Minnesota Urban Debate League
2012 Spring Updates
Middle School
Contents
Affirmative ...................................................................................................................................... 2
Add On: Extraterrestrial Life ...................................................................................................... 3
Answer To (AT): Space Militarization ....................................................................................... 6
Answer To (AT): US-China Relations ....................................................................................... 8
Negative ........................................................................................................................................ 11
Answer To (AT): Extraterrestrial Life ...................................................................................... 12
Position 1 (Don't run with Position 2): Alien life doesn't exist ............................................ 12
Position 2 (Do not run with Position 1): Aliens exist but cause negative consequences...... 13
Space Militarization .................................................................................................................. 15
US-China Relations .................................................................................................................. 18
Notes:
The following packet provides your teams with some interesting new arguments for the spring
semester. It is not intended to replace the fall packet but rather to give you some fresh options if
you would like to try something new.
As with the fall packet, these cards include the full text of article and book excerpts and need to
be cut before reading them in a debate round. Talk through these cards as a team to determine
what parts you should read in order to best represent the argument you would like to make.
Highlight and underline the best portions and make notes in the margins to help you remember
what to say at tournaments.
The arguments cover three substantive areas:
1. Alien Life: Would a Mars mission help us find extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) and
what might be the consequences, positive and negative, of such discovery?
2. What is the role of the military in space exploration? Do advances in space technology
apply to warfighting and, if so, how might those advances affect humankind?
3. What would these Chinese government, a state that has recently begun its own human
spaceflight program, think about a US mission to Mars? What role should international
cooperation play in colonizing space?
Good luck with the new packet and, most importantly, have fun debating!
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Minnesota Urban Debate League
2012 Spring Updates
Middle School
Affirmative
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Minnesota Urban Debate League
2012 Spring Updates
Middle School
Add On: Extraterrestrial Life
Mars exploration is key to understanding the genesis of biological existence and finding life
on other planets.
Reiman--10
[Saara Reiman, Department of Political and Economic Studies at the University of Helsinki, "On Sustainable
Exploration of Space and Extraterrestrial Life," Journal of Cosmology, Volume 12, October-November 2010, pp.
3894-3903, http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars141.html]
The possibility that Mars is a living planet is supported by evidence from the 1976 Viking
Mission Labeled Release (LR) experiment. As determined by Levin, the LR obtained positive
responses at Viking 1 and 2 sites on Mars which was at first interpreted as indications of life.
Almost immediately, however, a consensus formed which favored chemical or physical agents in
the Martian surface material, not life. Science is not a democracy and a positive response favors
the possibility of life. In fact, the positive response to the LR experiment can be explained by
microbial organisms which employ use a mixture of water and hydrogen peroxide as an
intracellular solvent.
Additional evidence suggestive of life is based on the presence of substantial amounts of
methane in the Martian atmosphere. Although it is yet to be determined if the methane is
biological or abiogenic, the fact remains that methane continues to be produced. Even if abiotic
in origin, the combination of reduced gases and oxidised minerals provides opportunities for life
to flourish.
Based on studies of genetics, biology, and astrobiology, there is a growing consensus that life on
Earth originated from extra-terrestrial sources, and were delivered to this planet by comets,
meteors and planetary debris; and this implies life may be everywhere throughout the cosmos. If
life on Earth arose by mechanisms of panspermia or through abiogenesis, then certainly the same
mechanism can apply to Mars and other celestial bodies. And even if life first arose on Earth, it
is possible life could have been transferred to Mars from Earth by mechanisms of panspermia.
There is thus every reason to suspect that life may exist on Mars, and that highly evolved forms
of life have evolved on other planets.
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Space exploration and the search for extraterrestrial life leads to advances in science and
improves our understanding of the world around us
Lamb--01
[David Lamb, Los Angeles Times journalist and five-time author; he has been Nieman fellow, a Pew Fellow, and a
writer-in-residence at the University of Southern California's School of Journalism, "The Search For Extraterrestrial
Intelligence, a Philosophical inquiry," 2001,
http://images.hitungmundur.multiply.multiplycontent.com/attachment/0/ScpeiQoKCEAAACeVUCQ1/The%20Sear
ch%20for%20Extraterrestrial%20Intelligence.pdf?key=hitungmundur:journal:20&nmid=223228769]
The exploration of space, the search for life and extraterrestrial intelligence, will not merely add
to the weight of scientific facts; it will play a fundamental role in the transformation of science,
its goals and methods, as well as a transformation of our relationship to the world around us. For
scientific research is not merely about the accumulation of facts, it is also bound up with the
transformation of facts and theories and inevitably with the transformation of human
expectations. Space research in general will undoubtedly bring benefits, many of which will be
unpredictable, with inevitable spin-offs affecting other branches of life, and some of them will
introduce new problems and terrors which future generations will have to live with.
There is a need to recognize the importance of curiosity-driven research, not merely freedom for
a few researchers to gather esoteric data, but in the service of a curiosity that is integral to our
culture and the way it has evolved over the past two millennia. For a fundamental reason for
SETI research is natural curiosity. Despite non-curious governments, curiosity has a way of
triumphing in many guises, one of which involves persuading potential investors of profitable
side effects. The discovery of new continents in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the
opening up of new frontiers in the nineteenth century and the cultural expansion of the twentieth
century, have all fostered a tradition of exploration that is still strong enough to excite and
capture the imagination as did the first lunar landings over a quarter of a century ago. The search
for life in the universe is, perhaps, one of the last great frontiers of science.
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Understanding human life through the eyes of extraterrestrial beings helps us understand
our unique, earthbound identity and drives us to overcome our differences
Tough--98
[Professor Allen Tough is a noted social scientist, author, educator, and futurist at the University of Toronto,
"Positive consequences of SETI before detection," Acta Astronautica, Volume 42, Issues 10-12, May-June 1998,
Pages 745-748]
By thinking about how a remote civilization might view us, we gain a fresh perspective on our
own civilization. Various specific implications may occur to us. We may wonder why our
society places such emphasis on differences among people when, compared with any
extraterrestrial species, we are all quite similar and should feel deeply connected. We may see
more sharply the importance of such priorities as ensuring our long-term survival and
flourishing, caring about future generations, accumulating significant knowledge, protecting that
knowledge from potential catastrophes, developing a set of universal goals and laws that might
apply throughout the galaxy, and reducing our worst foibles and errors (warfare, population
growth, environmental degradation). Surely extraterrestrials would wonder why we have not
shifted our attention, resources, and efforts towards these key priorities.
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Answer To (AT): Space Militarization
Obama's National Space Policy focuses on transnational cooperation and coordination, not
domination; US leadership is key to forming peaceful partnerships
Phillip--11
[Joshua Phillip, "US Space Strategy Bringing Governance to Outer Space," The Epoch Times, 8 February 2011,
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/50800/]
Obama’s new space strategy brings “a move toward the sustainability and stability of the space
domain; a new emphasis on international cooperation; an expansion of how we protect space
systems in a contested environment; and, finally, the improvement of our space acquisition
process.” According to a DOD summary, the space strategy program, NSSS, “draws on all
elements of national power and requires active U.S. leadership in space.” It will include
establishing partnerships with “responsible nations, international organizations, and commercial
firms” and will “promote responsible, peaceful, and safe use of space.” It also includes strategy
to deter “aggression against space infrastructure that supports U.S. national security,” and states
the United States will “prepare to defeat attacks and operate in a degraded environment.” The
original space policy was set in motion when President Dwight Eisenhower signed the National
Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. It was at a time, however, when the only competition the
United States had in space was the USSR. The United States has been a world leader in space
exploration, yet 60 nations now have a presence in space, and “the skies over earth are so
cluttered with debris that further collisions could eventually put some usable orbits in jeopardy.”
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Just because policymakers use militaristic language and psychology to frame the
conversation about space exploration doesn't mean threats to the planet aren't real; you
must vote to save all life on Earth from real threats like asteroids, environmental
degradation and human-made disasters.
Matheny--07
[Jason Matheny, Department of Health Policy and Management, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins
University, “Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction,” Risk Analysis, Vol 27, No 5, 2007, http://www.upmcbiosecurity.org/website/resources/publications/2007_orig-articles/2007-10-15-reducingrisk.html]
The temptation of psychology is that, knowing a little psychology, we can meddle in arguments
where we have no technical expertise - instead sagely analyzing the psychology of the
disputants. If someone wrote a novel about an asteroid strike destroying modern civilization,
then someone might criticize that novel as extreme, dystopian, apocalyptic; symptomatic of the
author's naive inability to deal with a complex technological society. We should recognize this as
a literary criticism, not a scientific one; it is about good or bad novels, not good or bad
hypotheses. To quantify the annual probability of an asteroid strike in real life, one must study
astronomy and the historical record: no amount of literary criticism can put a number on it.
Garreau (2005) seems to hold that a scenario of a mind slowly increasing in capability, is more
mature and sophisticated than a scenario of extremely rapid intelligence increase. But that's a
technical question, not a matter of taste; no amount of psychologizing can tell you the exact
slope of that curve. It's harder to abuse heuristics and biases than psychoanalysis. Accusing
someone of conjunction fallacy leads naturally into listing the specific details that you think are
burdensome and drive down the joint probability. Even so, do not lose track of the real-world
facts of primary interest; do not let the argument become about psychology. Despite all dangers
and temptations, it is better to know about psychological biases than to not know. Otherwise we
will walk directly into the whirling helicopter blades of life. But be very careful not to have too
much fun accusing others of biases. That is the road that leads to becoming a sophisticated
arguer - someone who, faced with any discomforting argument, finds at once a bias in it. The one
whom you must watch above all is yourself. Jerry Cleaver said: "What does you in is not failure
to apply some high-level, intricate, complicated technique. It's overlooking the basics. Not
keeping your eye on the ball." Analyses should finally center on testable real-world assertions.
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Answer To (AT): US-China Relations
The US and China are committed to cooperation on space policy and see each other as
partners, not threats.
Zhang--11
[Dr. Baohui Zhang, received his undergraduate education in China and his Ph.D. in political science from the
University of Texas in Austin. Before joining the faculty of Lingnan, he taught for ten years in the United States. His
research interests include Chinese politics, international relations of East Asia, and democratization. “The Security
Dilemma in the U.S.-China Military Space Relationship” March/April 2011,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/AS.2011.51.2.311?origin=JSTOR-pdf]
The strategic landscape between China and the U.S., as seen by Chinese experts from both
civilian and military backgrounds, has shifted because of changes in American grand strategy
and military strategy. This change in perception has relaxed Chinese concerns about national
security. It marks a significant turnaround from China’s view of the American threat from the
mid-1990s to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, when the American pursuit of hegemony was
seen as the greatest threat in China’s strategic environment. After U.S. Secretary of Defense
Robert Gates announced major changes in the Pentagon’s 2010 budget, including cancelling the
procurement of F-22 fighters and key missile defense programs, one PLA strategist characterized
these adjustments as “a comprehensive rethinking about U.S. geopolitical strategies.” As the
analysis emphasizes, “Gates’s and Obama’s thinking no longer shows aggressiveness. Instead,
they seek a new security framework through accommodation. These significant adjustments in
U.S. military strategies, especially the decisions to cut missile defense and stop procurement of
F-22 fighters, which are directed mainly against China and Russia, should be welcomed. They
are conducive for relaxing relations among great powers and reducing their strategic
misunderstanding.”
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China believes in the peaceful use of outer space and won’t start a space race; they are
currently working on a treaty to prevent this
Xinhua--11
[The Xinhua News Agency is the official press agency of the government of the People's
Republic of China (PRC), “China opposes arms race in outer space: white paper,” 31 March
2011, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-03/31/c_13806954.htm]
The Chinese government advocates the peaceful use of outer space, and opposes any
weaponization of outer space and any arms race in outer space, says a white paper on the
country's national defense. "China believes that the best way for the international community to
prevent any weaponization of or arms race in outer space is to negotiate and conclude a relevant
international legally-binding instrument," says the white paper, issued by the Information Office
of the State Council Thursday. According to the document, in February 2008, China and Russia
jointly submitted to the Conference on Disarmament (CD) a draft Treaty on the Prevention of the
Placement of Weapons in Outer Space and the Threat or Use of Force against Outer Space
Objects (PPWT). In August 2009, China and Russia jointly submitted their working paper
responding to the questions and comments raised by the CD members on the draft treaty. China
is looking forward to starting negotiations on the draft treaty at the earliest possible date, in order
to conclude a new outer space treaty, says the white paper.
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Openness and transparency between governments solves miscalculations about a US Mars
program's intent
South China Morning Post--07
[The South China Morning Post is an English language newspaper based in Hong Kong, "Openness can head off a
new space race," 29 March 2007]
A major driving force of the cold war space race was a lack of openness between the Americans
and Soviets. There were shades of a return to that era in January when Beijing secretly tested a
ballistic missile by blowing up an old satellite, scattering debris that had the potential to damage
other satellites. The central government was roundly condemned by the US, Japan and others for
carrying out the test. It initially remained silent, but after two weeks admitted carrying it out behavior that has to be avoided for the sake of global stability. The US, however, stands accused
of hypocrisy because - unlike China and Russia - it refuses to support an international agreement
banning the deployment of weapons in space. China's achievements, although they follow in the
footsteps of the US and Russia, are significant. It is among the space elite and this is a reason for
pride. Each new step into space will boost the country's international standing. But China must
not fall into the trap of putting competition and accolades ahead of those on the ground. Each
yuan budgeted for spending in space has to be weighed against how it might be used to alleviate
poverty and provide essential infrastructure. Nor should China's space ventures be anything other
than peaceful. Keeping technological developments transparent and ensuring openness is
essential to preventing another space race.
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Negative
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Answer To (AT): Extraterrestrial Life
Position 1 (Don't run with Position 2): Alien life doesn't exist
The conditions required for extra-terrestrial life are exceedingly uncommon; even in the
unlikely case that all conditions are perfect, the probability of intelligent life arising from
those conditions is next to impossible
Crawford--2000
[Ian Crawford, "Where Are They? Maybe We Are Alone In the Galaxy After All”, Scientific American, Volume
283, Issue 1, July 2000, pp. 38-43]
For more than three billion years, Earth was inhabited solely by single-celled microorganisms.
This time lag seems to imply that the evolution of anything more complicated than a single cell
is unlikely. Thus, the transition to multicelled animals might occur on only a tiny fraction of the
millions of planets that are inhabited by single-celled organisms. It could be argued that the long
solitude of the bacteria was simply a necessary precursor to the eventual appearance of animal
life on Earth. Perhaps it took this long—and will take a comparable length of time on other
inhabited planets—for bacterial photosynthesis to produce the quantities of atmospheric oxygen
required by more complex forms of life.
But even if multicelled life-forms do eventually arise on all life bearing planets, it still does not
follow that these will inevitably lead to intelligent creatures, still less to technological
civilizations. As pointed out by Stephen Jay Gould in his book Wonderful Life, the evolution of
intelligent life depends on a host of essentially random environmental influences. This
contingency is illustrated most clearly by the fate of the dinosaurs. They dominated this planet
for 140 million years yet never developed a technological civilization. Without their extinction,
the result of a chance event, evolutionary history would have been very different. The evolution
of intelligent life on Earth has rested on a large number of chance events, at least some of which
had a very low probability. In 1983 physicist Brandon Carter concluded that “civilizations
comparable with our own are likely to be exceedingly rare, even if locations as favorable as our
own are of common occurrence in the galaxy.”
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Position 2 (Do not run with Position 1): Aliens exist but cause negative consequences
Alien contact is just as likely to lead to the collapse of humanity as it is to have a positive
outcome; the high risk of disaster means you vote negative on presumption
Chaisson--2000
[Eric J. Chaisson, Harvard University research professor, "When SETI Succeeds: The Impact of High-Information
Contact," 2000, p. 59]
Should contact with ETI [Extraterrestrial Intelligence] be physical, even as a mere ceremonial
visitation, then the impact could be large and negative for our species. I refer to the universality
of physical and chemical phenomena in the cosmos, and by extension to the subjects of biology
and its allied behavioral sciences. In short, if neo-Darwinism (or some version of it) holds
cosmically, meaning that competition is at least part of any complex being’s methodology, then
it is not inconceivable that they (who will be, again, more advanced than we are) would
dominate us. Not that they would “come and eat us”—though they might; we do, in fact,
consume many other, “lesser” species—and not that their alien posture toward us would be
overtly hostile. Rather, dominance is likely to be the natural, indeed perhaps inevitable, stance of
any advanced life form. It is just as reasonable to argue that advanced life, anywhere in the
cosmos, will tend to control other life (as well as controlling matter and radiation locally) if
given the opportunity and if in physical contact, as it is to suggest that positive consequences will
result from our detection of and interaction with extraterrestrial intelligence.
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Alien diseases could wipe out humanity; the cross-cultural spread of disease during the Age
of Exploration on Earth proves this scenario could be devastating
Bauma, Haqq-Misrab, & Domagal-Goldmanc--11
[Seth D. Bauma, Jacob D. Haqq-Misrab, and Shawn D. Domagal-Goldmanc, Department of Geography,
Pennsylvania State University, Department of Meteorology, Pennsylvania State University, NASA Planetary
Science Division, "Would contact with extraterrestrials benefit or harm humanity? A scenario analysis, Acta
Astronautica, Volume 68, Issues 11-12, June-July 2011, Pages 2114-2129]
If humanity comes into direct physical contact with either ETI themselves or some ETI artifact,
then it may be possible for humanity to be unintentionally harmed. One of the most prominent
scenarios of this kind is the transmission of disease to humanity. This scenario is inspired by the
many instances in which humans and other species on Earth have suffered severely from diseases
introduced from other regions of the planet. Such diseases are spread via the global travels of
humans and our cargo and also through certain other disease vectors. Introduced diseases have
been extremely potent because the population receiving the disease has no prior exposure to it
and thus no build-up of immunity. Indeed, disease introductions are blamed for loss of human
life so widespread as to have altered the broadest contours of human history. If ETI could
introduce disease to humanity, then the impacts could be – but would not necessarily be –
devastating. The disease could quite easily be significantly different from anything our immune
systems have ever encountered before. The disease could also be entirely unfamiliar to our
medical knowledge, and it could potentially be highly contagious and highly lethal. This
combination of contagiousness and lethality (i.e. high mortality rate) is unlikely in existing
pathogens because such pathogens would quickly kill their host population and then die out
themselves.
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Space Militarization
Space technology gets co-opted for military use and leads to a new competition for military
dominance (also known as "hegemony"); the perception that space dominance is key to
security leads to a dangerous race to "control" space
Pollpeter--06
[Kevin Pollpeter, China Project Manager for DGI's Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, 2006, “The
Chinese Vision of Space Military Operations,” www.defensegroupinc.com/cira/pdf/doctrinebook_ch9.pdfSimilar]
The development of space technology will inevitably lead to the militarization of space and
space militarization will lead to confrontation in space. As the struggle over air and space control
is becoming the new focal point of war, space will become the main battlefield of future wars.
According to Chinese writings, recent high-technology local wars are evidence that whoever
gains air and space control will seize the initiative. Consequently, air and space control will play
an increasingly important role in modern war and dominating space will be the one and only
principle of winning future wars. Therefore, air and space control will be the new focal point of
struggle in future wars.
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The language and practice of space exploration is rooted in the idea of military conquest
McMillen--04
[Ryan Jeffrey McMillen, "Space Rapture: Extraterrestrial Millennialism and the Cultural Construction of Space
Colonization," Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin,
Proquest]
The conquest of the sky, either through colonization and its attendant transportation and satellite
technologies, or through SDI [Strategic Defense Initiative] and the ringing of the Earth with laser
guns cocked and ready to blow any transgressors out of the heavens, is inextricably rooted in the
imagined conquest of the Earth. The vicious Earth can only be subdued from above, so it stands
to reason that those that seek to control the planet seek to gain the high ground. [President
Ronald] Reagan's dream was to arm the heavens and subdue the Earth's governments and thus
achieve world peace. The union of space advocate and fundamentalist constituencies behind
Ronald Reagan marked a comfortable turn back to the right for exo-millennialism. Since the
extraterrestrial technocratic fantasies of Federov and Tsiolkovsky in Russia, the aim of space
travel has always been connected with increasing militarization, regimentation, and automation.
The powers necessary to exodus the planet were never possible for the individual, but only for a
well-organized and hierarchical central authority. The nations that have established successful
space programs have primarily done so only through an emulation of military hierarchy. Nazi
Germany, Soviet Russia, Cold War-era America, and now, Industrial China are the only entities
to develop rocket programs of lasting importance and rocketeers capable of sending humans into
space. While American fundamentalists often evince an other-worldly attitude towards current
events, dismissing them as merely existential messages from God heralding the 'signs of the
times,' militarism, fundamentalism, and the sky have always found common ground.
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The race to militarize space threatens military and civilian satellites and heightens the risk
for nuclear miscalculation.
Krepon, Hitchens, & Katz-Hyman--11
[Michael Krepon, Theresa Hitchens, and Michael Katz-Hyman, President of the Henry L. Stimson Center, Director
of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research, and Research Associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center on the Spac
Security and South Asia Projects, respectively, "Toward a Theory of Space Power: Selected Essays," February 2011,
http://www.ndu.edu/press/lib/pdf/spacepower/spacepower.pdf]
As the preeminent space power, the United States has the most to lose if space were to become a
shooting gallery. The best offense can serve as an effective defense in combat at sea, but this
nostrum does not apply in space, since essential satellites remain extremely vulnerable to
rudimentary forms of attack. The introduction of dedicated and deployed weapons in space by
one nation would be followed by others that feel threatened by such actions. The first attack
against a satellite in crisis or warfare is therefore unlikely to be a stand-alone event, and nations
may choose different rules of engagement for space warfare and different means of attack once
this threshold has been crossed.
Our analysis thus leads to the conclusion that the introduction and repeated flight-testing of
dedicated ASAT [anti-satellite] weapons would greatly subtract from U.S. spacepower, placing
at greater risk the military, commercial, civil, and lifesaving benefits that satellites provide.
Instead, we propose that the United States seek to avoid further flight testing of ASATs while
hedging against hostile acts by other spacefaring nations.
We argue that realizing the benefits of spacepower requires acknowledgment of four related and
unavoidable dilemmas. First, the satellites upon which spacepower depends are extremely
vulnerable. To be sure, advanced spacefaring nations can take various steps to reduce satellite
vulnerability, but the limits of protection will surely pale beside available means of disruption
and destruction, especially in low Earth orbit (LEO). Vulnerabilities can be mitigated, but not
eliminated.
Second, the dilemma of the profound vulnerability of essential satellites has been reinforced by
another dilemma of the space age: satellites have been linked with the nuclear forces of major
powers. Nuclear deterrence has long depended on satellites that provide early warning,
communications, and targeting information to national command authorities. Even nuclear
powers that do not rely on satellites for ballistic missile warning may still rely on them for
communications, forecasting, and targeting. To interfere with the satellites of major powers has
meant—and continues to mean—the possible use of nuclear weapons, since major powers could
view attacks on satellites as precursors to attacks on their nuclear forces.
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US-China Relations
China's observations of how the United States uses its space technology to wage war
furthers the perception that space technology leads to a security dilemma; the perception of
security is key
Cheng--11
[Dean Cheng, Research Fellow at the Asian Studies Center of The Heritage Foundation, "China's Active Defense
Strategy and Its Regional Impact," The Heritage Foundation, 1 February 2011,
http://www.heritage.org/research/testimony/2011/01/chinas-active-defense-strategy-and-its-regional-impact]
In the tactical and operational realm, PLA [People's Liberation Army--China's military]
observation of Western conflicts has led them to conclude that, in order to conduct the hightempo, dispersed operations typical of recent Local Wars, it is essential to have access to space.
Chinese analyses of the first Gulf War, the conflicts in the Balkans, and the march to Baghdad
are rife with statistics on the number of satellites employed, whether maintaining surveillance
over opponents, providing essential weather information, or guiding munitions and forces.
Thus, as one PLA analysis notes, in places like Afghanistan, when U.S. military forces have
identified the enemy, they have promptly exploited GPS to determine the enemy’s location and
satellite communications to transmit the target’s location to weapons operators, in order to attack
targets promptly. Similarly, in Iraq, the use of space was essential for the U.S. military’s
intelligence gathering and battlefield command and control.
From their perspective, the ability to exploit space is essential for the ability to wage noncontact, non-linear, non-symmetric warfare. This reliance is so extensive that another Chinese
analysis posits that the U.S. could not conduct the kind of warfare it prefers, but only high-level
mechanized warfare, if it could not access space.
The implication is that an essential part of any Chinese anti-access/area denial effort will
probably entail operations against the U.S. space infrastructure, both in order to secure space
dominance for the PLA, as well as to deny it to the United States. Space dominance, in this case,
is defined as the ability to control the use of space, at times and places of one’s own choosing,
while denying an opponent the same ability.
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A US-China space race would be catastrophic; distrust would lead to a policy of mutual
preemption that threatens peace and global economies
Martel & Yoshihara--03
[William C. Martel, professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College in Rhode Island, and Toshi
Yoshihara, doctoral candidate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, "Averting a SinoUS Space Race," The Washington Quarterly, 26:4, p. 27]
What would a bilateral space race look like? Hypothetically, in the next 10 years, some critical
sectors of China’s economy and military could become increasingly vulnerable to disruptions in
space. During this same period, Sino-U.S. relations may not improve appreciably, and the
Taiwan question could remain unresolved. If Washington and Beijing could increasingly hold
each other’s space infrastructure hostage by threatening to use military options in times
of crisis, then potentially risky paths to preemption could emerge in the policy planning
processes in both capitals. In preparing for a major contingency in the Taiwan Strait, both the
United States and China might be compelled to plan for a disabling, blinding attack on the
other’s space systems before the onset of hostilities. The most troubling dimension to this
scenario is that some elements of preemption (already evident in U.S. global doctrine) could
become a permanent feature of U.S. and Chinese strategies in space. Indeed, Chinese strategic
writings today suggest that the leadership in Beijing believes that preemption is the rational way
to prevent future U.S. military intervention. If leaders in Beijing and Washington were to
position themselves to preempt each other, then the two sides would enter an era of mutual
hostility, one that might include destabilizing, hair-trigger defense postures in space
where both sides stand ready to launch a first strike on a moment’s notice.
If leaders in Beijing and Washington were to position themselves to preempt each other, then the
two sides would enter an era of mutual hostility, one that might include destabilizing, hair-trigger
defense postures in space where both sides stand ready to launch a first strike on a moment’s
notice. One scenario involves the use of weapons, such as lasers or jammers, which
seek to blind sensors on imaging satellites or disable satellites that provide warning of missile
launches. Imagine, for example, Washington’s reaction if China disabled U.S. missile warning
satellites or vice versa.
In that case, Sino-U.S. relations would be highly vulnerable to the misinterpretations and
miscalculations that could lead to a conflict in space. Although attacks against space assets
would likely be a precursor or a complement to a broader crisis or conflict, and although
conflicts in the space theater may not generate many casualties or massive physical destruction,
the economic costs of conflict in space alone for both sides, and for the international community,
would be extraordinary given that many states depend on satellites for their economic wellbeing.
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