[WCUSP] Fwd: [NucNews] IRC News | Space: The Phantom Menace

[Odile Hugonot Haber]

I think that some of the money meant for the war in Iraq
is being re-routed to weapons in space program. Although
I have no proof for that statement.

We working on an alternative feminist foreign policy for the earth
and they are working on dominating new frontiers: space.

Odile Hugonot Haber

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: International Relations Center <communications at irc-online.org>
Date: Nov 9, 2006 9:10 AM
Subject: [NucNews] IRC News | Space: The Phantom Menace

To: nucnews at yahoogroups.com
New at IRC

 "People-Centered Policy Alternatives Since 1979"
 http://www.irc-online.org/

 Introducing the latest policy analysis from International Relations
 Center

 Space: The Phantom Menace

 Tom Barry, IRC | November 8, 2006
 International Relations Center (IRC)

 http://rightweb.irc-online.org/rw/3685

 The October publication of President George W. Bush's new space
policy marked a definitive victory in a long-fought campaign by
right-wing hawks to extend their agenda toward the stars.

 How can we truly protect the U.S. homeland while ignoring the space
above us? That is the question of space hawks, who for more than two
decades have promoted a national security strategy that includes U.S.
control of space—all planetary space. To that effect, the government
created the U.S. Space Command in 1985.

 Since the early 1980s, a campaign by defense contactors, right-wing
policy institutes, and former military officials to control and
militarize space has paralleled efforts to build an anti-ballistic
missile defense system. President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense
Initiative (SDI), known as the "Star Wars" defense, sought to raise
public fear that the first attack on the homeland since Pearl Harbor
would come from space and called for an extensive missile defense
system.

 Last month President George W. Bush released his administration's
revised National Space Policy. Four years in review, the new policy
replaces the 1996 space policy set by the Clinton administration.

 When announcing the policy, the president asserted that domination of
space was as important to U.S. national interests as air or sea power.
The intent to dominate is clear in the policy's language: "The United
States will preserve its rights, capabilities, and freedom of action
in space; dissuade or deter others from either impeding those rights
or developing capabilities intended to do so; take actions necessary
to protect its space capabilities; respond to interference; and deny,
if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to
U.S. interests."

 The National Space Policy stresses the belief that U.S. control of
space is not only essential to defend against attacks on the U.S.
homeland, but also fundamental to U.S. prosperity. Speaking about the
new strategy statement, Fredrick Jones, a spokesman for the White
House's National Security Council, told the Associated Press:
"Technological advances have increased the importance of and use of
space. Now we depend on space capabilities for things like ATMs,
personal navigation, package tracking, radio services, and cell phone
use."

 According to Theresa Hitchens of the Center for Defense Information
(CDI), "The changes in wording [from the Clinton policy] aggregate to
a much more unilateralist vision of the U.S. role, particularly its
military role, in space." Hitchens said that "while seeking to assert
'unhindered' U.S. rights to act in space, the new policy at best
ignores—and at worst dismisses—any U.S. obligations toward other
space-faring nations and under a spectrum of international accords and
agreements."

 The first National Space Policy, issued by the National Security
Council as a presidential directive in 1996, opened the door to new
lobbying for the development of space weapons by the defense industry,
Air Force, and right-wing policy institutes.

 Rumsfeld Commission Relaunches Space Militarization

 It was not, however, until the so-called Rumsfeld Space Commission
released its report in January 2001, which warned of a "space Pearl
Harbor," that serious pressure started building for the government to
develop space weapons.

 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been a leading proponent of
a U.S. military presence in space. In 1999, Rumsfeld chaired the
Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management
and Organization, the so-called Space Commission established by the
Republican Congress to challenge the perceived weakness of the Clinton
administration on national defense issues. Rumsfeld also chaired the
Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United
States.

 The Space Commission concluded that it is "possible to project power
through and from space in response to events anywhere in the world.
Having this capability would give the United States a much stronger
deterrent and, in a conflict, an extraordinary military advantage."
The commission argued in Orwellian style that because the United
States is without peer among "space-faring" nations, the country is
all the more vulnerable to "state and non-state actors hostile to the
United States and its interests." In other words, U.S. enemies would
seek to destroy the U.S. economy together with its ability to fight
high-tech wars by attacking global-positioning satellites and other
"space assets," which would effectively result in a so-called space
Pearl Harbor.

 According to a March 2006 report produced by the CDI and the Henry L.
Stimson Center, the Bush administration has already moved to develop a
space weapons program. The "facts in orbit" that come from this
commitment to "full-spectrum domination"—land, air, sea, and
space—have already pushed a space weapons program forward. In 2006 the
Department of Defense requested $22.5 million for space activities,
including communication and reconnaissance.

 Reviewing the 2007 Defense budget request, the CDI/Stimson Center
report concluded: "These facts—the development and testing of space
weapon technologies and the deployment of dual-use systems without any
codes of conduct or rules of the road for their operation—will drive
U.S. policy toward space weapons." Such existing or proposed programs
include a Space-Based Interceptor Test Bed, an Experimental Spacecraft
System, the MDA Micro Satellite, and the Autonomous Nanosatellite
Guardian for Evaluating Local Space. According to the CDI/Stimson
Center report, "The defense budget contains a number of high-energy
laser research and development programs that are either necessary
precursors to space weapons or are explicitly identified for such a
mission."

 In a speech to the UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in June
2006, John Mohanco, deputy director to the State Department's Office
of Multilateral Nuclear and Security Affairs, said that the United
States would not participate in any negotiations to limit weapons use
in outer space. "As long as the potential for such attacks [from
space] remains, our government will continue to consider the possible
role that space-related weapons may play in protecting our assets."

 The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which Washington has signed and
ratified, bans weapons of mass destruction in space and declares that
space is to be used for the common good; Washington says it is not
violating the treaty because it currently has no space weapons. Other
countries, including China and Russia, say a new treaty is needed to
ban anti-satellite and other space weapons, such as lasers. In 2005,
Washington voted to block a UN resolution calling for a total ban on
weapons in space.

 Any weapons that the United States might eventually deploy in space
would be defensive, say U.S. government officials. But weapons experts
contend that if the United States installs space-based interceptors as
part of its missile defense system, the interceptors could just as
well be used for offensive purposes.

 Indeed, the U.S. Air Force in 2004 published a vision paper,
according to a Boston Globe report, that advocated a new agenda for
space weapons including an air-launched anti-satellite missile, a
ground-based laser aimed at low-Earth orbit satellites, and a
"hypervelocity" weapon that could strike earth targets from space. The
Air Force document said that U.S. space dominance "will require [the]
full spectrum, sea, air, and space-based offensive counterspace
systems." The U.S. Air Force Space Command clearly states that
military action in space must be offensive as well as defensive,
requiring policy that calls for war fighting "in, from, and through
space."

 The October release of the National Space Policy comes on the heels
of a report by the "Independent Working Group on Missile Defense, the
Space Relationship, and the 21st Century," which is a misnamed task
force assembled by various right-wing policy institutes. Among the
report's recommendations are the following:

 * Within three years, a space-based missile defense system should be
tested (anticipated cost: $3.5 billion).
 * Deploy 1,000 Brilliant Pebbles-like space-based interceptors ($16.4 billion).
 * Because of the centrality of space to U.S. national security,
efforts to counter U.S. primacy in space via restrictive legal regimes
should be rejected.

 The task force claims that the 21st century maintenance of the "U.S.
lead in space may indeed be pivotal to the basic geopolitical,
military, and economic status of the United States. Consolidation of
the preeminent U.S. position in space is akin to Britain's dominance
of the oceans in the 19th century."

 The group's members and sponsors include many key figures and
institutions that advocate a more aggressive nuclear weapons and space
weapons policy, including the four sectors of the space weapons lobby:
defense contractors (including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Assured
Space Access Technologies), think tanks and policy institutes
(including the Hoover Institution), former military (including the Air
Force Space Command), and university research institutes (including
Tufts and MIT).

 In addition to the ties to the sponsoring institutions—the American
Foreign Policy Council, Claremont Institute, Department of Defense and
Strategic Studies at Missouri State University, George C. Marshall
Institute, Heritage Foundation, High Frontier, Institute for Foreign
Policy Analysis, and Institute of the North—the Independent Working
Group included members with close links to the Center for Security
Policy (CSP), National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP), and the
Rumsfeld Space Commission.

 William Van Cleave served as the group's co-chairman along with
Robert Pfaltzgraff of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, which
published the group's report. Van Cleave was a member of the infamous
Team B Strategic Objectives Panel, a threat assessment committee
authorized by George H.W. Bush, then-CIA director in the Ford
administration. Along with two other members of the Independent
Working Group— William R. Graham and Charles Kupperman—Van Cleave was
a member of the Committee on the Present Danger, which opposed détente
with the Soviet Union.

 Van Cleave, Graham, and Kupperman all have had teaching positions at
the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies at Missouri State
University (formerly Southwest Missouri State University). The three
are also associates of NIPP, a nuclear weapons policy institute, and
serve on the CSP advisory council. Two other members of the
Independent Working Group who also have close ties with Missouri State
University are Henry Cooper of High Frontier and Keith Payne of NIPP.
Another Missouri professor who is part of this right-wing circle is
J.D. Crouch, who served a short term as assistant secretary of defense
for international security policy in the George W. Bush administration
before returning to the university.

 Van Cleave, chair of Missouri State University's Defense and
Strategic Studies Department, is co-director of research in strategy
at the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political
Studies, a think tank closely associated with the Likud Party and
Israeli military hardliners that also has an office in Washington, DC.

 Another prominent figure in the Independent Working Group was Ilan
Berman of the American Foreign Policy Council.

 According to the editors of the National Review, "A domestic
coalition of liberals and peaceniks that has consistently opposed
ballistic missile defense since the early days of SDI is trying to
make the National Space Policy controversial." In their view, "What's
really going on here is a conflict of visions between hawks who
recognize the importance of space power in the 21st century and doves
who think international treaties restricting America's technological
advantages in space would make the world safer" (National Review
Online, October 24, 2006).

 During the Clinton administration, the hawks kept missile defense
alive by raising fears about missile attacks on the U.S. homeland by
China, Iran, and North Korea. They also accused Clinton of failing to
adopt a "coherent policy and program," as the neoconservative Project
for the New American Century (PNAC) opined in its 2000 publication
Rebuilding America's Defenses, which was meant to serve as a policy
blueprint for Clinton's successor. Promoting an ambitious,
multilayered missile defense system, PNAC argued: "The ability to
preserve American military preeminence in the future will rest in
increasing measure on the ability to operate in space militarily: both
the requirements for effective global missile defenses and projecting
global conventional military power demand it."

 More recently, the hawks—in large part the same groups that supported
the SDI in the mid-1980s—have revived their pressure campaign for a
land-, sea-, and space-based missile defense system they say would
ensure global dominance by the United States. Applauding the
Independent Working Group's work, the neoconservative-led CSP declares
that the report "makes clear the imperative of developing and
deploying missile defenses in the place where they can do the most
good and at the least cost: space."

 Tom Barry is a contributor to Right Web (rightweb.irc-online.org) and
policy director of the International Relations Center
(www.irc-online.org).

 Sources

 Theresa Hitchens, "The Bush National Space Policy: Contrasts and
Contradictions," Center for Defense Information, October 13, 2006.

 Theresa Hitchens, Michael Katz-Hyman, and Victoria Samson, "Space
Weapons Spending in FY 2007 Defense Budget," Center for Defense
Information and Henry L. Stimson Center, March 6, 2006.

 Project for the New American Century, Rebuilding America's Defenses:
Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century, September 2000.

 Brent Bender, "Pentagon Eyeing Weapons in Space; Budget Seeks
Millions to Test New Technologies," Boston Globe, March 14, 2006.

 Stephanie Nebehay, "U.S. Insists on Right to Develop Arms for Outer
Space," Reuters, June 13, 2006.

 "Concentrating on Missile Defense," Decision Brief, No. 06-D 36,
Center for Security Policy.

 William D. Hartung with Frida Berrigan, Michelle Ciarrocca, and
Jonathan Wingo, Tangled Web 2005: A Profile of the Missile Defense and
Space Weapons Lobbies, Arms Trade Resource Center.

 Independent Working Group, "Missile Defense, the Space Relationship,
and the 21st Century," Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, 2006,
http://www.ifpa.org/pdf/IWGreport.pdf.

 Editors, "Spacing Out," National Review Online, October 24, 2006.

 For media inquiries, email media at irc-online.org or call (505) 388-0208.

 With printer-friendly pdf version at:
 http://rightweb.irc-online.org/pdf/0611space.pdf

 For related information see:

 EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) Commission
 The commission's 2004 report said the "very fabric of U.S. society"
 could be threatened by an EMP attack, but others don't see the danger.
 http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/3683

 For media inquiries Siri Khalsa, media at irc-online.org, 505-388-0208

 Produced and distributed by International Relations Center (IRC). For
 more information, visit http://www.irc-online.org/. If you would like
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 If you would like to see IRC's variety of free ezines and listservs ,
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 International Relations Center (IRC)
 http://www.irc-online.org/
 Siri D. Khalsa
 Outreach Coordinator
 Email: communications at irc-online.org
 PO Box 2178
 Silver City, NM 88062

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