Nuclear Reset - Program on Strategic Stability Evaluation (POSSE)

474<strong>Nuclear</strong> <strong>Reset</strong>: Arms Reduction and Nonproliferationof the United States remains hostile and destructive. However, ifWashington’s point of view should become more constructive andthe demilitarization of space should become the object of practicalnegotiations, including the vitally important problems of verification,China and Russia would face numerous unpleasant surprisesand difficulties.The many years of experience with previous initiatives and negotiationsattest to the fact that there have been huge uncertaintiesand discrepancies among diplomats and experts on the very subjectof regulation through legally implemented treaties. In other words,the primary fundamental objective of defining the topic of negotiationsremains far from resolved.Experts are in general agreement that arms and other weaponryin space are combat devices created and tested for striking targetsfrom orbit (i.e., from vehicles that orbit the Earth at least once; fornow, no reference is being made to any other celestial bodies or vehiclesin orbit around them), as well as combat devices created andtested for attacking objects in space (i.e., objects that make at leastone orbital revolution around the Earth). A simpler (though lessprecise) definition of space weapons is that they are combat devicesthat are space objects in their own right or intended to attackspace objects. The Soviet Union applied just such a broad definitionto the concept of “space strike weapons” as the subject of treaty negotiationsin the early and mid 1980s when it was attempting to prohibitthe U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative. In other words, spaceweapons were defined on the basis of either the location of theirtargets or of the deployment locations of the devices themselves.The main nuance here lay in establishing the fundamental differencebetween “space objects” and “objects in space.” The latter implies anyobject that has been placed in space or passes through space withoutcompleting at least one orbital revolution around the Earth. Unlesssuch a distinction is drawn, any intermediate-range or intercontinentalballistic missile, or any anti-missile defense system designed to interceptits targets at altitudes of over 100 kilometers, could be consideredto be space weapons, although many nations have already createdsuch weapons and systems long ago, and they have been covered byother negotiations, treaties, and proposed agreements. However, eventhis consensus has done little to help resolve the problem.A particular paradox is inherent to space weapons, in that someof them were created in the past and have since either been moth-