Peace on Earth Before Peace in Space

Commentary

There is an enduring myth, promoted largely by the well-meaning or the naive, that peace in space can lead to or even influence the possibility of greater peace on Earth. In reality, it’s the latter that determines the former.

Enthusiasm for this notion increases during the anniversary of the first international mission in space: the July 17, 1975, docking of the U.S.–Soviet Union Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

The result of more than a decade of negotiations and work, the main event saw Apollo Commander Thomas P. Stafford, a veteran of the Apollo 10 mission, shaking hands with Soyuz Commander Alexi Leonov, who made the first space walk in 1965. Leonov might have been the first cosmonaut to reach the moon had the N-1 moon rocket program not ended in failure.

No doubt, nostalgia for the Apollo-Soyuz mission will last well beyond another 50 years. Still, the historic facts remain that it did nothing to alter Soviet hegemonic ambitions on Earth, and it most certainly did not cause Soviet leaders to abandon their ambitious plans to deploy weapons in space.

On June 25, 1974, the Soviets launched their Salyut-3, also known as Almaz-2, a cannon-armed and later a missile-armed version of their small, manned space station precursor to the larger Energia Corp. Mir space station.

At the 1997 Moscow Airshow, I asked a veteran of the Almaz mission how they would respond if the Americans fired back. He replied that Almaz was designed to maintain its atmosphere for five minutes, which would be enough time for the crew to reach their Soyuz escape ship.

Soon after the Apollo-Soyuz mission, the Soviet Union began developing its Polyus (also known as Skif-DM), a 1-megawatt chemical space laser combat satellite whose May 15, 1987, launch ended in failure.

Had it been successful, Polyus would surely have been followed by more powerful variants with the ability to attack targets on Earth.

In 1996, Energia revealed that it had been developing a combat-capable version of its Mir space station, docking up to four Earth-bombers based on the fuselages of its Buran spaceplane.

These Soviet military-space projects were halted only by fundamental political change on Earth: the 1990–1991 collapse of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and with it, for at least a decade, its hegemonic ambitions on Earth and in space.

Perhaps the more realistic, if less appealing, lesson of the Soviet example is that no amount of peace in space can alter diehard Earth-bound political trajectories. These include the post-Soviet Russian and communist Chinese hegemonic ambitions on Earth, which Moscow and Beijing seek to reinforce by building combat power in space and by eventually imposing their hegemony over the Earth–moon system.

But on this 50th anniversary, nostalgia-driven hope endures largely because after the Cold War, freedom survived in the democracies, sustaining the ability of space workers, space experts, and historians to appeal to the free people’s preference for peace.

American astronaut Mike Fincke recalled that he was 8 years old during the Apollo-Soyuz mission.

“It made a big impression, not just on me, but on the rest of the world—that if the Soviet Union and United States can work together in space, maybe we can work together here on Earth,” Robert Z. Pearlman, writing on the popular Space.com web portal on July 17, quoted Fincke as saying during a July 10 press conference.

Similarly, one of America’s most prolific space historians, Fordham University’s Asif Siddiqi, told The New York Times in a July 17 article that “it’s amazing to think that two diametrically opposed countries with different systems and cultures, essentially ready to destroy each other, can somehow cooperate and do this highly technical, complicated mission.”

In reviewing the benefits of the Apollo-Soyuz mission—primarily that it helped to set the stage for post-Cold War U.S.–Russia space cooperation, first in Russia’s Mir space station and then with the construction of the International Space Station—most commentators fail to mention that such cooperation was only possible because of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s collapse and the termination of its broad hostilities during the 1990s.

However, this still does not stop analysts from using the very limited lessons of the Apollo-Soyuz mission to appeal for change in the far more daunting U.S.–China relationship in space.

Clayton Swope, deputy director of Aerospace Security Project at Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in an op-ed on July 17: “In the same way that the United States extended an olive branch to the Soviets, it should extend one to China by proposing a joint civil space initiative that improves the safety of human spaceflight.

“A carefully framed joint initiative could serve this modest, practical purpose, though it certainly could not bridge broader policy differences. It just might, however, begin to lessen tensions and build trust as Apollo-Soyuz did with the Soviets.

“It could also renew faith in the timeless belief that people can put aside their disagreements to take big steps for all humankind.”

While he suggested that such U.S.–China cooperation could benefit astronauts aboard the International Space Station, he did not specifically suggest allowing the Chinese aboard the station.

But any such consideration should be balanced by what Russian sources disclosed to this analyst at about the time of the 2009 Moscow Airshow: The Chinese were able to steal Russian technology, which allowed them to base their Tiangong space station on Energia Corp.’s Mir space station technology.

It is almost certain that the Chinese regime would use any access to try to steal any U.S. space technology to help improve its space station and the space structures it plans to use on the moon, Mars, and further into the solar system.

It is increasingly clear that the goal of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is to use military superiority in space to reinforce its eventual political-economic-military hegemony on Earth, which it requires to ensure the survival of the CCP’s dictatorship over all Chinese.

As such, we should remain grateful for a 2011 legislative amendment authored by former Congressman Frank Wolf, called the Wolf Amendment, which requires that any U.S. cooperation with China in space be reviewed by the U.S. Congress and the FBI.

No “olive branch” is going to alter the CCP’s course. That will require fundamental change, such as the termination of the CCP’s dictatorship and the emergence of a democratic culture in China.

Peace on Earth before peace in space.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.