Space Warfare in the 21st Century

Arming the Heavens

Joan Johnson-Freese

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138693869
• eBook ISBN: 9781315529158
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines the recent shift in US space policy and the forces that continually draw the US back into a space-technology security dilemma.

The dual-use nature of the vast majority of space technology, meaning of value to both civilian and military communities and being unable to differentiate offensive from defensive intent of military hardware, makes space an area particularly ripe for a security dilemma. In contrast to previous administrations, the Obama Administration has pursued a less militaristic space policy, instead employing a strategic restraint approach that stressed multilateral diplomacy to space challenges. The latter required international solutions and the United States, subsequently, even voiced support for an International Code of Conduct for Space. That policy held until the Chinese anti-satellite (ASAT) test in 2013, which demonstrated expanded Chinese capabilities. This volume explores the issues arising from evolving space capabilities across the world and the security challenges this poses. It subsequently discusses the complexity of the space environment and argues that all tools of national power must be used, with some degree of balance, toward addressing space challenges and achieving space goals.

This book will be of much interest to students of space policy, defence studies, foreign policy, security studies and IR.

1
PROTECTING SPACE ASSETS

Unfortunately, aggressive leaders tend to be risk-acceptant optimists.

Forrest Morgan¹

If you don’t care where you’re going, any road will take you there. Or so explained the Cheshire Cat to Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.² However, notionally, policymakers and strategists do care where they are going and so work with goal achievement in mind; policymakers set the goals and strategists develop plans to achieve them. Regarding space, specifically US space security policy, protecting space assets has driven the work of policymakers and strategists for many years. Remarkably, there has been substantial consistency in studies focused on what needs to be done in order to achieve US space goals; basically, all elements of US power need to be employed.

The importance of protecting the space environment and US space assets in orbit has prompted strategic ends and means to be considered and reconsidered at many levels within multiple communities of the US government. The most recent US strategies related to or referencing space include the National Security Strategy (NSS) of 2010 and 2015, the National Space Policy (NSP) 2010, the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) 2010, and the National Security Space Strategy (NSSS) 2011.³ Guidance in the 2015 NSS is simply stated thus:

The world is connected by shared spaces—cyber, space, air, and oceans—that enable the free flow of people, goods, services, and ideas. They are the arteries of the global economy and civil society, and access is at risk due to increased competition and provocative behaviors. Therefore, we will continue to promote rules for responsible behavior while making sure we have the capabilities to assure access to these shared spaces.⁴

These general ideas—goals—are reiterated in the NSP as follows: “the United States considers the sustainability, stability, and free access to, and use of, space vital to its national interests.”⁵

The same goals are reiterated in the NSSS, with others more directly related to security added. The NSSS also recognizes the importance of working with all spacefaring nations due to the nature of the space environment as “a domain that no nation owns but on which all rely,” although, as per these government space documents, the space environment is benchmarked as increasingly “congested, contested, and competitive.”⁶ Specifically, because the United States does not own space, “partnering with responsible nations, international organizations, and commercial firms”⁷ as well as seeking “common ground among all space-faring nations”⁸ to maintain stability and address issues relevant to all becomes imperative. The assumed congested, contested, and competitive space environment presents both challenges and opportunities, if only through the self-interest of all spacefaring nations in sustaining that environment.

Within that now accepted description of the space environment, the security-specific NSSS goals are given as:

•Strengthen safety, stability, and security in space;

•Maintain and enhance the strategic national security advantages afforded to the United States by space; and

•Energize the space industrial base that supports U.S. national security.⁹

The NSSS means to achieving those goals are clearly stated, as follows:

The National Security Space Strategy draws upon all elements of national power and requires active U.S. leadership in space. The United States will pursue a set of interrelated strategic approaches to meet our national security space objectives:

•Promote responsible, peaceful, and safe use of space;

•Provide improved U.S. space capabilities;

•Partner with responsible nations, international organizations, and commercial firms;

•Prevent and deter aggression against space infrastructure that supports U.S. national security; and

•Prepare to defeat attacks and to operate in a degraded environment [emphasis added].¹⁰

The last two bullets include development of military capabilities to “deter, defend against, and defeat aggression”—language drawn from the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and cited in the NSSS.¹¹ US goals in space have stayed relatively stable as might be assumed due to their enduring nature. The important question for analysts and strategists to address becomes, then, how best to implement the goals.

Bruce MacDonald, in a 2008 study for the Council on Foreign Relations, stated that “certain objectives are clearly in the interest of the United States. … preventing space conflict should be a major US security objective, and … all instruments of U.S. power, not just military measures, should be drawn upon to this end.”¹² Similarly, Ambassador Roger Harrison, Deron Jackson, and Collins Shackelford of the Eisenhower Center for Space and Defense Studies at the US Air Force Academy conducted a study on space deterrence in 2009. The study was premised on the United States having “created a military structure that is heavily satellite-dependent without making corresponding improvements to the survivability of its space systems. The result is a classic opportunity for asymmetric, preemptive attack.” Therefore, they asked “how to structure a strategy of deterrence to persuade potentially hostile actors that the costs of attack will nevertheless outweigh the benefits.”¹³ In other words, how can a war in space be prevented? In response, they recommended a four-tiered “layered approach”¹⁴ to address the challenges of space deterrence: international norms, entanglement, retaliation, and denial. It is important to note that the first two layers focus on diplomatic and economic aspects of US national power rather than the military.

Forrest Morgan’s 2010 RAND study presented a space deterrence strategy intended to protect US space assets by simultaneously addressing both sides of a potential adversary’s cost–benefit decision calculus. While the strategy condemns the use of force in space, it also makes it clear that the United States would severely punish any attacks on its space systems and those of friendly states in ways, times, and places of its choosing—deterrence by punishment. But, specifically reiterating the fundamental interest in space stability, the strategy goes on to talk about appropriate approaches to achieve the policy goal, stating:

such a policy would embrace diplomatic engagement, treaty negotiations, and other confidence-building measures, both for whatever stabilizing effects can be attained from such activities and because demonstrating leadership in these venues helps to characterize the United States as a responsible world actor with the moral authority to use its power to protect the interests of all spacefaring nations.¹⁵

The moral authority aspect of US space policy is not insignificant. If the United States expects other countries to follow its lead in space, it must itself be seen to be holding the moral high ground in terms of commitment to stability. In addition to deterrence by punishment, the strategy discusses the importance of deterrence by denial. In other words, space stability can only be achieved through layered activities, not a single focus.

And therein lies the problem. While a full complement of interrelated approaches utilizing all elements of US power is stressed throughout these documents and analyses as being necessary to effectively deal with space security issues, in practice focus is increasingly being put on military options—and even more specifically, deterrence by punishment—at best overshadowing and more realistically discounting or excluding others. Focusing on military options has too frequently become the US fallback position.

Though the United States is generally said to have diplomatic, informational, military, and economic tools of power available (referred to by the acronym DIME), since 9/11 especially, utilization can be characterized as primarily diMe. In his book The New American Militarism, Andrew Bacevich explains the rise of the “M” over other tools.

In former times American policymakers treated (or at least pretended to treat) the use of force as evidence that diplomacy had failed. In our own time they have concluded (in the words of Vice President Dick Cheney) that force “makes your diplomacy more effective going forward … .” Policymakers have increasingly come to see coercion as a sort of all-purpose tool.¹⁶

Analysts including Sean Kay¹⁷ and Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson¹⁸ have argued that President Barack Obama tried to bring America back to a more traditional realist, noninterventionist position than that taken during the George W. Bush Administration. Additionally, in some policy areas, the Obama Administration worked decidedly, and against substantial criticism, to return to a more balanced use of policy tools, such being the case in normalizing relations with Cuba and negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran. Space policy, however, was and is returning to being dominated by those who see every problem as a nail suited to a military hammer solution.

Space Stability

“Space stability is a fundamental U.S. national security interest.”¹⁹ Stability sustains the space environment for continued use. The Secure World Foundation defines space sustainability as “the ability of all humanity to continue to use outer space for peaceful purposes and socioeconomic development over the long term.”²⁰ A report published by the Union of Concerned Scientists states that “the United States has a vital interest in ensuring the sustainability of the space environment, keeping satellites safe and secure, and enhancing stability not only in space but also on the ground.”²¹ Sustainability, however, is a concept, or abstraction. As with most abstractions, as opposed to physical principles, there are many definitions and variations of definitions. While concepts are useful for general characterizations, they also allow for obfuscation and argumentation regarding why definitions are incorrect, needing refinement or further clarification. Space...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Protecting Space Assets
• 2 Congested, Contested, and Competitive
• 3 Avoiding Thucydides’ Trap
• 4 Deter, Defend, Defeat
• 5 Feeding the Beast
• 6 Space Development and Governance
• 7 Space at the Tipping Point
• Index