{"id":115150,"date":"2018-07-23T12:01:06","date_gmt":"2018-07-23T11:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=115150"},"modified":"2018-07-22T10:10:35","modified_gmt":"2018-07-22T09:10:35","slug":"trumps-space-force-military-profiteerings-final-frontier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/07\/trumps-space-force-military-profiteerings-final-frontier\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s Space Force: Military Profiteering’s Final Frontier"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe heavens are going to be littered with radioactive debris.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Donald Trump has called for the creation of a sixth branch of the U.S. military called the ‘Space Force.’
(photo: U.S. Air Force)<\/p><\/div>\n

21 Jul 2018 – <\/em>The Commander-in-Chief, President Donald Trump, has announced a new mission into the realm of martial excess. It is one is that will surely enrich the aerospace industry while spreading the global battlefield to a new dimension.<\/p>\n

Trump is calling<\/a> for the creation of a new Space Force as a sixth branch of the U.S. military, to militarize the heavens.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not enough to merely have an American presence in space,\u201d Trump told<\/a> a meeting of the National Space Council in mid-June. \u201cWe must have American dominance in space.\u201d<\/p>\n

To this end, the President has taken a page from Ronald Reagan\u2019s Star Wars playbook. Reagan\u2019s scheme, according to a recent article<\/a> by Karl Grossman, was built around \u201cnuclear reactors and plutonium systems on orbiting battle platforms providing the power for hypervelocity guns, particle beams and laser weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grossman, a journalism professor at State University of New York\/College at Old Westbury and author of the book The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program\u2019s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet<\/em>, has been reporting on the militarization of space for decades, says the move will likely spur a new international competition to weaponize space.<\/p>\n

In an interview, Grossman told me that \u201cthe Russians and Chinese are hesitant because of the high cost. But if the Americans proceed with this, all bets are off. They\u2019re not going to sit for it. They\u2019re going to get up there before you know it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will all be nuclear,\u201d Grossman adds. \u201cIt\u2019s the ultimate nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s move contradicts the letter and spirit of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967<\/a>, which was won after years of epic negotiations, mostly during the Vietnam War. The landmark United Nations accord brought the Soviet Union, China, the United States, and 120 other nations together in a monumental agreement to designate space as a global commons, reserved for peaceful purposes.<\/p>\n

\u201cStates Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner,\u201d the treaty states<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all States Parties to the Treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes. The establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military maneuvers on celestial bodies shall be forbidden.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now Trump has instructed the Pentagon \u201cto immediately begin the process necessary to establish a Space Force as the sixth branch of the armed forces; that is a big statement. We are going to have the Air Force and we are going to have the Space Force, separate but equal, it is going to be something.\u201d<\/p>\n

The proposal for a Space Corps as part of the Air Force could likely pass in the House but faces tougher going in the Senate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of resistance to this,\u201d says Grossman, \u201cbecause a lot of the current work is located in Colorado Springs, and in Huntsville, Alabama. So there\u2019s geographical lobbying from the Pentagon because they thought a new Space Corps might be competition to some of the vested interest in those towns.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to know how much this would cost,\u201d says Grossman. An article in Roll Call<\/em> has estimated \u201c$500 billion or more in the coming decade.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe real cost will depend on how greedy the aerospace companies are,\u201d Grossman says. \u201cSo much of space is now private business, with Elon Musk and Bezos and all kind of companies talking about making a buck out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Representative Trent Franks, Republican of Arizona, seems to agree, telling<\/a> Roll Call<\/em> that \u201ca big payday is coming for programs aimed at developing weapons that can be deployed in space.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Franks, \u201cIt was a Democrat mindset that caused us to step back from space-based defense assets to ostensibly not \u2018weaponize space,\u2019 while our enemies proceeded to do just that, and now, we find ourselves in a grave deficit. In every area of warfare, within the Geneva Conventions, America should be second to none. That includes satellite warfare, if it\u2019s necessary. We cannot be victims of our own decency here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty was the result of worldwide recognition that war is incredibly costly in terms of lives and resources\u2014and that more needed to be done.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe U.S. led the effort to de-weaponize space in the wake of Sputnik,\u201d says Grossman. \u201cI was told by<\/a> Craig Eisendrath of the State Department that the U.S. feared the Soviet presence in space. As a model they used the Antarctic Treaty, which banned weapons down there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the mid-1980s, key players at the United Nations have tried to expand the \u201867 accord. The Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space Treaty<\/a>, proposed in 1985<\/a>, would have banned from space all weapons, nuclear and otherwise. Canada, Russia, and China pushed hard for its ratification. But no American president has been willing to sign it. The United Nations committee working on it was dissolved in 1994. In 2008, China and Russia submitted an updated draft to the U.N. General Assembly which the United States alone has continued to oppose (Israel has abstained). Even Putin, at their infamous Helsinki presser, chided<\/a> Trump about it.<\/p>\n

Now Trump is heading where no President since Reagan has gone before. \u201cMy new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a warfighting domain, just like the land, air, and sea,” he says<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump\u2019s plan, like Reagan\u2019s, involves laser beams, particle beams and hypervelocity guns, all of which will have to involve nuclear power,\u201d says Grossman. \u201cIf there\u2019s a shooting war it will be Chernobyls and Fukushimas in the sky. Some of it will come down, which will be catastrophic. And some will take millennia to fall, which means the heavens are going to be littered with radioactive debris.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Grossman sees it, \u201cOf all the many, many terrible things the Trump Administration is doing, opening space to war will be the most destructive.\u201d<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/p>\n

Harvey \u201cSluggo\u201d Wasserman hosts the \u201cCalifornia Solartopia\u201d show at KPFK-Pacifica in Los Angeles, and the \u201cGreen Power & Wellness Hour\u201d at prn.fm. His <\/em>History of the US is at solartopia.org, where <\/em>America at the Brink of Rebirth: The Life & Death Spiral of US History, From Deganawidah to The Donald will soon be published.<\/em><\/p>\n

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 readersupportednews.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

21 Jul 2018 – Of all the many, many terrible things the Trump Administration is doing, opening space to war will be the most destructive. The heavens are going to be littered with radioactive debris.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":115151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-militarism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}