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John M.
, Professor of political Science and International affairs at George Washington University, 20
, NASA, “50
Years of Human Spaceflight: Why Is There Still a Controversy?”, http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20100025875_2010028362.pdf
Many believe that the only sustainable rationale for a government-funded program of human spaceflight is to take the lead in exploring the solar system beyond low-Earth orbit.20 The MIT white paper provides an insightful definition of exploration: Exploration is a human activity, undertaken by certain cultures at certain times for particular reasons. It has components of national interest, scientific research, and technical innovation, but is defined by none of them. We define exploration as an expansion of the realm of human experience, bringing people into new places, situations, and environments, expanding and redefining what it means to be human. What is the role of Earth in human life? Is human life fundamentally tied to the earth, or could it survive without the planet? Human presence, and its attendant risk, turns a spaceflight into a story that is compelling to large numbers of people. Exploration also has a moral dimension because it is in effect a cultural conversation on the nature and meaning of human life. Exploration by this definition can only be accomplished by direct human presence and may be deemed worthy of the risk of human life.21 In the wake of the 2003
Columbia accident that took the lives of seven astronauts and the report of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board that criticized the absence of a compelling mission for human spaceflight as “a failure of national leadership,”22 the United
States, in January 2004, adopted a new policy to guide its human spaceflight activities. The policy directed NASA to
“implement a sustained and affordable human and robotic program to explore the solar system and beyond” and to “extend human presence across the solar system, starting with a human return to the Moon by the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration of Mars and other destinations.”23 This policy seems totally consistent with the definition of exploration provided in the MIT white paper.
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, http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Space+Exploration space exploration, the investigation of physical conditions in space and on stars, planets, and other celestial bodies through the use of artificial satellites (spacecraft that orbit the earth), space probes (spacecraft that pass through the solar system and that may or may not orbit another celestial body), and spacecraft with human crews.
B. Violation—they demonstrate SPS before they develop—that’s extra-topical
NEXT OFF
Alan L.
is a distinguished professor of national security policy at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, National
Defense University, “Waning Education Standards Threaten U.S. Competitiveness,” June 20
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2008/June/Pages/Waning2235.aspx]
High-quality education is absolutely critical to national security, and the United States must soon address a number of challenges in its educational system if it wants to maintain a competitive edge in the global economy and in key technologies. Of concern is that U.S. student scores are lagging behind other nations in critical areas such as math, science and reading, concluded a study by the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. A group of U.S. and foreign military officers and civilians completed the study last year after visiting dozens of educational organizations in the United States and abroad. The study highlighted the dichotomy between the way educational achievement is measured in the United States versus international standards. In the United States, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires states to develop challenging, coherent, and rigorous academic standards in reading and math, and then demonstrate mastery of those standards. The law required a “highly qualified” teacher in every classroom by the end of 2006, but this requirement was not met and is being addressed in the reauthorization debate. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as the “Nation’s Report Card,” measures the proficiency of fourth, eighth, and 12th grade students in mathematics, science and reading. During the period 1990-2005, NAEP test results showed positive performance trends. In contrast to the national standards measured by NAEP, a comparison of U.S. scores against international standards is not as positive. The
Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) test was developed by education professionals from many countries. In 2003, students from 46 countries took the test. U.S. scores lagged behind those of other nations. Another international education assessment tool, the Program for International Student Assessment, tests 15 year olds from the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development member countries on math, science, and reading literacy. In the latest test in 2003, U.S. students scored below the international average and did significantly worse than students from 20 of the 30 participating countries. Some experts believe the United States is losing its competitive and comparative advantage because of globalization and the associated gains achieved by other nations, the ICAF study pointed out. In this context,
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1 competitiveness applies to both hard and soft power aspects of national security. With respect to hard power, scholars have said that a decline in the quality of math and science education in the United States is partly responsible for the loss of economic and technological advantage. A key challenge in this area is the lack of degreed math and science teachers in U.S. secondary schools. In 2004, more than 31 percent of high school students were taught math by a teacher without a major, minor, or certification in that area. The numbers are even worse in the sciences — 45 percent with degrees in biology, 61 percent in chemistry, and 67 percent in physics, the study said. The soft power knowledge gap is evidenced in the low international ranking of U.S. students in history and geography. The U.S. education system also lacks adequate capacity to offer courses in strategic languages and where language courses are offered, they are rarely mandatory. As a result of these trends and the international threats to economic and technical superiority, the United States should consider the need for greater federal involvement in education, said the ICAF study. This involvement can be accomplished by leveraging federal budget authority and by encouraging appropriate state and local actions.
Russia may be able to balance its budget this year thanks to higher oil prices and a growing economy, Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin said after the surplus widened in June. "We hope the deficit this year will be minimal, and perhaps we'll be able to make it through this year without one," Putin told a government meeting in Moscow on Thursday. The government expects deficits in 2012-14 and will need "strenuous work" to rein in costs. The federal budget surplus surged to 640.2 billion rubles ($23 billion) through June, equivalent to 2.7 percent of gross domestic product, the Finance Ministry said
Thursday on its web site. The surplus in June widened to 5.9 percent of GDP from 5.3 percent a month earlier. Russia needs crude to average $115 a barrel this year to balance the budget, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said last month in St.
Petersburg. It will average $125 for the next three years, according to preliminary budget parameters the Finance Ministry presented earlier this month. "I would ask you again to minimize expenses that are non-essential, and state bodies need to take a balanced approach to their spending on state programs," Putin said. "We know what the forecasts are for 2012 to
2014, and it's not by accident that we're planning for a small deficit." The budget, which usually sees higher spending in the second half, was in deficit at this time last year, Kudrin said at the meeting. The government is maintaining its forecast for a full-year shortfall of "just over 1 percent," he said, down from the 3.6 percent gap projected in the original budget plan.
John Carey senior correspondent in BusinessWeek's Washington bureau “Taming the Oil Beast” Businessweek
Yet reducing oil use has to be done judiciously. A drastic or abrupt drop in demand could even be counterproductive. Why?
Because even a very small change in capacity or demand "can bring big swings in price," explains Rajeev Dhawan, director of the Economic Forecasting Center at Georgia State University's Robinson College of Business. For instance, the slowdown in Asia in the mid-1990s reduced demand only by about 1.5 million bbl. a day, but it caused oil prices to plunge to near $10 a barrel. So today, if the U.S. succeeded in abruptly curbing demand for oil, prices would plummet. Higher-cost producers such as Russia and the U.S. would either have to sell oil at a big loss or stand on the sidelines. The effect would be to concentrate power--you guessed it--in the hands of Middle Eastern nations, the lowest-cost producers and holders of two-thirds of the known oil reserves. That's why flawed energy policies, such as trying to override market forces by rushing to expand supplies or mandating big fuel efficiency gains, could do harm.
Carola McGiffert senior fellow and director of Smart Power Initiatives at CSIS 2007 “Global forecast: the top security challenges of 2008”
While it is obviously difficult to predict major discontinuity in Russia or elsewhere, the next administration will need to keep in mind that Russia for much of its history has shown a remarkable proclivity toward discontinuity and unpredictability. The current economic recovery and apparent political stabilization sit on a fairly fragile foundation. A crash in the price of oil will upset the current stability just as it was a precursor to major change and then collapse in the
Soviet Union 20 years ago. There is no question that Putin and his team see themselves presiding over a stable authoritarian modernization of Russia for the next two to three decades. But history is replete with nations pursuing authoritarian modernization plans that have gone awry.
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Steven R
professor of political science
professor of political science at the john Hopkins U, Foreign Affairs,
January/February.
AT NO TIME since the civil war of 1918 -- 20 has Russia been closer to bloody conflict than it is today. The fledgling government confronts a vast array of problems without the power to take effective action. For 70 years, the Soviet Union operated a strong state apparatus, anchored by the KGB and the Communist Party. Now its disintegration has created a power vacuum that has yet to be filled. Unable to rely on popular ideology or coercion to establish control, the government must prove itself to the people and establish its authority on the basis of its performance. But the Yeltsin administration has abjectly failed to do so, and it cannot meet the most basic needs of the Russian people. Russians know they can no longer look to the state for personal security, law enforcement, education, sanitation, health care, or even electrical power. In the place of government authority, criminal groups -- the Russian Mafia -- increasingly hold sway. Expectations raised by the collapse of communism have been bitterly disappointed, and Moscow's inability to govern coherently raises the specter of civil unrest. If internal war does strike Russia, economic deterioration will be a prime cause.
From 1989 to the present, the GDP has fallen by 50 percent. In a society where, ten years ago, unemployment scarcely existed, it reached 9.5 percent in 1997 with many economists declaring the true figure to be much higher. Twenty-two percent of Russians live below the official poverty line (earning less than $ 70 a month). Modern Russia can neither collect taxes (it gathers only half the revenue it is due) nor significantly cut spending. Reformers tout privatization as the country's cure-all, but in a land without well-defined property rights or contract law and where subsidies remain a way of life, the prospects for transition to an American-style capitalist economy look remote at best. As the massive devaluation of the ruble and the current political crisis show, Russia's condition is even worse than most analysts feared. If conditions get worse, even the stoic
Russian people will soon run out of patience. A future conflict would quickly draw in Russia's military. In the Soviet days civilian rule kept the powerful armed forces in check. But with the Communist
Party out of office, what little civilian control remains relies on an exceedingly fragile foundation -- personal friendships between government leaders and military commanders. Meanwhile, the morale of
Russian soldiers has fallen to a dangerous low. Drastic cuts in spending mean inadequate pay, housing, and medical care. A new emphasis on domestic missions has created an ideological split between the old and new guard in the military leadership, increasing the risk that disgruntled generals may enter the political fray and feeding the resentment of soldiers who dislike being used as a national police force.
Newly enhanced ties between military units and local authorities pose another danger. Soldiers grow ever more dependent on local governments for housing, food, and wages. Draftees serve closer to home, and new laws have increased local control over the armed forces. Were a conflict to emerge between a regional power and Moscow, it is not at all clear which side the military would support. Divining the military's allegiance is crucial, however, since the structure of the Russian Federation makes it virtually certain that regional conflicts will continue to erupt. Russia's 89 republics, krais, and oblasts grow ever more independent in a system that does little to keep them together. As the central government finds itself unable to force its will beyond Moscow (if even that far), power devolves to the periphery.
With the economy collapsing, republics feel less and less incentive to pay taxes to Moscow when they receive so little in return. Three-quarters of them already have their own constitutions, nearly all of which make some claim to sovereignty. Strong ethnic bonds promoted by shortsighted Soviet policies may motivate non-Russians to secede from the Federation. Chechnya's successful revolt against Russian control inspired similar movements for autonomy and independence throughout the country. If these rebellions spread and Moscow responds with force, civil war is likely
. Should Russia succumb to internal war, the consequences for the United States and Europe will be severe. A major power like Russia -- even though in decline -- does not suffer civil war quietly or alone. An embattled Russian Federation might provoke opportunistic attacks from enemies such as China. Massive flows of refugees would pour into central and western Europe.
Armed struggles in Russia could easily spill into its neighbors. Damage from the fighting, particularly attacks on nuclear plants, would poison the environment of much of Europe and Asia. Within Russia, the consequences would be even worse.
Just as the sheer brutality of the last Russian civil war laid the basis for the privations of Soviet communism, a second civil war might produce another horrific regime. Most alarming is the real possibility that the violent disintegration of Russia could lead to loss of control over its nuclear arsenal. No nuclear state has ever fallen victim to civil war, but even without a clear precedent the grim consequences can be foreseen. Russia retains some 20,000 nuclear weapons and the raw material for tens of thousands more, in scores of sites scattered throughout the country. So far, the government has managed to prevent the loss of any weapons or much material. If war erupts, however, Moscow's already weak grip on nuclear sites will slacken, making weapons and supplies available to a wide range of anti-American groups and states. Such dispersal of nuclear weapons represents the greatest physical threat America now faces. And it is hard to think of anything that would increase this threat more than the chaos that would follow a Russian civil war.
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Webb ‘9 (Dave Webb is a Professor of Engineering Modeling, Director of the 'Praxis Centre" (a multidisciplinary research centre for the 'Study of Information Technology to Peace, Conflict and Human Rights') and a member of the School of Applied Global Ethics at
Leeds Metropolitan University. "Securing Outer Space"; "Space Weapons: Dream, nightmare or reality?" Routledge Critical Security
Studies Series, 2009, Google Books
Conclusion War in space is undesirable for a number of reasons - not least of which are the problems associated with space debris and the possibility of space-based weapons aimed at Earth — and most nations appear to be united in wishing to prevent weapons being stationed in space. However, the US is determined not to give up*its superiority and dominance in space technology and has consistently prevented progress in treaty negotiations and has in fact led space weapons development through missile defense and other programmes claiming them to be defensive rather than offensive . However, offence is often in the eyes of the beholder and other technologically capable (or near capable) states are concerned about the dominance and aggressive stance of the US in this area. A major question often asked is what is the force behind the US drive to space dominance? Mow do major projects get huge amounts of funding when eminent scientists can show that they are not technically feasible? Are concerns about national security and a national faith in technological solutions to national and global problem too strong in the US? Does the drive come from a desire for world domination and control? Perhaps it is a mixture of many things. Certainly the aerospace and defense industry (and, increasingly, academia) is a major beneficiary in the effort to achieve full spectrum dominance*. It has been at the forefront of the development of a philosophy of security through strength with a role for the US as a global police force through technological superiority . This also fits well with some US right-wing political views concerning the destiny of America as world police and the Americans' trust in technology to eventually find solutions to seemingly insoluble problems. Another possible influence on all this is a continuing decline in non-military public support for science and engineering programmes and training. The increasing reliance on industry to support military activities has meant that high technology projects in universities are often linked to military programmes.
Students and groups such as the Scientists for Global Responsibility in the UK and the Union of Concerned Scientists in the
US actively campaign on issues such as the ethical use of science and engineering and continue to lobby politicians but there has been little positive response from government. Therefore, there is little choke for those wanting to follow a career in engineering or science but to become an integral part of the 'military industrial complex' and contribute to the development of lucrative military projects . Now must be the time for scientists, engineers and politicians to seriously consider what might constitute a workable ethical policy on space. Although fears are that it is already too late. At a time when satellite and missile-related technologies are growing rapidly, an international space weapons race cannot be the path to follow. Many nations and NGOs agree on a number of issues, including the desirability of the ethical and sustainable use of space. A firmly secure future can only be guaranteed if space remains weapon free and the increasing development of military-related space systems is limited (or ideally reversed) and rigorously monitored and controlled. If there is the will then it can be done. There is a significant role for the technologically able nations here. The world is seeing the warnings and suffering the consequences of ill-planned technological growth. Global warming is beginning to be taken seriously by the major energy and resource consumers. Urgent action is needed to prevent global disaster. Ignoring the environmental consequences of our actions is not an option and often results in human misery and suffering. A significant step for humanity would be made if the nations of the world could develop a collective dream, a meaningful respect and trust that would enable an international agreement on the prevention of the weaponisation of space to be reached. To care enough to make a space environment free of war a reality.
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That day in October 1957 also marked the beginning of serious concerns regarding the modes and kinds of space activities that we would be witnessing, and these concerns were dominated from the outset by the fact that the first journey into space was accompanied by - if not entirely driven by - the Cold War arms race. The initial steps in the exploration of space were inexorably linked with pressures to militarize and securitize this new dimension. As a geographical realm that had hitherto been pristine in relation to mankind's warlike history, this immediate tendency for space exploration to be led by military rationales raised profound philosophical and political questions. What should the purpose of space activity be, and what should it not be? And how would we approach, understand and distinguish between military activities, civilian ones, commercial ones, and SO forth? More than a half century later, the questions as to what we bring to space' as well as how space activities challenge us, and to what effects, seem ever more pressing. While the debate over some of the assumptions, modes and effects of the space age never truly abated, most of the contributors in this volume agree that there is sense of urgency in raising concern, re-conceptualizing the modes of the debate, and engaging critically with the limits and possibilities of the dimension of space vis-a-vis the political. This sense of urgency reflects the revitalization of national space programmes, and particularly that of the United States and China since the start of the twenty-first century. In January
2004, at NASA headquarters, US President George W. Bush announced the need for a new vision for America's civilian and scientific space programme. This call culminated in a Commission's Report on Implementation of United States Space
Exploration Policy, which emphasized the fundamental role of space for US technological leadership, economic validity, and most importantly, security. While this certainly stimulated the debate over the future direction of US space exploration, it has led many to express concern over the implicitly aggressive and ambitious endeavor of colonizing space in the form of calling upon the need for permanent access to and presence in space. A critical eye has also been cast on the Commission's endorsement of the privatization and commercialization of space and its support for implementing a far larger presence of private industry in space operations. Certainly also at the forefront of the current debate on space activities are notions of its militarization and securitization. The deployment of technologies with the aim to secure, safeguard, defend and control certain assets, innovations and activities in space is presented to us as an inevitable and necessary development. It is argued that just as the development of reconnaissance aircraft in the Fitst World War led inexorably to the emergence of fighter aircraft to deny the enemy the ability to carry out such reconnaissance and then bombers to deliver weapons against targets that could be identified and reached from the air, so too has the 'multiplier effect' on military capabilities of satellites encouraged calls for the acquisition of space-based capabilities to defend one's own satellites and attack those of adversaries, and in the longer term, to place weapons in space that could attack targets on Earth. Here, the Bush administration's indication that it envisaged a prominent role for space-based weapons in the longer term as part of the controversial national missile defence system contributed to the atmosphere of controversy surrounding space policy. As space has become crucial to, and utilized by, far more international actors, so the political implications of space activities have multiplied. The members of the European Space Agency have pursued space development for economic, scientific and social reasons. Their model of international space Cooperation has been seen as offering an example to other areas of the world, particularly in their desire to avoid militarizing efforts. Yet even Europe has begun to develop military space capabilities, following a path that has already been pursued by other key states such as China and India, suggesting that there is an inevitability about the militarization, and perhaps ultimately the weaponization, of space. How we conceptualize space has therefore become of fundamental moral, political and strategic importance. Outer space challenges the political imagination as it has always challenged the human imagination in many other fields. For millennia people have looked up to the stars and imagined it as the home of gods or the location of the afterlife. For centuries they have looked to it for answers about the physical nature of the universe and the place of mankind's ancestral home within it. And for decades, it has been seen as the supreme test for advanced technology. Space exploration is a driver of innovation, encouraging us to dream of what might be possible, to push back the boundaries of thought and to change the nature of ontological realities by drawing on novel epistemologies. The physical exploration of the solar system through the application of science and technology has been the visible demonstration of this. The challenges that Space poses for political theory are profound. If space-is about the use of imagination, and the application of novel developments to create new possibilities for human progress, how has political theory and political reality responded to this challenge'? The answer, at least thus far, is both that it has changed everything, and that it has changed very little. For international law, most notably in the Outer Space
Treaty, the denial of territoriality and limitations on sovereignty beyond planet Earth offers a fundamental challenge to the way in which international relations has been conceptualized and operationalized in the modern era. On the other hand, the dream of many, that humanity would leave behind its dark side as it entered space, has not been realized. For the most part,
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1 the exploration and utilization to space has reflected, not challenged, the political patterns and impulses that characterized twentieth-century politics and international relations. Propaganda, military rivalry, economic competition and exploitation,
North—South discrimination and so on have extended their reach beyond the atmosphere. Industrialization and imperialism in the nineteenth century helped produce powerful new social theories, as well as new philosophy, political ideologies and conceptualizarions of the meaning of politics and the nature of human destiny. The realities of the space age demand novel social theories of the same order.
Pever
, Prof. of English @ Bowdoin,
[ Queer Frontiers , p. 39-40]
Perhaps. But to claim that American culture is at present decisively postnuclear is not to say that the world we inhabit is in any way postapocalyptic. Apocalypse, as I began by saying, changed-it did not go away. And here I want to hazard my second assertion: if, in the nuclear age of yesteryear, apocalypse signified an event threatening everyone and everything with (in Jacques Den-ida's suitably menacing phrase) "remairiderless and a-symbolic destruction,," then in the postnuclear world apocalypse is an affair whose parameters are definitively local. In shape and in substance, apocalypse is defined now by the affliction it brings somewhere else, always to an "other" people whose very presence might then be written as a kind of dangerous contagion, threatening the safety and prosperity of a cherished "general population ." This fact seems to me to stand behind Susan Sontag's incisive observation, from 1989, that, 'Apocalypse is now a long-running serial: not
'Apocalypse Now' but 'Apocalypse from Now On."" The decisive point here in the perpetuation of the threat of apocalypse (the point Sontag goes on, at length, to miss) is that apocalypse is ever present because, as an element in a vast economy of power, it is ever useful. That is, through the perpetual threat of destruction-through the constant reproduction of the figure of apocalypse -agencies of power ensure their authority to act on and through the bodies of a particular population. No one turns this point more persuasively than Michel Foucault, who in the final chapter of his first volume of The History of Sexuality addresses himself to the problem of a power that is less repressive than productive, less life-threatening than, in his words, "life-administering." Power, he contends, "exerts a positive influence on life land, endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations?' In his brief comments on what he calls "the atomic situation;' however, Foucault insists as well that the productiveness of modern power must not be mistaken for a uniform repudiation of violent or even lethal means. For as "managers of life and survival, of bodies and the race," agencies of modern power presume to act 'on the behalf of the existence of everyone."
Whatsoever might be construed as a threat to life and survival in this way serves to authorize any expression of force, no matter how invasive or, indeed, potentially annihilating . "If genocide is indeed the dream of modem power," Foucault writes, "this is not because of a recent return to the ancient right to kill; it is because power is situated and exercised at the level of life, the species, the race, and the large-scale phenomena of population." For a state that would arm itself not with the power to kill its population, but with a more comprehensive power over the patterns and functioning of its collective life, the threat of an apocalyptic demise, nuclear or otherwise, seems a civic initiative that can scarcely be done without.
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Space is not the final frontier. No matter how many times this trope is deployed in popular culture, so long as there is a need for people to imagine a place where things might be different, new, and/or better, there will be places produced as frontiers.
The frontier of space shares with previous frontiers - such as the New World or the American West – a mythological construction that serves as a repository for all manner of utopian dreaming and capital scheming. But unlike those previous frontiers, space is still open enough to be constructed differently , to avoid what Alondra Nelson calls the “social science fictions” that reinscribe the worst social inequalities of dominant culture as it seeks new territory to colonize (1). Space is still relatively non-existent as a place of real significant human occupation, meaning that space as most people know it today has been largely constructed through popular culture. The social, capital, or cultural restraints of our earthly existence need not follow should humanity colonize space in the future. As a place that has been socially but not yet materially produced, the everyday lived experience of people in space is still open to be constructed differently , to be a place where what seems odd to us today may turn out to be a perfectly normal part of everyday life. Importantly, the future of space is still in the hands of anyone who cares to participate in its construction. The existing discursive construction of space, to which this project is an amendment, valorizes American exceptionalism, normalizes frontier militarism, and perpetuates myths of technological and capitalist superiority . The space of twentieth century popular culture is of both endless opportunity and unlimited danger. From
Star Wars to the Star Trek franchise, the Alien trilogy to Battlestar Galactica, the combatants and contests may differ but the regime of violent conflict is unchallenged .
Even within the discourse of opportunity in space, the opportunities are circumscribed by socially constructed terrestrial limits on who gets to participate, how they do so, and to what ends. In other words, the Star Trek franchise may feature ethnically diverse crews and even a female captain in one case, and Trekkies consistently profess tolerant values, but the
universalism is wrapped in militarism, the economics are ubiquitously capitalist, and uneasy differences like queerness or class are erased and made invisible. Hard Days and Nights It may seem premature to be concerned about the impact of the existing representations on future lives in space when there is yet to be any substantial human presence, but given how many of the futuristic imaginings debuted on Star Trek have come to pass (such as the cell phone, desktop computing, and remote sensing for example) it may be beneficial to begin the process of imagining space as a real place with real social, cultural, and political beings. In other words, we’ve been shown that officers and doctors would fare well in a Star Trek-ian space future, but if you’re one of those generic workers in the red shirts, the ones put in the line of fire but not in the story, you may wish that the concerns of working people were front-loaded into the human colonization of space. The time for postcolonial analysis of space is before it is colonized any further . As John Hickman suggests, [...] few space development enthusiasts have given the political economy of their very large space projects serious thought . Instead, they have chosen to describe the exciting science and engineering possibilities while promising the moon and the stars to those who would dare to exploit them.
Case Offense –
(Mike
, Senior Consultant at Sapient Government Services, Winter 20
, “A Debate About Weapons in Space:
Against A New Cold War?” SAIS Review, Volume 26, Number 1, pg.179)
National righteousness is not uncommon. It characterizes the elites of any number of states beginning with France, a nation whose chief exports seem to be wine, cheese, and moral smugness. But Britain and Germany are powerfully righteous states, too, as are Norway and Sweden, Russia and India, Saudi Arabia and Israel, China and Japan. None of these states, however, aspires to develop and maintain the capability to exercise “full spectrum dominance”—a favored Defense
Department phrase6—anywhere in the world at any time; none of these states contemplates developing and deploying a space-control capability; none of these states is attempting to design space-based weapons.
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Rick Rozoff, contributing writer to Global Research.ca in Canada, 2009. “Militarization of Space: The Threat of Nuclear
War on Earth,” http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/militarization-of-space-threat-of-nuclear-war-on-earth-by-rickrozoff/
That is, the militarization of space can result in a nuclear conflagration on earth not only by accident or the law of unintended consequences but fully by design. If the US plan is, by a combination of ground, sea and air delivery systems, to destroy any ability to retaliate after a devastating first blow , the Russian general warned of what in fact would ensue: “The Americans will never manage to implement this scenario because Russian strategic nuclear forces, including the Russian Strategic Missile Forces, will be capable of delivering a retaliatory strike given any course of developments.
“After receiving authorization from the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian
Armed Forces it will not take our strategic missile force more than two-three minutes to carry out the task of launching missiles .” [38] What Solovtsov has described is the nightmare humanity has dreaded since the advent of the nuclear age: An exchange of nuclear-tipped intercontinental missiles. One that might result from an attack launched at least partially from space and in one manner or other in relation to space-based military assets.
An analogous warning was issued last year by the then commander of Russia’s Space Forces, General Vladimir Popovkin, who said, “ Space is one of the few places around not yet separated by borders, and any kind of military deployments there would upset the existing balance of forces on our planet.
” [39] This past
March American space researcher Matt Hoey stated that an arms race in space would be “increasing the risk of an accidental nuclear war while shortening the time for sanity and diplomacy to come into play to halt crises .” “If these systems are deployed in space we will be tipping the nuclear balance between nations that has ensured the peace for decades .
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