FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
U.S. Space Force Is Conceived as Geopolitical Weapon Against Russia and China
Aug. 10 , 2018 (EIRNS)—The U.S. Space Force, as announced by Vice President Mike Pence yesterday at the Pentagon, has been conceived on the basis of the National Defense Strategy, which sees Russia and China as geopolitical rivals and “revisionist powers.” Rather than seeing space as a domain for human exploration for the benefit of the whole of humanity, the policy sees it as another domain of “great power” competition and even warfare.
At the same time that Pence was speaking Aug. 9, the Pentagon also released a 15-page report to the Congress on the organization and structure of the military space components within the DOD. The report declares that the U.S. must “dominate” in space against its “adversaries.”
“U.S. space systems have historically maintained a technological advantage over those of potential adversaries, those potential adversaries are now actively developing ways to deny our use of space in a crisis,”
the Pentagon report states. It directly names Russia and China as space threats to the U.S.
“China and Russia, our strategic competitors, are explicitly pursuing space warfighting capabilities to neutralize U.S. space capabilities during a time of conflict,”
it says.
“Russia and China perceive a need to offset any U.S. military advantage derived from military, civil, or commercial space systems and are increasingly considering attacks against satellite systems as part of their future warfare doctrine. Both will continue to pursue a full range of anti-satellite weapons as a means to reduce U.S. military effectiveness.”
This perspective was also reflected in Pence’s remarks, in which he claimed that competitors and potential adversaries such as China and Russia have developed new weaponry geared toward taking down U.S. satellites. “As their actions made clear, our adversaries have transformed space into a warfighting domain already,” Pence said. “The U.S. will not shrink from this challenge.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement in response, which warned that “a military confrontation in space may be as dangerous as the nuclear arms race set off by Washington in the middle of the last century.” It slammed the U.S. military space program as “adventurism” that may have “the most negative impact on the state of international security,” reported Sputnik.
