Lt Col Anthony Mastalir has done policy makers a welcome service by exploring the enigma wrapped in a conundrum which is Chinese space policy, focusing on the Chinese kinetic energy antisatellite (KE-ASAT) test of January 2007. That test ended a de facto moratorium on KE-ASAT tests which the United States and Russia had observed for over two decades. It also announced the arrival of a new player in strategic space, forcing a reevaluation of US capabilities in space as well as Chinese intentions there. Colonel Mastalir examines both that reevaluation and those intentions, relying on open-source material, particularly from Chinese...

Nearly three years have passed since China’s successful antisatellite (ASAT) test ushered in a new era of space competition. If US civilian and military leaders are any closer to gleaning China’s overall strategic intent vis-à-vis the acquisition of space weaponry, it is not readily apparent. Somewhere in the Pentagon finance office sits an impressive stack of international travel vouchers, evidence of the numerous trips US Defense Department representatives have made to Beijing in search of answers. One bears the name of US defense secretary Robert M. Gates, who broached the antisatellite issue with China defense minister Cao Gangchuan during his...

The Chinese have developed an ASAT, but few can be certain as to why. Inability to answer the primary question makes the subsequent question considerably more challenging. How should the United States respond? One might turn to history as a means to illuminate the way ahead. Historian Williamson Murray argues that “history will always present the military professional with considerable difficulties. But the past can suggest how to think about new contexts and different challenges. It is almost never predictive. It can only suggest a range of possibilities and thinking about the future.”¹

Indeed, the historical evidence indicates a range...

US diplomatic relations with China have long been bipolar, alternating between containment and engagement.¹ The 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review recognizes China’s “potential to compete militarily with the United States” and at the same time identifies China as a “partner in addressing common security challenges.”² Likewise, the 2008 Defense Department assessment of the PRC’s military power warns that “much uncertainty surrounds China’s future course, in particular in the area of its expanding military power and how that power might be used,” but “welcomes the rise of a stable, peaceful, and prosperous China.”³ Sir Lawrence Freedman maintains that throughout the Cold War,...

In modern times, information power is generally considered the most compelling instrument of national power. Theoretical ideas regarding the speed and maneuver of information have preconditioned the US military to embrace a transformation to network-centric warfare. Likewise, the PLA has undergone its own revolution in military affairs based on the precepts of informationized warfare. Still, neither the United States nor China is seemingly able to discern the intentions of the other, and their respective need for information appears insatiable. Western diplomats characterize this phenomenon as transparency, while military commanders refer to it as intelligence. Both are critical elements of information...

Identifying practical options within the economic sphere of influence to counter China’s space weapon ambitions is perhaps the most difficult to analyze. The underlying challenge becomes apparent when one considers the nexus of two incredibly complex, cognitively dominant systems: international relations and international economics. Second- and third-order effects derived from decisions made in these areas of human interchange are not always obvious to the policy makers who implement change. Jervis argues that “many crucial effects are delayed and indirect; the relation between two actors often are determined by each one’s relations with others; interactions are essential and cannot be understood...

General Shelton’s edict in the epigraph above reflects his war-fighting pedigree. As a military strategist, he understands which capabilities the United States needs to defend against potential military adversaries. Of course, the salient question becomes, how? If indeed the US military will one day conduct combat operations in space, as Shelton suggests, then what national security space strategy can successfully parlay America’s limited resources into the proper force structure necessary to protect the nation?¹

The situation has all the makings of the classic security dilemma discussed in chapter 2. ASATs represent a relatively simple, cost-effective option to counter what Chinese...

China’s ascendance as a major space power, as demonstrated by its acquisition and employment of space weapons, is a matter of consequence at the US grand-strategic level. Consequently, it is appropriate that the US response draws upon all elements of US national power. Physicist Thomas Kuhn once argued that new paradigms emerge when a crisis reveals the inability of the existing structure to provide a solution.¹ China’s test may be the crisis that overturns the traditional US approach to national security space. If so, Luttwak’s assertions defining the power of paradoxical logic and dimensional harmony in grand strategy provide a...