Arms Control in Space Needs a Motivator

Since the revelations in February that Russia has been developing a nuclear-armed anti-satellite weapon, much of the U.S. government's efforts in response have focused on trying to prevent Russia from actually acquiring such a capability in the first place. Outside analysis on the subject has also tended to focus on arms control and diplomatic leverage that the U.S. might be able to use against Russia. The problem is that these efforts assume that nuclear arms control in space will work in the same way that it does on Earth. This is not the case. Understanding why is crucial to developing a proper strategy to curtail Russia's pursuit of a nuclear anti-satellite weapon.

The second issue is that Russia simply depends far less on access to space than the U.S. or its allies do. The stakes for Russia are therefore much lower for it than the United States. U.S. military leaders have directly cited this as a key motivator for Russia to develop a nuclear anti-satellite weapon. While Russian satellites would also be destroyed by its detonation of a nuclear weapon in space, the consequences for such a move would be far less devastating for it than they would be for the United States. As such, there is little motivation to engage in talks aimed at halting the development of weapons that will harm the U.S. and its far allies more than they would Russia. As such, the fundamental motivator for the U.S. and the Soviet Union to engage faithfully in arms control discussions during the Cold War (interest in preventing nuclear war) simply does not exist in space.

Convincing Russia to engage in arms control talks around nuclear anti-satellite weapons thus depends fundamentally on the U.S.'s ability to meaningfully raise the stakes for Russia in the same way that Russia has raised them for the United States. The wisest option for policymakers to consider would be to target critical Russian infrastructure, especially its oil and natural gas extraction. Ideally, such strikes would aim to minimize civilian casualties. Military exercises demonstrating the U.S.'s ability to carry out such attacks in a denied satellite environment will be essential to these efforts.

Arms control negotiations aimed at curtailing Russia's development of a nuclear anti-satellite weapon are virtually impossible without some sort of demonstration of the U.S.'s willingness to inflict levels of damage proportionate to the devastation that such a weapon would cause. Without a clear incentive to get Russia to the negotiating table, American efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons in space will continue to not produce any results.

Luke Widenhouse is a research assistant at the Yorktown Institute and senior at St. John's College in Annapolis, MD.