson in Realpolitik, as it is often presented in political science courses.
The Athenians and the Melians are emblematic of one of the most enduring facts of international life: the compulsion of powerful states to dominate and the repugnance with which weaker states regard being dominated.
The United States may have the best of intentions in seeking “full spectrum dominance of the battlespace.” But the Melos Syndrome is powerful. Over the course of the next decade or two, you can bet that at least a few states will attempt to develop the means to counter the planned U.S. domination of space. They will not assume that U.S. intentions are always benign.
The current U.S. attempt to achieve space dominance may in the end compromise U.S. security, either by promoting an actual arms race in space or by encouraging “asymmetric responses”–biological weapons perhaps, or cyber weapons, or even nuclear weapons deliverable by means other than ballistic missiles.
Such dark outcomes are not inevitable. The U.S. drive toward space dominance is still embryonic and a new president may be in a position to definitively abort it by agreeing to work within the U.N. framework–and by beginning discussions on banning all weapons in space.
Only two states–the United States and Israel–vigorously oppose discussions that might lead to a treaty prohibiting all weapons in space. Even Canada, whose military officers work closely–as members of norad–with the folks at Space Command, argues against the weaponization of space.
“To the best knowledge of the international community,” the Canadian government says, “outer space has not yet witnessed the introduction of space-based weapons. This may change as nations contemplate the implementation of ‘space control’ doctrines and policies.”
That plural construction–“nations”–is diplospeak. So far, only one nation, the United States, is talking about “controlling space.”