*** ASATs Advantage
Space Race – US Drives Chinese ASAT Acquisition (1/2)
China’s perception of US control over space caused them to develop ASATs as a security measure
Hagt, director of the China Program at the World Security Institute, 2007
(Eric, “China’s ASAT Test: Strategic Response,” China Security, Issue No.5, p. 35, Winter, http://www.chinasecurity.us/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=187&Itemid=8, Accessed June 30, 2011, NS)
In the past decade, China has derived a number of key conclusions from its observations of U.S. military activities in space that have fundamentally shaped China’s own strategic posture. The first is the profound implications of space for information and high-tech wars. China witnessed with awe and alarm the power of the U.S. military using satellite communication, reconnaissance, geo-positioning and integration capabilities for an impressive show of force beginning first with the Gulf war in 1991 to the recent campaign in Afghanistan and Iraq.1 The U.S. military’s almost complete dependence on space assets has also not escaped the close examination of Chinese analysts.2 Coupled with a number of key U.S. policy and military documents that call for control in space and the development of space weapons as well as the U.S. refusal to enter into any restrictive space arms control treaty, China has concluded that America is determined to dominate and control space.3 This perceived U.S. intent leads Beijing to assume the inevitable weaponization of space.4 Even more worrisome for China is the direct impact of these developments on China’s core national interests. The accelerated development of the U.S. ballistic missile system, especially as it is being developed in close cooperation with Japan, has been cited as threatening China’s homeland and nuclear deterrent.5 The ‘Shriever’ space war games conducted by the U.S. Air Force in 2001, 2003 and 20056 strongly reinforced the conclusion that U.S. space control sets China has concluded that the United States is determined to control space. Eric Hagt China Security Winter 2007 33 China as a target.7 Most central to China’s concerns, however, is the direct affect U.S. space dominance will have on China’s ability to prevail in a conflict in the Taiwan Straits.8 As U.S. military space developments have evolved, China’s observations and subsequent conclusions have engendered a fundamental response: we cannot accept this state of affairs. For reasons of defense of national sovereignty as well as China’s broader interests in space – civilian, commercial and military – America’s pursuit of space control and dominance and its pursuit to develop ASATs and space weapons pose an intolerable risk to China’s national security.9 China’s own ASAT test embodied this message. Attempting to redress what China perceives as a critically imbalanced strategic environment that increasingly endangers its interests, China demonstrated a deterrent to defend against that threat. Its willingness to risk international opprobrium through such a test conveys China’s grim resolve to send that message. This still leaves unanswered nagging questions about: who made the decision, who was party to the decision, when was the decision made, and its significance for China’s intentions in space. Knowing the answers to some of these important issues may do little to temper the detrimental effects of the test, but can hopefully provide clues as to how the United States and the international community can respond
Space Race – US Drives Chinese ASAT Acquisition (2/2)
China’s ASAT testing could only stem from external motivators, such as the threat of US space dominance
Hagt, director of the China Program at the World Security Institute, 2007
(Eric, “China’s ASAT Test: Strategic Response,” China Security, Issue No.5, p. 35, Winter, http://www.chinasecurity.us/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=187&Itemid=8, Accessed June 30, 2011, NS)
This urgency to address China’s rising security concerns is also evidenced by the call within key military institutes around the 2003-2005 timeframe to create a dedicated military space command with a stated purpose of tackling the growing strategic and national security threats in space.22 The driving force behind this new command system appears to be the PLA General Armament Department (GAD) or the closely related Armament Academy (AA).23 Presently, command over civilian space experiment activities is roughly divided between the State Council, the Central Military Commission (CMC) and functional sections of the GAD.24 Although the institutional hierarchy of China’s military space program is not fully understood, military space activities are probably led by the CMC and the PLA General Chief Department, with significant personnel coming from the GAD.25 Under a new powerful supreme command department for space, an agency with the Chinese president as the supreme commander, military space would take on a new priority in terms of budgeting and military and political authority; similar to what occurred with the Second Artillery, China’s strategic force, upon its establishment.26 While a space command and space forces may not have formally taken shape, the call for them strongly indicates the need for the military to seriously counter perceived threats to its national security challenges in space.27 China’s increasingly heightened sense of insecurity in space and its calls for a separate space command in response to the U.S. drive for space control have additional significance for the development of its military space initiatives and its eventual ASAT test. These trends have driven the establishment of domestic institutional and industrial constituencies that have taken root in the system and are vying for political and economic influence and authority. This phenomenon is certainly not unique to China as the experience of bureaucratic agencies in the United States will attest.28 With deepening institutional interests, such agencies naturally evolve a degree of imperviousness to outside influence. The closed and nontransparent nature of China’s military establishment, which largely runs the space program, only exacerbates this tendency. The sum of these realities suggests that once set in motion, national defense considerations planned over a long period to address security threats may be China’s ASAT Test: Strategic Response influenced to a degree by external factors but cannot be altered at the whim of those factors.29 In this sense, China’s space program may have been less malleable to altering its course of developing as a military hedge than has been hoped
Share with your friends: |
