Putin warns: Global security will be put in jeopardy if New START Treaty with US not renewed
(February 17, 2020) — The United States will deal an irreversible blow to the existing security balance in space, Russia has warned, in the wake of an announcement by Washington about plans to deploy weapons to space.
Earlier this month, General John “Jay” Raymond, commander of the newly minted US Space Force, claimed that a pair of Russian spacecraft had been allegedly shadowing a multi-billion-dollar American spy satellite hundreds of kilometers above the Earth’s surface the previous month.
He said what Russia had done was “unusual and disturbing,” adding that he had conveyed Washington’s concerns in this regard to Moscow through diplomatic channels.
The US Space Force, for which the administration of President Donald Trump is requesting 15 billion dollars in its budget proposal, is the first new military service since the US Air Force was established in 1947, two years after the conclusion of the World War II.
According to Raymond, in mid-January Russia’s satellites of Cosmos 2542 and Cosmos 2543 were allegedly sidling near the US state-of-the-art satellite, identified as USA 245, known to space experts as a KH-11.
On Monday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry rejected Washington’s claim that Russian satellites were tailing the American space machine, stressing that the Russian satellites were not weapons, but rather “inspector” spacecraft engaged in an “experiment.”
“We would like to point out that the movement of our spacecraft did not pose a threat to the US satellite and, most importantly, did not violate any norms and principles of international law,” the ministry stated.
It also lambasted Washington’s idea of deploying weapons to space, which could trigger a new era of arms race in space, stressing that Moscow did not have plans to solve problems in space using weapons.
“This provocative step is another attempt by the United States to justify the US plans to deploy weapons in space, shifting to others the responsibility for destabilizing the situation in space security,” the ministry warned.
It also stressed that the implementation of US military plans in space would inflict irreparable damage upon the current space security system.
Last year, the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) collapsed after Washington pulled out of the 1987 bilateral deal with Moscow. The INF had banned all land-based missiles with the range of up to 5,500 kilometers.
The withdrawal from the agreement came after Washington accused Moscow of secretly violating it. Russia, which has repeatedly rejected these allegations, stopped implementing the INF after the pullout.
Late last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that nothing can hold back yet another arms race and thus international security will be damaged if the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with the US was not renewed.
The START accord is the last major nuclear arms control treaty between Moscow and Washington that puts a limit on the development and deployment of strategic nuclear warheads of both countries.
Back in July 1991, START, which later was called START I, was signed by then US President George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, barring both countries from deploying more than 6,000 nuclear warheads atop a total of 1,600 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and bombers.
In January 1993, President Bush and Boris Yeltsin, the former Russian president, signed START II, but it collapsed and never entered into force.
The START I treaty expired in late 2009 and its replacement, called the New START or START III, was signed in April 2010 by former US President Barack Obama and then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, under which both sides agreed to halve the number of strategic nuclear missiles and restrict the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550.
The New START can be extended for another five years, beyond its expiry date in February 2021, by mutual agreement.
In 2015, US Congress Announced Open Season on Space Resources
(November 29, 2015) — During the Age of Discovery – which roughly spanned from the 15th to 18th centuries – newly emerged European powers carried out extensive overseas exploration and discovered uncharted small and vast masses of land, shortly before these territories were claimed in the name of the monarchs who had funded the expeditions. All too often, this led to bloody wars between rivals, particularly over more lucrative trade routes, which ended up in colonization of the newly-found lands and nations.
But who owns space and who can claim its ownership? Is it for everybody or for nobody? Does history of space exploration follow that of its terrestrial forerunner?
Until the second half of the twentieth century and the arrival of the age of space exploration, when space cropped up in dialogues, ownership did not immediately spring to mind.
In 1967, a decade after Russians (then USSR) launched the first man-made object to orbit the Earth and just two years prior to the first Moon landing by Americans, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs entered the Outer Space Treaty into force, which stated: “Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”
Nearly 130 countries, including China, Russia, the UK and the US, have committed to this treaty.
It, therefore, meant that outer space is not the property of a specific country or so-called power and no one can claim all or parts of it.
On November 18, however, everything changed when the US Congress, in violation of the treaty, passed the Space Act of 2015 into law, which now awaits US President Barack Obama’s signature.
According to the legislation, US space companies have the rights to possess and sell natural resources they mine from celestial bodies, including asteroids. The other side of the coin, however, is that extracting extraterrestrial resources, one-sidedly could irrevocably alter the pristine conditions of space forever, and reminding us of the classic rendition of the “he who dares wins” philosophy of the Wild West.
Space is the province of all mankind and not the exclusive property of a certain country equipped with space technology. It needs to be supported and understood legally by laws agreed upon by all nations, which are powerful enough to thwart domestic laws of a certain country seeking systematic exploitation of mineral resources in space.
Space cannot be treated as the Earth was treated in the gone days of the Age of Discovery. The Ancient Romans had this all correctly in their legal maxim: “What concerns all must be decided upon by all.”
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
