MOSCOW, (RIA Novosti political commentator Andrei Kislyakov) Miracles only happen in fairy tales, not in the high-tech world, which lives according to its own logic.
In the middle of April, Lieutenant General Henry Obering, the director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, addressed the 3rd Annual Missile Defense Conference in Washington, where he said new global threats highlighted the need to create space-based defensive systems.
So, although there are no weapons in space today, they may well be there tomorrow. In particular, this means orbital interceptors, which, in Obering's opinion, should become part of America's ballistic missile defense program.
Moscow expected Obering to say something like this, but was never likely to term it good news. "The deployment of anti-ballistic missile systems' information-reconnaissance and strike elements in space will reduce the threshold of global military danger," Vladimir Belous, leading research associate at the World Economy and International Relations Institute, said. "And an arms race will begin in space."
Although President Bush recently said that orbital weapons would not be deployed, the opposite seems inevitable, which is the main danger of the NMD program. Indeed, its "eyes" and "ears" (the information-reconnaissance infrastructure) that will be deployed on space vehicles must be given the appropriate protection.
The U.S. leader assured Canada's premier in Ottawa last year that his administration did not intend to deploy orbital weapons. However, it is worth repeating: miracles do not happen in the defense-technology world. First, any new invention requires adequate protection. Second, a more effective counter technology will always emerge. By introducing allegedly useful defense technologies, mankind could gradually lose control over its own achievements.
There is a solution to this predicament. Alexei Arbatov, a leading Russian authority on strategic arms, said on April 19 that America's military security depended on the normal operation of auxiliary space systems like no other country. "Naturally, the United States does not want countries such as Russia, China and some others to develop anti-satellite weapons," Arbatov said.
He said attempts cold be made to try to convince Washington that it would be better to ensure spacecraft safety on the basis of various accords and international-law restrictions than to deploy anti-satellite weapons for shielding these systems. "Russia will have to modify its policy of the last few years and start producing more initiatives. This could rid us of a new threat that could be a serious problem for Russia: the deployment of attack weapons in space," Arbatov said.
Moscow has already put forward this initiative. The Russian delegation told the First Committee of the 59th UN General Assembly last October that it would not deploy any space weapons. This unilateral Russian initiative did not come with any pre-conditions attached, while Russia also called on all other space powers to follow its example.
If the Russian initiative is supported, then unilateral military superiority in space will remain non-science fiction.
