The two articles below appeared in The Undercurrent (March issue) and the Fresno Bee, Vision section (Sunday, March 4) respectively. The graphic that appeared with the Fresno Bee article, nearly half a page (by SW Parra) shows the globe, space in the background. There is a giant Chinese arrow/missile that has crashed into NY City. (see image at http://www.fresnobee.com/286/story/33188.html) The Bee article isn't as outlandish as the graphic, considering that the article is about China's new ability to shootdown satellites, but the graphic shows a Chinese arrow/missile crashing into NY City. It is as if the Bee read Blum's article in The Undercurrent and then said to themselves: "Hmmm, let's try to give the best example we can of the validity of William Blum's article that appeared in this month's Undercurrent."

Thank you Fresno Bee for erasing any doubt in the minds of readers of Blum's article. Keep it up.

++++++++++++++++

Anti-Empire Report: Somethings you need to know before the world ends.
by William Blum

(EXCERPT: for full article pick up the March issue of The Undercurrent)

Full Spectrum Dominance
It is not often that the empire is put in the position of one of its victims, in fear of the military and technical prowess of another country, forced to talk of peace and cooperation, just as Iraq and others, hoping to put off an American attack, were forced to do over the years; just as Iran now. No, China is not about to attack the United States, but the Chinese shootdown of a satellite (an old weather satellite of theirs) in space on January 11, has made a US attack on China much more dangerous and much less likely; it's made the empire's leaders realize that they don't have total power to make any and all other nations do their bidding.
Here's how the gentlemen of the Pentagon have sounded in the recent past on the subject of space.
"We will engage terrestrial targets someday—ships, airplanes, land targets—from space. ... We're going to fight in space. We're going to fight from space and we're going to fight into space.” -- General Joseph Ashy, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Space Command, 1996[1]
"With regard to space dominance, we have it, we like it, and we're going to keep it." -- Keith R. Hall, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space and Director of the National Reconnaissance Office, 1997[2]
"US Space Command—dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment. Integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict. ... During the early portion of the 21st century, space power will also evolve into a separate and equal medium of warfare. ... The emerging synergy of space superiority with land, sea, and air superiority will lead to Full Spectrum Dominance. ... Development of ballistic missile defenses using space systems and planning for precision strikes from space offers a counter to the worldwide proliferation of WMDs [weapons of mass destruction]. ... Space is a region with increasing commercial, civil, international, and military interests and investments. The threat to these vital systems is also increasing. ... Control of Space is the ability to assure access to space, freedom of operations within the space medium, and an ability to deny others the use of space, if required."-- "United States Space Command: Vision for 2020", 1997[3]
"Space represents a fundamentally new and better way to apply military force" -- U.S. Strategic Command, 2004[4]
And now along comes China, with the ability to make all this proud talk look somewhat foolish. At a State Department press briefing a week after the shootdown, the department's deputy spokesman Tom Casey stated, presumably without chuckling: "We certainly are concerned by any effort, by any nation that would be geared towards developing weapons or other military activities in space. ... We don't want to see a situation where there is any militarization of space." He spoke of the "peaceful use of space", and was concerned about the threat to "modern life as we know it", because "countries throughout the world are dependant on space based technologies, weather satellites, communications satellites and other devices".
A reporter asked: "Has the United States conducted such a test destroying a satellite in space?"
Yes, said Casey, in 1985. But that was different because "there was a Cold War that was being engaged in between the United States and the Soviet Union" and there were much fewer satellites moving about space.[5]
Congressman Terry Everett, senior Republican on the House armed services subcommittee on strategic forces, said China's test "raises serious concerns about the vulnerability of our space-based assets. ... We depend on satellites for a host of military and commercial uses, from navigation to ATM transactions."[6]
Even prior to the Chinese test, the Washington Post pointed out: "For a U.S. military increasingly dependent on sophisticated satellites for communicating, gathering intelligence and guiding missiles, the possibility that those space-based systems could come under attack has become a growing worry. ... The administration insists that there is no arms race in space, although the United States is the only nation that opposed a recent United Nations call for talks on keeping weapons out of space. ... Although the 1967 U.N. Outer Space Treaty, signed by the United States, allows only peaceful uses of space, some believe that the United States is moving toward some level of weaponization, especially related to a missile defense system."[7]
Tom Casey, the State Department spokesperson, tried his best to give the impression that the United States has no idea why China would do such a thing—"We would like to see and understand and know more about what they're really trying to accomplish here." ... "exactly what their intentions are" ... "questions that arise about what Chinese intentions are" ... "not only the nature of what they've done, but the purpose and intent"[8]
But the United States can well imagine what China's intention was. The Chinese were responding to the efforts of the Bush administration, and the Clinton administration before them, to establish and maintain US military supremacy in space and to use that supremacy as a threatening, or actual, weapon. Beijing wished to put Washington on notice that in any future conflict with China the United States will not be dealing with Iraq or Afghanistan, or Yugoslavia, Panama or Grenada.
"But what did anyone expect?" asks Lawrence Martin, columnist for The Globe and Mail of Canada. "For several years, China, Canada, and virtually every country in the world have been urging the United States to enter into an arms-control treaty for outer space. Leave the heavens in peace, for god's sake. Come together and work something out. It's called collective security. ... Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney showed no interest in a space treaty. Their national space policy is essentially hegemony in the heavens. They oppose the development of new legal regimes or other measures that restrict their designs. A UN resolution to prevent an arms race in space was supported by 151 countries with zero opposed. The U.S. abstained. It wants strategic control."[9]
-------------------
[1] "Aviation Week and Space Technology" (New York), August 5, 1996, p.51
[2] Speaking to the National Space Club (Washington, DC), September 15, 1997
[3] Excerpts are in the same sequence as found in the August 1997 brochure beginning on page 1.
[4] March 2004, www.stratcom.mil/fact_sheets/fact_sm.html. In 2002, the U.S. Space Command was merged with the U.S. Strategic Command.
[5] State Department Press Briefing, January 19, 2007, www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2007/79056.htm
[6] Associated Press, January 19, 2007
[7] Washington Post, December 17, 2006; p.12
[8] See note 5
[9] January 25, 2007 p.A19

===============================

Target practice
In the final frontier, potshots at our satellites leave us vulnerable.
By Michael Krepon
03/04/07 06:01:16

They warn us of approaching storms. They allow us to make emergency phone calls on mobile phones.

They're the digital conveyor belt for global commerce. They help police and ambulances reach their destinations when every minute counts.

And the Pentagon relies on them to provide U.S. forces with intelligence, communications and targeting information.

Satellites, it seems, have become our lifelines.

Still, it's easy to take satellites for granted -- easy, that is, until the People's Liberation Army crashes a missile into one of China's aging meteorological satellites, as it did recently. It was a crude show of strength, which the PLA will do on occasion when it wants to make a point.

In 1995, for example, Beijing sent a fusillade of missiles in Taiwan's direction, a blunt reminder to think twice about independence. This time around, the PLA's message seemed directed at the Bush administration and the Air Force, which has adopted a "space control" doctrine that endorses the use of weapons in, from and through space.

The debris from China's missile blast could travel in space for much more than a quarter-century before burning up in the Earth's atmosphere. That's a long time, but not longer than the debate over weapons in space has raged, beginning with the launch of Sputnik in 1957. Having prying eyes overhead is unsettling enough, but it is not nearly so worrisome as weapons circling overhead, ready to fire.

What the Air Force euphemistically calls "offensive counter-space" capabilities -- use of the terms "space weapons" and "space dominance" is verboten -- does not have a broad constituency of support in the Pentagon or on Capitol Hill. The notion of turning space into one more war zone offends many sensibilities, from those of devout believers who don't think the heavens should be sullied by weapons, to those of pragmatic soldiers who realize that, if satellites become fair game in warfare, their other missions will become even harder.

President Reagan couldn't dent these concerns with the Strategic Defense Initiative, his 1983 proposal to use space-based weapons as a shield against nuclear attack. Journalist Frances FitzGerald offers a skeptical account of this period in "Way Out There in the Blue," which treats Reagan's scheme as part fantasy, part public relations and part device to kill arms control. Mikhail Gorbachev is the hero of FitzGerald's narrative, while Reagan's contributions toward devaluing nuclear weapons are short-changed. Astronomer Robert Jastrow makes the moral case for Reagan's vision of space-based defenses in his 1985 book "How to Make Nuclear Weapons Obsolete."

So far, the Bush administration's testing in space appears limited to demonstrations of multipurpose technologies: For example, a recent test maneuvered a small satellite to make close passes at U.S. space objects. These techniques could ultimately be used to help with satellite docking or monitoring.

The Air Force's new doctrine and the Bush administration's refusal to discuss, let alone negotiate, anything that could limit U.S. freedom of action in space -- along with the traditional secrecy surrounding military space programs -- has gotten China's attention.

Last September, press reports indicated that China had "painted" a U.S. satellite with a laser. It is unclear how often this has occurred, or whether the United States has carried out similar practices against Chinese satellites. (Shining lasers on satellites can be used for space tracking and monitoring, as well as for temporarily blinding a satellite, among other uses.)

Now that Beijing has in turn gained Washington's attention, the competition in space is likely to heat up. An old U.S.-Soviet-style space race seems unlikely -- after all, we live in an era of asymmetric warfare -- but it doesn't take an arms race to mess up space, as the PLA just proved.

These days, "lasing" and jamming are the preferred Pentagon means for dealing with satellites that could threaten U.S. combat forces.

Initially, however, the Pentagon considered nuclear detonations as a way to destroy satellites, even deploying (but never launching) two nuclear-tipped rockets for this assignment after the Cuban missile crisis. The Kennedy administration learned that this was a bad idea after one particularly powerful atmospheric nuclear test in 1962 damaged every U.S. satellite -- and one Soviet satellite -- in low Earth orbit.

The United States and the Soviet Union turned next to space weapons that killed on contact, as detailed in Paul Stares's 1985 book on Cold War space warfare, "The Militarization of Space." The U.S. military conducted dozens of such tests, but only one, in 1985, was like the recent Chinese test, with the Air Force blowing up an aging meteorological satellite. Fourteen years later, a piece of debris from this test came within one mile of the international space station. It took three additional years for this lethal hazard to clear out of low Earth orbit. (The recent Chinese test has produced a much larger debris field at a higher altitude, meaning that the resulting hazard to spaceflight will be much worse.)

Political interest in space weapons is usually linked to spikes in public anxiety. During the Reagan administration, many were concerned that the Kremlin had achieved strategic and military superiority and might exploit its advantages -- including the use of futuristic space weapons. The Kremlin leadership felt precisely the same way about Washington, which made this chapter of the Cold War so dangerous.

Walter A. McDougall's Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age," published in 1985, is a graceful and lyrical account of the space race, and details the history of the Soviet and U.S. space programs.

Now, the focus is squarely on China. Just as the Pentagon once published annual reports on "Soviet Military Power" and "Soviet Space Power," it now issues annual reports on Chinese military capabilities; they are far better than the old analyses of Soviet power, but the analysis remains spotty. For instance, the recent congressionally mandated report "Military Power of the People's Republic of China 2006," from the defense secretary's office, covers many Chinese military innovations -- including a new doctrine of modern warfare and the purchase of more advanced weapons systems -- but failed to predict a "hit to kill" anti-satellite test.

In the current debates over space weapons, few advocates mince their words less than Everett Dolman, a faculty member at the Air Force's Air University and author of "Astropolitik: Classical Geopolitics in the Space Age." Dolman argues that the Air Force should seek military control of space and thus dictate terms to potential adversaries. In "Neither Star Wars Nor Sanctuary," Brookings Institution scholar Michael O'Hanlon is less enthusiastic about weapons in space, but doesn't wish to rule them out in the case of a potential conflict with China over Taiwan. My own view is laid out in my book "Space Assurance or Space Dominance: The Case Against Weaponizing Space," in which I argue that the United States has more to lose than to gain if space becomes a shooting gallery.

It is perhaps fitting that some of the best information and analysis on weapons in space would be found in, well, cyberspace. The Space Security Index 2006, issued by the research consortium SpaceSecurity.org, offers a detailed overview of these issues on an ongoing basis. The Air Force Space Command also maintains a detailed and informative Web site (www.afspc.af.mil). And among the bloggers, I would recommend Leonard David of Space.com, as well as Jeffrey Lewis, who keeps perhaps the leading blog on nuclear proliferation and arms control, ArmsControlWonk.com -- where he broke the Chinese anti-satellite test story on Jan. 17.
Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center, lectures on nuclear proliferation at the University of Virginia. This commentary was written for the Washington Post.