Space shenanigans

Russia has been accused by Western agencies of testing a new weapon able to knock out satellites and cripple worldwide communications. Although Moscow has denied this, there is sufficient evidence to alarm policymakers in Europe and America.

Ben Wallace, the Secretary of State for Defence, wrote in The Sunday Telegraph that China is also developing offensive space weapons – a development that needed to be reflected in Whitehall’s ongoing security review. He said the Government would adopt “next-generation defence” to “outmanoeuvre our adversaries with a sharper technological edge and relentless focus on innovation”.

But rather than a tit-for-tat response, efforts should be made to nip a space arms race in the bud. Multilateral approaches are not exactly de rigueur at the moment, when the American president is so hostile to international organisations. Yet even at the height of the Cold War in the 1980s, it was possible to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons through intergovernmental treaty-making. Negotiations were never easy, but the protagonists recognised a mutual advantage in achieving agreement.

If Russia is developing a Star Wars weapons system then it needs to be stopped. One way to do that is to match threat with threat. Russia needs satellites as much as we do. As the Tory MP Bob Seely said: “If people can destroy your satellites then you’re back in the Middle Ages.” But once an arms race begins it is hard to end, and the risk of a catastrophic miscalculation is always present. Attempts at an international consensus against the militarisation of space are worth exploring, if only to expose the hollowness of Moscow’s denials.