Vijay Prashad

This is the stated goal of the United States Air Force (USAF) in its 2000 Strategic Master Plan for space. The goal for the USAF is "Full Spectrum Domination," a phrase that is far more blunt than its earlier incarnation --- "Global Battlespace Dominance." Space is no longer principally (and perhaps only) the Final Frontier, the place of exploration by humans for other forms of life and for techniques to further develop our lives on earth. It is now the latest terrain for US imperial designs. But it is not space itself that the US military planners wish to colonise. They do not foresee combat in space, mainly because no rival is even close on the horizon to entangle their forces with the US in a gravity-less environment.

The space weaponry designed and put into operation by the USAF is geared toward an effective military hegemony over those of us feeble earthlings who may never launch a missile into space. Weapons designers have not made space armaments to conduct dogfights in space; they have produced very sophisticated devices whose goal is to knock out rival satellites in space as well as to conduct surveillance of civilians and of military targets on earth.

The names of the high-tech arsenal stagger the imagination: oxygen suckers, kinetic energy rods, microwave guns, destructo swarmboats, microsatellites, microwave guns, space-based lasers, pyrotechnic electromagnetic pulses, robo-bugs, holographic decoys, suppression clouds, cluster satellites and, finally, hyperspectral imaging devices such as Warfighter I which will be launched in early September by the Pentagon. Each of these devices will enhance US military superiority for engagements on the earth, provide military intelligence to the CIA and the Pentagon, and offer a decisive edge to US-based corporations. (The latter, along with defence contractors, will dominate the technology, as well as engage in high-tech industrial espionage. Since 1998, commercial space launches overtook military ones, and only eight of the satellites in orbit belong to the US military, the rest to other powers and, crucially, to US-based corporations. In December 2000, the US defence department authorised money for two laser weapon projects, one by TRW, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and a second by TRW to build the "Alpha High-Energy Laser.") Full-spectrum domination lives up to its name.

Reality is far more bizarre than Hollywood. Science fiction, since its birth in the late nineteenth century, has been a very popular genre both on paper and on the screen. The modern imagination, fired by technological advances, stretched the boundaries of human possibility, both for our betterment and downfall. The English novelist H G Wells sent us to the moon much before the NASA did, and the US television shows like "Buck Rogers" and "Star Trek" offered us a vision of space domination decades before the Pentagon.

But science fiction also has its good side. For example, the early twentieth century Bengali writer Rokeya Hussein's feminist paradise combated drought through the canalisation of clouds --- one way to dream of technology aiding human suffering. There is, however, nothing recoupable in the Pentagon's fantasy, since it is entirely wed to domination of the world. How can 'oxygen suckers' or 'suppression clouds' relieve the hunger and oppression of those who live under their cover? Some scientific development does not come with a silver lining.

Furthermore, the turn to "Full Spectrum Domination" inaugurates for us the end of the era of détente. The US and the USSR, as well as the three other nuclear powers, adopted the theory of détente as a means to keep the nuclear stalemate in check, to prevent an actual nuclear exchange by the acknowledgement of their mutual power. With the collapse of the USSR and the enfeeblement of the Russian military, the US can now disregard the canons of détente and fashion its current theory of international relations: domination. The Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty of 1972 is, as US president George W Bush put it, without meaning. And perhaps this is one of those few moments when he is right when he least expects to be so: the US Pentagon's activities on the "Full Spectrum Domination" front have already rendered the ABM moot, and it seems that the other nuclear powers have begun to bargain for favours within the new domination regime. (These include the BJP-led Indian government, eager as always to back the US on the missile defence issue.)

On August 13, Russian president Vladimir Putin and US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld met in Moscow. While Putin used the language of 'negotiations,' Rumsfeld treated the conversation as 'consultations.' The US right-wing, which controls the branches of government, sees the world as an object that must accede to its will and not as subjects with whom one must negotiate. This is a crucial difference in the international relations logic and it is reflected in the strategic shifts in arms deployment. With "Full Spectrum Domination," who will dare to challenge the US Pentagon (and its allies)?

The US Air Force's 2000 Strategic Master Plan for space informs us that the National Missile Defence (NMD) concept is but one part of a triad: the other two parts are improved space surveillance and anti-satellite offensive weaponry. NMD, then, should not only be seen in light of the ABM, and certainly not in terms of the language of defence. Words like 'defence' have long since lost their meaning: the NMD is part of a war strategy, one of three legs for what the Air Force calls 'space control.' NMD is now part of the international conversation, whereas the other two legs have been relegated to the internal reports of the US Military. Journalist Jack Hitt calls these reports "an encyclopaedia of our war planners' dreams." Indeed, the titles of the reports themselves reveal the terrifying fantasy of the Pentagon: New World Vistas, Long Range Plan, Guardians of the High Frontier, Spacecast 2020, and Counterair: the Cutting Edge.

A reading of the reports indicates, further, that the deployment of space weapons is not in the distant future. On May 8, 2001, Rumsfeld announced that the secretary of the Air Force will "realign headquarters and field commands to more effectively organise, train, and equip for prompt and sustained space operations." Rumsfeld, who held the same post under the Ford administration, and was the chair of the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organisation (report produced in 1998), is a key player in the space weapons game. The Rumsfeld report of 1998 urges the US president to "have the option to deploy weapons in space" and it warns against a "space Pearl Harbour." The Pentagon has both secured funds for bits and pieces of their plans and they have created the bureaucratic infrastructure for space warfare.

In 1993, the US Air Force established the Space Warfare Centre in Shriever Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Colorado (home to the North American Aerospace Defence Command, NORAD). The centre has three sections --- the Space Battle Lab, the Space Warfare School and the 527th Space Aggressor Squadron. Secretary Rumsfeld feted the newly appointed head of the US Space Command, four-star general Ralph E Eberhardt, in May of 2001, and Eberhardt is already being considered to head the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, the apex of the military structure. The first full-scale war game was held at SpaceCom in January 2001, and the 527th fought an imaginary 'near-peer competitor' nation called Red --- perhaps the People's Republic of China, or since the simulation was set in 2017, any number of nations who may elect the socialist path and be a threat to US "Full Spectrum Domination."

Pentagon's SpaceCom's Long Range Plan notes that "now it is time to begin developing space capabilities, innovative concepts of operations for war-fighting and organisations that can meet the challenge of the 21st century." At his briefing on May 8, Rumsfeld was asked if the US wants to put weapons in space. His reply was hesitant, but then he said that the US would continue to follow its National Space Policy (adopted on September 19, 1996). He read a part of the text: "The department of defence shall maintain the capability to execute the mission, areas of space support, force enhancement, space control and force application. Consistent with treaty obligations, the United States will develop, operate and maintain space control capabilities to ensure freedom of action in space, and if directed, deny such freedom of action to adversaries. These capabilities may also be enhanced by diplomatic, legal and military measures to preclude an adversary's hostile use of space systems and services."

Peace-loving states in the United Nations put forward the Outer Space Treaty that would ban weapons in space. But the United States has refused to vote for the treaty. In 1999, the US and Israel abstained from voting, and in 2000 the two states found an ally in Micronesia, a group of islands deeply dependent on US aid. Isolated, but for its opportunistic allies, the US seems unconcerned as it surrounds itself with a fantasy arsenal. The sound of war drums deafens.