With the successful test of anti-satellite (ASAT) technology on January 19, China joined a club of three nations, all of whom have successfully destroyed their own spacecraft. China has, in fact, been talking about getting some ASATs for years, so to the uninitiated it might seem that their sudden test launch was just a shot out of the blue to become one of the musketeers. But some space pundits, most notably Theresa Hitchens of the Center for Defense Information, have been insisting for months that it would come to this. Indeed, the China launch, more than anything, was a symbolic cheap shot at the United States' military machismo, which most recently came in the form of our revised National Space Policy.

Oh, how much we've changed. Have a conversation with anyone from the baby boomer generation for long enough and they will eventually re-imagine the space age. They'll tell you about that moment, at 5:15 p.m. on January 27, 1967, when President Lyndon B. Johnson triumphantly celebrated the signing of the Outer Space Treaty (OST) that in the past decades has served as the guarantor of space neutrality. “This is an inspiring moment in the history of the human race,” President Johnson proclaimed in 1967. “We are taking the first firm step toward keeping outer space free forever from the implements of war.” None of them however, would likely mention that one moment before Columbus Day almost forty years later, at 5 p.m. on October 6, 2006, when the Bush Administration all but silently posted a 10-page version of its own National Space Policy on the White House website. The nation had departed for its three day weekend without notice.

Domestic malaise about obscure news items was unsurprising, especially given that October saw both an election cycle and a radioactive Kim Jong-Il. But space had had its own revolution overnight. Gone were any pleas for international cooperation. Most obviously, the new space policy replaced Clinton’s 1996 language--that the interference with space systems of “any nation” will be considered an “infringement on sovereign rights”—with the line that “the United States will view purposeful interference with its space systems as an infringement on its rights.” With no lack of internationalist irony, the clause indicating the importance of adherence to disarmament treaties had been replaced with one hawkishly declaring America’s right to be free of such international regulation.

The new space policy had, more than any other policy shift since the Cold War, created a climate under which the weaponization of space was nothing short of predetermined. By exploiting language—language that has been considered ambiguous since the 1967 signing of the OST--“freedom of action in space” has become both the United States' freedom to defend from space attack and to preemptively strike the adversary's strategic capabilities. In four out of the new document’s six policy goals, the treaty mentions National Security objectives, asserting the United States' real, and widely varied, space National Security interests. But rather than this assertion bolstering U.S. security objectives, our hawkish space posturing in this document—as well as in recent initiatives like the Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA), the incredibly weak Son of Star Wars Program--has volatilized international relations, most recently leading to the successful testing of China's ASAT program.

The policy seems nothing short of a denial that the world has changed. The short list of U.S. enemies over the past few years has grown cancerously, but the relative power of each individual enemy has diminished. No longer do most opponents possess the apocalyptic might of the Soviet Union; instead they are imbued with the meager economic might characteristic of rogue states and non- or pan-national terrorist organizations. Powers, in short, that would be incapable of technologically engaging the United States in a space race. No other country on earth could even dare to dream, for instance, of the Air Force’s hypothetical Rods From God—a hypersonic space satellite weapon capable of launching uranium cylinders at selected targets at around the speed of a falling meteor.

The policy therefore seems more passé, aimed instead at "old school" powerful state competitors—that is to say, at China and Russia: two countries that didn't behave like space threats before October 6. Commander of Russian Space Forces Vladimir Popovkin revealed in an interview before the release of the U.S. policy that Russia has had enough trouble maintaining existing space satellites, let alone building new ones. China, on the other hand, had been the most vocal proponent of international solutions to the space dilemma. And while many worry about the ASAT program, policy-makers agreed, even before the launch, that more low-tech, more effective ways to destroy U.S. satellites exist.

Indeed, the only New Year's surprise was that China's test fell along conventional lines. The Russians, on the other hand, have threatened to explode nuclear weapons in space, rendering all satellite assets useless if the United States should continue to pursue space-based laser or ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems. True, this tactic would destroy all satellites, but in every possible scenario the United States has much more to lose than its competitors. But even more low-tech options exist. A growing number of states have the capability to launch satellites designed to release sand into low-orbital space--forming a miniature temporary meteor belt around the earth that could cause massive space collisions and failures.

Perhaps most dangerously, the new space plan actually does nothing. Essentially, our policy of posturing caused the China disaster. We drew sanctions from a competitor while simultaneously refusing to compete. Few, if any, budgetary assets have been reallocated to accomplish these bold goals. While Congress has sporadically added money to a deeply-faulted missile defense program (the MDA's budget actually decreased from 2005 to 2006 by $468 million), more ambitious projects, such as the space-based laser (SBL) were cut by over $120 million from the president's initial $170 million proposal in 2002. Considering its goals, NASA's budgetary increases could be considered pathetically modest at best. NASA received a 2.4 % budgetary increase to $16,457.3 millions from its 2005 budget. Compare this to NASA's budget pre-9/11 budgetary capacity, $14,035 millions. Not exactly what one would expect for a program suddenly seeking military dominance in space.

Contrary to what one might think, space has been militarized since the launching of the first satellite designed to assist military operations. Nowadays, the United States military is deeply dependent upon its space assets. As stated at the end of the 2006 unclassified Space Policy, the United States conducts "satellite photoreconnaissance that includes a near real-time capability; overhead signals intelligence collection; and overhead measurement and signature intelligence collection."

Given that these military capabilities are essential to our current, various wars--the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, the War on Terror--why should the United States choose to pursue a strategy that, in fact, threatens these assets without pursuing an adequate defense? A smarter strategy would pursue programs designed to shore up existing military assets. As some experts have noted, the United States could pursue projects that would successfully increase U.S. space security with little international backlash: It could harden satellites, making them more defensible; miniaturize them, to decrease enemy targeting ability; or create redundant networks, to minimize the impact of a successful attack.

In space, perhaps more so than in any other medium, great powers have equal opportunity to attack, without the corresponding capability--no matter how much money is pumped in for the short term--to defend. This was the key to the China disaster—and the world now knows it. Without serious work spent on the defense of satellite assets or on treaty options, the weaponization of space will prove a great disaster for United States hegemony. No doubt the world has changed. But we must now face another Cold War dilemma. If the world's powers maintain parity in their ability to destroy human space capabilities for years to come, won't it be better if we all just get along?