"Space Governance is Just a Reflection of Power Politics," An interview with Bleddyn E. Bowen

I

n Original Sin: Power, Technology and War in Outer Space, Dr. Bleddyn E. Bowen presents the sobering reality of space technology; its development to enhance the killing power of the state.

Bowen discusses the political, strategic, and social causes and consequences of the Global Space Age and sees it as an outgrowth of the international system actors within it. The book provides a global view of international politics of space and its increasingly multipolar environment, and masterfully links technopolitics to power politics.

Q. What is the original sin? How did nations first decide to pursue space power?

It’s tied up in the Thermonuclear Revolution, through the pursuit of military power. If it wasn’t for the perceived military benefits of being able to launch nuclear weapons, you would not have had the very large sums of money poured into these very temperamental, exotic new technologies in the 1940s and ’50s. The scenario would be similar for satellite technologies; they were very temperamental and unknown. The potential benefits were so huge that both superpowers’ military industrial complexes in the early Cold War put resources into it, and got the things working that then opened up access to space for all sorts of other applications as well.

The original sin refers to the military interest in developing those very first technologies that opened up the entire space. It started with the Sputnik shock. The launch of Sputnik in 1957 was the product of the Soviet missile arms and nuclear project. It wasn’t just to have a demonstration; Khrushchev did not plan that. It was very much Sergei Korolev saying, “Well, we might as well put a demonstration satellite up there.”

They were building those rockets to launch nuclear weapons. Korolev was told he could only work on the satellite in his spare time, so that the work did not interfere with developing them as missiles with nuclear weapons. So, Korolev and his teams worked on Sputnik in their own time, not on the main line of work. Even the very first satellite launch was just the tip of the iceberg of what was a massive military nuclear buildup.

Q. How has the use of space technology evolved from back then?

What we have today are just mature and advanced versions of the same basic technological system. They are often decades old. GPS is 50 years old. We just have a very advanced version of it today compared to 50 years ago. So, it’s about the spread and the increased availability of the services rather than a change in the technology as such.

It didn’t happen overnight, but by the 1990s most of the kinds of satellite service types that we use today had been developed in their earliest generations, or sometimes even the second or third generations.

Satellite TV, for example, came out of military command and control systems. The Tokyo Olympics were broadcast by satellite in 1964; it was the first major sports event to be broadcast by satellite. That’s an example where the actual service and technology have been there for a long time, but it’s far more ubiquitous now.

Satellite navigation is another one. Various parts of the military and civilian economy in the United States were already using the very first services of GPS in the late 1980s. Today, those services are just far more accessible to everyone rather than just specialized organizations.

Similarly, with satellite imagery; one of the applications was in 1960 when the first Corona spy satellite images came back. Those things have been around for a very, very long time; now, you have a lot more commercial companies doing that, which means the private sector, and even individuals who have the money can purchase those kinds of images now, and get them much more quickly as well.

However, I’m not optimistic about that future, because if anything of value is found that is economically feasible to develop or exploit, then selfish interests will probably prevail because the precedent is already there in Earth orbit. If you want to look at the actual competition for resources in space, it’s been happening for decades already in the geostationary satellite belt.

At geostationary orbit, 36,000 kilometers above the equator, there’s a finite space and finite radio frequency spectrum to use, and different countries have to file at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to get the right to use the particular radio communication frequency and the location to put their satellite. They are given a time limit to get their satellites up there and to start using it. Then, they must continuously use it and have a satellite there, or they lose the right to that slot and somebody else can bid for it. It’s pretty much on a first-come-first-serve basis.

The geostationary belt and Earth orbit are so valuable for military and economic purposes that there is no truly equitable method of governance there. It may occur in the future; politics is about possibilities. However, that’s the precedence we’ve set over the last 70 years, and it’s not encouraging. I don’t think we’re going to have profitable moon mining anytime soon. I think that might take another 100 years or more. But if the moon becomes economically very valuable, there aren’t many positive precedents to use sadly.

Q. Do actors hog up these strategic locations? Is there any regulation that prevents such an act?

In terms of geostationary satellite slots and frequency use, it is first come, first served, and if you don’t use it, you lose it. The filings on the ITU are constantly watched because if countries or companies file for a certain frequency, and if it was approved, they own that frequency. Some countries like to file for very large satellite constellations and people evaluate this as an attempt to hog the spectrum or a location.

It’s up to the countries within the ITU to resolve those disputes before final decisions are made. If the ITU fails to make enough decisions that people think are fair, then the organization itself risks becoming desolate. There has to be some level of coordination to avoid jammed and incompatible satellite usage. So, you could end up with a situation where nobody can use satellites in a certain area, because too many people are trying to use it at the same time.

Q. How does more countries or actors stepping into the space arena translate to international relations?

That is a difficult question. I won’t have a clear answer for you, because I’m observing it just like everyone else. The phrase the “democratization of space” is being thrown around a lot. I don’t like that phrase because I don’t think that having more countries doing things in space is necessarily democratic.

Space governance is usually more a reflection of power politics rather than any democratic process, and a lot of countries that are doing more things in space are not democratic countries themselves, and even within democratic countries there are questions over how involved the wider electorates are in space policy, or whether they are actually interested or informed about their countries’ space policies and activities. There’s a representation and engagement question there that we would ascribe to any system we would call democratic.

So, whilst there’s more population in space now, perhaps in terms of the number of different countries, and also large private companies doing things in space, I wouldn’t call it democratic. We don’t have a truly democratic governance structure for outer space. There are votes of the UN General Assembly, but it’s not really the same as the domestic democratic system.

On one hand, more countries are paying more attention to space now, because it affects everyone, so more engagement and more awareness is a good thing. On the other hand, it means that the ways that a lot of countries have been using the United Nations to try to govern space activities needs to be revisited in a way that recognizes that dozens more countries now have a stake in it. It’s not necessarily the West versus the rest, and it requires a shift in mentality for many of the older traditional space powers, including China, Japan, and India, just like Western Europe, the United States, and Russia.

The older, bigger traditional space powers are used to being able to do what they want to, without having to consider the rest of the world too much—that is less and less the case now. If they can’t change the ways they behave, or try to get agreements or consensus built in various forums, that may be an issue. Space is becoming more like governing the seas now, with a lot of smaller states much more involved and influential in any sort of UN-level agreement.

Q. Do different countries take similar or different paths in developing and utilizing space technology?

There are variations, especially in the way countries might want to present themselves. Yet, they share a lot of the same technological hurdles because it’s the same base technologies that you need to use. As I do in Original Sin, you can look at six or seven significant space powers and they all must get over the same technological hurdles to have their own access to space, their own launch vehicles, their own satellite industries, their own educated and trained workforce in space technology and sciences, etc.

Especially early on, when space knowledge and technology were not as widespread, there were many common challenges that had to be faced. But then, within that broad similarity, in terms of the technological challenges, you have the variations in the way certain countries go about doing things.

Japan, for example, didn’t really have that much of an explicit military connection to its satellite and launch vehicle deployment. The logic of autonomy and avoiding complete dependence on the United States was supported by the Japanese government, just in case Japan might need to develop its own nuclear weapons program in the upcoming years. Having a nuclear energy industry and a rocket launch industry, you got the fundamental infrastructure there to develop nuclear bombs and missiles, if you need to down the line. India’s major space efforts were presented in terms of social and economic development, much more so than the Soviet Union, China, and the United States.

Today, there are even more variations because there are already six established space powers: the United States, Europe, Russia, China, India, and Japan. Other countries can now cooperate or purchase services and pick and choose which aspect of space industries they want to develop or take part in. Take Nigeria, for example. It has dropped its old ambitions of having its own launch vehicle, its own rockets, and its own astronaut in space, and focused on satellites and using satellite data. That means, Nigeria has really important stakes in what goes on in space, but it can’t launch its own satellites and it still buys satellites. It still hasn’t gotten a full satellite manufacturing capability yet, but it operates and uses its own satellites.

Brazil has major Earth observation satellites in a joint program with China. It tried to have a launch program which failed, and they eventually gave up on it because it was just too expensive. Other countries, for a fee, would launch their satellites for them. Britain, for example, doesn’t have its own launch capability, but it does a lot in space science, engineering and research, integrated with the European Space Agency. It relies on the United States for security and intelligence applications in space and services, and is a world leader in small satellites manufacturing. It’s not comprehensive, but it’s got very targeted, niche strengths.

Finland has a commercial radar imagery satellite company, and is a big player in terms of the space economy and technology development in the particular area, but it doesn’t have its own rockets.

Just like any other aspect of military, technological, economic, or diplomatic power, space power has so many different applications. What matters is what kind of space technologies and industries each country actually needs because they will be different for each case.

Different countries today can tailor their space strategies and policies according to their economic and security needs, etc. The United Arab Emirates is particularly interesting. They are throwing money at space in lots of different areas; they are investing in defense security, economic infrastructure, and space exploration. They have sent a satellite to Mars and wanted to send a payload to the moon, but they still don’t want to build their own rockets.

Space is still so expensive and you need a lot of trained people and highly specialized skills. You need to have loads of people go into rocket science, which would take them out of other sectors of high-technology skills and training that they could otherwise be deployed at. Therefore, space power must be targeted in countries that are new to space or smaller countries.

Q. The Outer Space Treaty bans the placement of nuclear weapons in space but that’s not the case with conventional weapons. What measures can actors take to protect themselves?

This has been the case since 1967 based on Article 4 of the Outer Space Treaty. There’s not a lot you can do in terms of governance, because there’s no appetite for any more restrictions on other kinds of weapon bans in space. The Russians and the Chinese have tried to push a treaty on it, but it has not gotten anywhere. It is seen by many as a bad faith diplomatic exercise; it is not something that’s done with genuine intent to try to make space warfare less likely to happen.

There’s not a lot you can do other than to build more satellites, so that if something happens to one, there are more ready to take over, or to build terrestrial alternatives or backups. If the satellites go dark, there’s not a lot you can do because if a determined enemy wants to shoot down your satellite and they have technology capabilities, direct defense of satellites is very difficult.

Against electronic warfare or cyber warfare, there are more options for defense. However, it’s difficult for us on the outside to observe it. The forensics of that become very difficult. It’s hard to tell when something is a deliberate attack or just accidental.

They are highly proliferated and the cost to entry is lower, so smaller powers can do cyber operations. It’s difficult to stop a missile from blowing up your satellite but you have more options to respond to enemy jamming or a cyber attack, the effects of those can be reversed. So, in terms of governance, there’s not a lot you can do. On the other hand, militarily depending on the kind of attack, there are some things you can do in some areas.