The InterDependent

As the United Nations is well aware after decades of international negotiations, politics and war are two of the world’s most constant endeavors.

But global hot spots aren’t the only environment where the UN must negotiate. Outer space, very much devoid of people, is home to the very real presence of political warfare, requiring the same measures of diplomatic prowess that national feuds elsewhere need.

So the UN extends its galactic reach.

In June, it held its 53rd session of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, an assembly of the 69 foremost space-faring nations – including the US, Russia, China, Japan and Germany – convening in Vienna to explore solutions on exactly what its name suggests.

At the meeting, issues like curbing the use of space-based atomic reactors were discussed. Though the committee does not have the ability to draft treaties barring this technology from space, the members agreed on a safety framework for such power sources, which should help ensure the absence of a nuclear threat raining down on humanity.

NASA

North and South America from space. The UN’s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space is essentially a debate forum.

Such are the negotiations the committee, which is known in UN circles as Copuos (sounds like the name of a new planet), uses to avoid threats in the cosmos.

As Yves Sorokobi, a spokesman for the UN secretary-general, explained in an e-mail to UNA-USA, Copuos is built to “study how to exercise universal legal jurisdiction and prevent countries from weaponizing space.”

“We are insuring that space remains a safe and responsible environment,” said Kenneth Hodgkins, the director of the Office of Space and Advanced Technology at the US State Department and one of 20 members of the American delegation at this year’s meeting in Vienna. “We’re using the UN to promote that whole notion.”

The meeting – essentially a forum to vent issues and suggest new ideas – was carried by the theme of expanding cosmic cooperation in an age when there are increasing numbers of nations and organizations blasting into orbit. Talking points throughout the 10-day session included the need to build wider understanding on what is acceptable conduct in space, and how to prevent articles placed into space – such as satellites, rockets and even weapons – from becoming a threat to life on the ground.

The US, one of the founding members of the committee in 1958, has consistently used Copuos to gain international consensus on space stability.

Copuos, operating under the auspices of the UN’s Office for Outer Space Affairs, is the only international body dealing with the diplomatic issue of preventing war above ground. Taming the final frontier of civilization is something countries aren’t able to do alone, Hodgkins said. The US, one of the founding members of the committee in 1958, has consistently used Copuos to gain international consensus on space stability.

Copuos does much of its activity behind closed doors, however, and has no public advocacy or activism efforts, Sorokobi said.

“The committee is a perpetual work in progress, mostly a debate forum,” Sorokobi said, adding that little real international consensus has been made on keeping space weapons-free. That, he explained, is because some countries – like the US – reserve the right to create “star wars” orbital space systems as they wish, contending that they are providing a net of security above their borders.

To date, such programs do not exist in any country.

Although nations have to some extent militarized space by using orbital applications for intelligence gathering, reconnaissance, communications and positioning – no weapons are actually in space. Since there are no weapons, there can be no real deweaponization efforts, like the work done, say, by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Copuos works more with what could happen -- such as the placement of orbital-based nuclear missile silos -- forcing the agency to focus on prevention.

As Nancy Gallagher, a professor from the University of Maryland’s Center for International and Security Studies said, though it may not be practical to place weapons in space from an economic or strategic standpoint, the ability to determine the vulnerability of such threats is very real.

“There is a strong trend towards increasing the use of space for a wide variety of active military support purposes, which creates pressure to develop various ways of protecting your own satellites and targeting others,” Dr. Gallagher said in an e-mail.

But averting a true space war may be difficult.

“The main problem is that prevention needs to be anchored in a multilateral legal framework based on consensus, which has been hard to reach,” said Cesar Jaramillo, the project manager of the independent Space Security Index, of which Project Ploughshares in Waterloo, Canada, a nongovernment organization where he is based, is a partner.

As a presenter at a plenary session at the Copuos meeting, Jaramillo emphasized how the UN has no authority to develop accords to keep space weapons-free and is hindered as a negotiator by a lack of legal binding.

“Since international law cannot be forced upon states, the challenge is to craft a space security and legal instrument that accommodates the concerns of all,” Jaramillo said. “The UN is only as effective as the collective actions of its member states.”

Nevertheless, the US views the agency as helpful.

“There are things we want to do, but can’t do on a bilateral basis,” Hodgkins of the State Department said. “That is where the UN comes in.”

Having worked with the committee for almost 30 years, Hodgkins said that the agency has given the US an international diplomatic position that it can point to during negotiations to show what the international community perceives as the norms of using space.

It is an interstellar code of conduct that is very much needed, Hodgkins said.

“As the number of entities going into space increases, we hope to illustrate how necessary these regulatory frameworks are,” he said.

Without infringing on the work of national space programs like NASA, the committee’s ultimate job is to provide multilateral understanding on how to use the great beyond.

“We want to build good behavior and responsibility in space,” Hodgkins said.

If all goes according to plan, intergalactic war scenes from the likes of “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” will remain science fiction.