Can the Militarization of Space by the United States be Justified Yes
Background and Overview. Any introduction of weaponry into spaceterritories must take into consideration the controlling national andinternational laws. According to Georg Schwarzenberger and Bin Cheng(2004), the evolution of space law can be traced to President Dwight D.Eisenhower's introduction of the concept into the United Nations in 1957 asan overall part of disarmament negotiations. After the successfullaunchings of the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 in 1957, followed by the U.S.satellite Explorer 1 in 1958, both the United States and the Soviet Unionassumed an active role in the development of international space policy.At this time, it was established that traditional laws of sovereignty thatallow any nation to claim for itself uninhabited and uncivilized lands werenot viable concepts for space territories; further, it was determined thatindividual nationals should not be allowed to extend the boundaries oftheir dominion indefinitely into the space regions above them; however, aclaim of sovereignty has already been made by certain equatorial statesover portions of the geostationary orbit, some 22,000 miles above the Earth
Accordingly, the Space Commission cautions that there has been aninsufficient amount of attention paid to the threat and, as a result, "theU. Furthermore, the president has made it clear that in order to moveforward on BMD, he intended to abandon the ABM Treaty, and the U. ), the Space Commission (which waspreviously chaired by the current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld),and others have proposed is that the U. Of the four, only theMoon treaty has not been ratified by the United States, Russia and theUnited Kingdom. Such critics are concerned that militarizing spacewould result in another dangerous arms race reminiscent of the Cold War. relies on space more than any other country, this task shouldnaturally fall there. Furthermore, the military andintelligence agencies may have unique requirements for surveillance andreconnaissance that can be met solely with their own dedicated satellites,either for reasons of security of data or technical requirements (e. This is due in large part becausethe agreements on which space law is based were developed during a periodin history in which policymakers could not foresee the what the 21stcentury demands in terms of control of space territories. org, militarizing space "runsfundamentally against the main theme of our space policy for the last half-century--to demonstrate America's power in space in a nonthreatening way"(Pena 14).
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