Space Security Program
Key Element: Supporting a Code of Conduct for Responsible Space-Faring Nations
< Building Block: Providing Reassurance through Cooperative Monitoring >
The accomplishments of superpower arms control during the Cold War were greatly facilitated by the ability of both the United States and the Soviet Union to monitor each other’s military activities by satellites and other national technical means. Noninterference with these national technical means, and mutual acknowledgement of their centrality to strategic and crisis stability, paved the way for more relaxed national postures toward transparency.
Growing tolerance for transparency, in turn, facilitated more meaningful limits and reductions on nuclear and conventional forces. These breakthroughs were predicated on intrusive, ground-based inspections, but purposeful on-site inspections remained intimately linked to observations from space. The NTM provisions of the 1972 SALT I accords were expanded in the 1979 SALT II Treaty, specifically the obligation not to use deliberate concealment measures during testing practices associated with the Treaty’s provisions. Another “common understanding” of SALT II was that “neither Party shall engage in deliberate denial of telemetric information, such as through the use of telemetry encryption, whenever such denial impedes verification of compliance” of Treaty provisions. SALT II never entered into force, but these provisions were subsequently incorporated into the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), concluded in 1991.
One of the prior conditions for successful reductions in strategic offensive arms was the acceptance by the Kremlin of intrusive, on-site inspections. This breakthrough occurred in 1986, when the Soviet Union agreed to on-site inspections in a multilateral accord promoting confidence-building measures in Europe. Subsequently, the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty significantly expanded the types and numbers of inspections, allowing close observation at operational missile sites, repair facilities, storage depots, training sites, and former missile production or assembly facilities. The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty extended these inspection provisions to include warhead monitoring. This Treaty also mandated the exchange of telemetry data from missile tests.
The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) contains far-reaching provisions for “anywhere, any time” inspections of suspect sites. Many nations, including the United States, have vitiated these extraordinary measures through conditions attached to ratification or through watered-down implementation guidelines. Serious efforts to reinvigorate the CWC’s implementation would not only serve global non-proliferation interests, but could also provide building blocks for a space assurance regime, since highly intrusive monitoring would be required to confirm that space launch payloads are not prohibited ASATs. These intrusive, cooperative-monitoring arrangements can additionally have enormous utility in controlling, reducing, and eliminating dangerous weapons and materials remaining after the Soviet Union dissolved. They could also have wide-ranging applications in other regions of the world plagued by tensions and deadly arsenals. The building blocks for cooperative, intrusive monitoring negotiated during the Cold War could also have considerable utility if suitably adapted for space assurance.