[E-rundbrief] Info 1924 - Don’t militarize the heavens

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief Info 1924 - KARL GROSSMAN/  Global Network Against Weapons 
& Nuclear Power in Space: Don’t militarize the heavens.

Bad Ischl, 7.1.2019

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

================================================

January 5, 2020

Don’t militarize the heavens

By KARL GROSSMAN

http://www.space4peace.org/articles/dont_militarize_the_heavens.htm

President Donald Trump has signed the National Defense Authorization 
Act for 2020 that establishes the creation of a Space Force as the 
sixth branch of the U.S. armed forces — despite the landmark The Outer 
Space Treaty of 1967, which designated space as a global commons to be 
used for peaceful purposes.

The treaty was put together by the United States, the former Soviet 
Union and Britain, and since been signed by most nations on Earth. 
Craig Eisendrath, as a U.S. State Department officer involved in its 
creation, has said that “we sought to de-weaponize space before it got 
weaponized…to keep war out of space.”

It prohibits the placement of weapons of mass destruction in space. 
Although the Trump administration and U.S. military have said a Space 
Force is necessary because of Russia and China moving into space 
militarily, Russia, China and Canada have lead for decades in pushing 
for an expansion of the treaty. They’ve advocated for the UN’s 
Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space resolution, which would 
affirm a ban on placing weapons in space. The United States has 
opposed the PAROS treaty and has effectively vetoed it at the UN.

At the defense authorization act signing Dec. 20, Trump said forming a 
Space Force marked “a big moment.” He said: “Space. Going to be a lot 
of things happening in space. Because space is the world’s newest 
warfighting domain.”

Trump’s advocacy of a Space Force “started as a joke,” as National 
Public Radio has reported. NPR’s Claudia Grisales related that in 
March 2018 “Trump riffed on an idea he called ‘Space Force’ before a 
crowd of Marines in San Diego. It drew laughs.” Subsequently, Trump 
noted: “I said maybe we need a new force, we’ll call it the Space 
Force. And I was not really serious. Then I said, ‘What a great idea, 
maybe we’ll have to do that.’”

I’ve investigated the possibility of space becoming an arena of war 
since President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” scheme of the 1980s.

This has included writing a book, “Weapons in Space,” and writing and 
narrating three TV documentaries. I’ve been to Russia several times, 
and I’ve been to China. What these nations want is the PAROS 
initiative and not to waste their national treasuries on weapons in space.

I recall sitting with Chinese diplomats after I spoke at a UN a 
conference on the threat of weaponization of space. They stressed how 
they need to feed, educate, house and provide health care to their 
people. My speech was followed by the Chinese UN ambassador speaking 
about how his nation sought to keep space for peace.

But if the United States moves ahead with a Space Force, China and 
Russia, and then other countries, will respond in kind. China and 
Russia won’t accept “American dominance” of space, and there would be 
an arms race in space.

The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space held a 
protest against space weaponization in Florida at which Apollo 
astronaut Edgar Mitchell participated. He said, “any war in space 
would be the one and only.”

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Maine-based Global Network, said 
Mitchell warned at the protest that in the event of war “activity on 
Earth below would immediately shut down — cell phones, ATM machines, 
cable TV, traffic lights, weather prediction and more — all hooked up 
to satellites, would be lost. Modern society would go dark.”

China has said that a U.S. Space Force would be a “direct threat” to 
peace. Its foreign ministry recently said the world should “adopt a 
cautious and responsible attitude to prevent outer space from 
beginning a new battlefield and work together to maintain lasting 
peace and tranquility in outer space.”

War in space would be calamitous.

~ Karl Grossman is a professor of journalism at the SUNY College at 
Old Westbury. He is author of “Weapons in Space” and writer and 
narrator of the TV documentary “Nukes in Space: The Nuclearization and 
Weaponization of the Heavens.”  He was one of the founders of the 
Global Network in 1992.


Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 607-4255
http://www.space4peace.org
http://space4peace.blogspot.com  (blog)

'Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.'
~ Henry David Thoreau

Information list of the network No to War - No to NATO 
www.no-to-nato.org, info at no-to-nato.net

-- 

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