Проблема предотвращения размещения оружия в космосе

More than fifty years have been since the humans set activity in outer space. It all started in a dif- ficult period of confrontation and competition between the U.S. and the USSR, and although not intended, it brought humanity many benefits. First launched satellites were meant to measure the capabilities of technology in the orbit of the planet. With the essential knowledge they pro- vided, they “contributed [to] critical knowledge and capabilities for developing satellite telecommunications, global positioning, and advances in weather forecasting”2 among others. Still today, we benefit daily from the scientific and technological progress made due to outer space exploration. But benefits came along with costs. Space became the new frontier of con- frontation during the cold war. It saw a crude technological race between the Americans and the Soviets, which ultimately made space a delicate environment. Still, although being crucial, less attention was paid to creating rules in outer space. In the late years of the 20th century, space was militarised and used with military applications, raising the stakes of the different space ac- tors. This situation led to the current one, where space is increasingly becoming a concern for many. Issues like weaponisation of outer space, debris generation and its impact, cooperation amongst spacefaring states, ambitions, interests, military capabilities, and the right to use and access space are growing concerns within outer space discourse. Space has provided us with sig- nificant advance, but in the current situation, outer space could head towards conflict.
The aim of this thesis is to address the chances of adopting rules, preventing the further weapon- isation of outer space, and answering why legally binding rules have not been created outer space yet.
To address the aim, we developed a research question consisting of two parts:
• What are the chances to establish rules that would prevent further weaponisation
of outer space?
• Why the international community has not reached any clear legally binding agreement no despite its agreed more strict rules are needed?
The main methodology to answer the research question will consist of description, comparison, and analysis. To this effect, the research will be structured as follows.
• The first chapter is devoted to the description and analysis of the origins of lack of de- finitions within the OST treaty as well as the definition of the loopholes paying atten- tion to the actual situation.
• The second chapter is devoted to the description and comparison of national doctrinal approaches towards space, interests in outer space, threat perception, and opportunities in space. The comparisons will be focused on four selected countries: the U.S., Russia, China, and India.
• The third chapter is devoted to the description and analysis of the prospects of coop- eration in building regulatory measures in space between the selected countries.
Weaponisation of outer space is not a new topic on the agenda of arms control and disarmament. Indeed since the late 2000s, this topic has been gaining more relevance among different scholars. The issues covered concerning outer space by researchers are mainly focused on the weaponisa- tion of outer space. We should mention certain diversity, as there are no researches that combine technological approach, policy approach, and cooperative approach. To this extent, we can say that studies dealing with space can be divided into different groups.
The first group consists of general researches about the topic of weaponisation. These research- es contain more general information about the process of militarisation and weaponisation of outer space. In this case, we have to underline the work of Lieutenant-Colonel Kowal, who gives an overview of the issue from a purely military perspective. Here he points the importance of certain military events, such as the 2007 Chinese military ASAT test, the first country con- ducting such a test like this since the end of the cold war3.
Continuing with the military affairs in outer space, many researchers are focusing on an Arms Race in outer space4. The researches covering this topic, are mainly devoted to clarifying the possible triggers for a space arms race, and they specially focus efforts on finding ways of preventing this from happening.
Turning to other researches, we should mention the many papers devoted to analysing the coop- eration in outer space. This group of documents is mainly conformed by American scholars, but also Indian scholars and some Russian contributors. These authors vary on their analysis, but there is a strong focus from American scholars towards a possible collision with China. That is why we have articles in this group completely devoted to the cooperation between China and the U.S. in space matters. One example of this could be Kenneth Blazejewski’s “space weaponi- sation and US-China relations”5. In the case of Indian academics, we could mention Lele as a major contributor to the global discourse around outer space.
Another extensively mentioned topic is international security and strategic stability. These issues are derived from spacefaring state’s activities in outer space. The researches centred in se- curity matters especially highlight the problems of a possible arms race in the space6,7 and the geopolitical consequences this would have in the security equilibrium in the Earth, examples of such researches can be found in work by Porras, Silverstein, and Borrie and also Gasparini. They also point that the development of ASAT programmes by third countries could have a very negative impact on the gradual measures for trust-building and compliance that arise for prevent- ing outer space weaponisation. One of the main ideas by many authors in this regard is the im- possibility to verify and recognise the authority of specific hypothetical attack to a satellite (us- ing ASAT weapons). This is a significant concern as Steinberg8 mentions, as the idea is formulat- ed both by American scholars and Russian ones too.
3 Kowal. P. 1—44.
4 Koplow. P. 331—388.
5 Blazejewski.
6 Porras; Silverstein; Borrie. P. 1—44.
7 Gasparini. “1991, Peaceful and Non-Peaceful Uses of Space—Problems of Definition for the Prevention of an Arms Race.” P. 3—183.
8 Steinberg. P. 248—267.

Other notable groups of papers are devoted to the analysis of national doctrines towards space and their possible effects in the space environment9,10,11. This group of researchers mainly com- prises American and European academics, but also have notable Asian contributors. These re- searches are mostly produced and oriented towards academia and policy-makers. These re- searches stress the interests of different countries regarding the use of space, not only focusing on military goals but also on scientific and economic purposes, as it is the case with Jordan12.
Finally, there are many pieces of research cantered on the legal/regulatory aspects of outer space approach. Here we should mention the work by Oduntant13,14, which is dealing with legali- ty and regulatory aspects of weaponising outer space have some connection with the researches dealing with cooperation. The discourse here is to try to encourage the possible main actors to reach legal agreements for the comprehensive use of the space. One of the main researches talking about legal aspects of outer space is Johannes M. Wolf15, who is cited by some other au- thors as he describes how the deregulation of space has been the mainstay for its militarisation and probable weaponisation.
As we can observe, researches are evenly disseminated among six different groups. The studies focused on the general aspect of space weaponisation are the majority. The next group of re- searches consists of those focused in a space arms race, cooperation, and security issues, and the last group of researches covers policy strategies and legal/regulatory aspects of outer space weaponisation. This means that the researches are not only trying to focus on one single topic affecting the issue of outer space weaponisation but rather trying to have different approaches. This does not mean that the recalled researches conduct an overall study of the problem of weaponisation of outer space, rather specialise on some isolated aspects of it, without bringing them together for a better comprehension of this topic.
9 Hitchens; Katz-Hyman; Lewis. P. 35—56.
10 Singh. P. 6—33.
11 Rajagopalan. “India’s Changing Policy on Space Militarization: The Impact of China’s ASAT Test.” P. 355—372. 12 Jordan. P. 174.
13 Oduntan. “Sovereignty and Jurisdiction in Airspace and Outer Space; The never ending dispute: legal theories on the spatial demarcation boundary plane between airspace and outer space.” P. 282—356.
14 Oduntan. “The Never Ending Dispute: Legal Theories on the Spatial Demarcation Boundary Plane between Air- space and Outer Space.” P. 64—84.
15 Wolf. P. 7—41.

We also have to highlight that the topic for the cooperation between the U.S. and China is quite a relevant topic, specifically for American researchers16. Regarding this, the main ideas found around Chinese-American cooperation in outer space are both trust-building and transparency of space programmes, especially the Chinese space programme, as it seems that American schol- ars are preoccupied with China challenging the U.S. as the leading player in the space.
As we have seen, the discourse of academia is more or less independent from political opinions but not that much from historical events. We have to underline that even if weaponisation of out- er space is the very actual topic, throughout the last 40 years, its importance has been varying, from being crucial, to a slight ‘irrelevance’ to its revival in the last decade. Therefore, we can say that this topic is highly determined by history, politics, and geopolitics altogether with the strate- gic interests of the key players.
We also have to highlight that the discourse around military use of space has been evolving in the last decades. The leading terminology changed from the 80s to the 2000s. In the 80s, when dealing with military issues in outer space, the main word used in the researches was “militarisa- tion.” This was corresponding to the ideas of employing military technology in outer space, mainly regarding military use of satellites, and the use of military technology to help with war- fare on the Earth as secondary assets. By the year 2000, space was already militarised, but not weaponised. Here many authors changed their discourse and their subject of study from militari- sation to weaponisation. With the adoption of this new terminology, the scope of the issue changed too, as the primary mission for the researchers would now be the suitability of placing weapons in outer space, or how the objects already launched might be affected by weapons ca- pable of targeting them.
Some other authors also associate arms control agenda (prevention of the weaponisation of outer space) and technological development, meaning that more technological progress does not mean that states are willing to create new rules. In this scenario, many are the authors who express that the states are trying to gain superiority in the space to establish rules, mainly beneficial for them. As we can see, the authors of these researches are more linked to educational entities and gov- ernments, and not many authors come from the military world. Here, we observe some gap in the
16 Arvatov; Dvorkin. P. 4—33.

discourse as the opinion of the military is not as present as the opinions by scholars and bureau- crats.
Continuing with the authors, the majority of the researchers analysed have an average level of cross-quotations. We do not observe a leading researcher or paper taken as reference by the scholars to develop their papers. Instead, we have a diversity of approaches, with different quotes, underlining that for U.S. linked researchers, their quotations seem to avoid other non- American researchers, as they focus mainly on the role of the U.S. in outer space weaponisation. In the case of Russian, Chinese and Indian researches, the references to non-Russian/Chinese/ Indian sources are higher than those in the American researchers. This can be understood as the discourse in non-American studies is more globally focused.
The conclusions of the literature review are the following. The first thing we should mention is that we observe several gaps in the discourse. First, we see how no authors are making a direct link between technological development (weapons technology) and the role of developing coop- eration in outer space between the different involved actors. We have seen how these two topics are covered, but separately by many authors. The second gap would be regarding cross-quota- tions. As we have said, we observe how American scholars are more U.S. centred, meaning that their researches do not have a general picture of the issue, rather a biased one. They also make a particular emphasis in the cooperation with China but do not mention any other key actors, as could be the case of Russia, the EU, and India, but not only them, few authors take into con- sideration private military companies and their role in outer space weaponisation. The third gap we observe has already been mentioned, and it is the few weight of military researchers regard- ing this topic. Fourth and last, we do not see authors addressing the different concepts of Strate- gic Stability in outer space and how it correlates to the cooperative measures states are pursuing.
Regarding some other more general conclusions, we can say that the conducted research is most- ly chronologically oriented, being affected by the political and geopolitical events, there is not leading researcher. However, instead, we have many different approaches and diversity of au- thors, even if the cross-quotations are not very high, we observe that some grade of citations is made between scholars with different scopes. We also have to highlight that the research topics regarding the prevention of outer space weaponisation can be divided into six different groups, having all of the more or less the same distribution of papers, and therefore the same grade of relevance for the discourse around our topic.
As reviewed in the literature review, the discourse around outer space is focused on six different points. This thesis intends to give a more comprehensive understanding of outer space by com- bining them. This is an approach that has not appeared in the review of the existing research. In this order, not only is this thesis going to cover critical aspects as the loopholes in the OST, but it also will focus on which are the interests and intentions of the key players while addressing threats. We will try to give answers to some of the definitions lacked by OST, such as proposing an operational definition for the weaponisation of outer space. We will also focus on the risk per- ceptions in outer space. For doing this, we will have to recall the military and political interests of the spacefaring states and how states regard strategic stability in space. We will also focus on cooperation, as we are going to analyse, which are the prospects of cooperation in the short and long terms. We will not only cover the aspects of other authors analysed, but we will also bring them together to have a clearer picture of which is the state of arts in space now. By doing this, we will be able to have a look more comprehensively on outer space issues.