Russia, China join against US 'star wars'

[norml]

Russia, China join against US 'star wars'



UPI - Friday, June 17, 2005

Date: Friday, June 17, 2005 8:10:08 PM EST By MARTIN SIEFF, UPI Senior News Analyst

WASHINGTON, June 17 (UPI) -- Russia and China have joined forces in a major U.N. forum to oppose U.S. plans to develop new space weapons. And the move could herald a far more wide-ranging strategic cooperation between the two nations.

Russia and China have joined forces to urge the U.N. Conference on Disarmament to launch a new round of international negotiations to prevent the increased militarization of space. On June 9, the two countries issued a joint working paper calling for the reactivation of the moribund Committee on Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space that was discontinued in 1994. The appeal was delivered to the Disarmament Conference in Geneva.

Hu Xiaodi, China's veteran top negotiator, and one of its most influential policymakers on space weapons systems, told the conference, "The recent developments concerning outer space are worrisome and require more urgent efforts to start work on preventing an arms race in outer space... China and Russia stand for the negotiation, at the Disarmament Conference, of an international legal instrument prohibiting the deployment of weapons in outer space and use of force against outer space objects."

Analyst Sergei Blatov writing for the Eurasia Daily Monitor of the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation called the Sino-Russian initiative "an apparent strategic partnership" and added that it was "understood to be anti-Washington, due to known joint Russo-Chinese opposition to the planned U.S. National Missile Defense (NMD) program."


The initiative is not likely to get anywhere.



snip



http://www.menafn.com/qn_news_story.asp?StoryId=CqRjkWeidCNvZC2LHlwnOAw5HlxnWywnL

[indepat]

1. Neocons are uniters: uniting the world against us?

[BlueStateModerate]

2. Pretty much

Making everyone hate us while turning the final frontier into a shooting range.

[norml]

3. Weapons In Space: Dawn of a New Era

Weapons In Space: Dawn of a New Era
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 17 June 2005
06:43 am ET


For more than a decade, the military utilization of space has become all the more important in warfighting. Since the Gulf War of 1991, using space assets has enabled air, land, and sea forces and operations to be far more effective.

Space power has changed the face of warfare. So much so, particularly for the United States, skirmishes of the 21st century cannot be fought and won without space capabilities. That reliance has led to a key action item for U.S. space warriors: How best to maintain and grow the nation’s space superiority and deny adversaries the ability to use space assets.

That fact has prompted arguments as to the "weaponization" of space – from satellites killing satellites, exploding space mines, even using technology to make an enemy’s spacecraft go deaf, dumb, or blind.

Leftover legacy

The White House is now delving into U.S. military space policy and what it sees as the need to reshape current national space policy, a leftover legacy document from the Clinton Administration.



snip



http://www.space.com/news/050617_space_warfare.html