Keeping the Peace in Outer Space
A Global Desire to Reserve Space for Entirely Peaceful Purposes
Feb 8, 2008
Almost immediately following the first successful launching of an object into space on 4th October 1957, the General Assembly of the UN issued Resolution 1148 (XII) calling for:
“the joint study of an inspection system designed to ensure that the sending of objects through outer space shall be exclusively for peaceful and scientific purposes”.
Although it was deemed desirable that space projects should be for exclusively peaceful and scientific purposes, it was also recognised that some degree of inspection and regulation would be necessary. Consequently, the General Assembly urged all States concerned with space exploration, particularly those in the Sub-committee of the Disarmament Commission currently negotiating an agreement on reduction, limitation and open inspection of armament and armed forces, to give priority to reaching a disarmament agreement covering outer space.
The following year the General Assembly issued Resolution 1348 (XII) reaffirming ‘the common interest of mankind in outer space and … that it is the common aim that outer space should be used for peaceful purposes only’. This Resolution and its desire for space to remain peaceful were instrumental in the formation of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) ‘to review the scope of international cooperation in peaceful uses of outer space’.
The majority of the international community agreed that space should remain peaceful, exemplified by the Indian delegate to COPUOS remarking:
“My delegation cannot contemplate any prospect other than that outer space should be a kind of warless world, where all military concepts of this earth should be totally inapplicable”.
The Meaning of ‘Peaceful’
In international law, the word ‘peaceful’ has always been taken to mean ‘non-military’. The Antarctic Treaty 1959 reserved Antarctica for exclusively peaceful purposes and demonstrated that ‘peaceful’ meant ‘non-military’:
‘Antarctica shall be used for peaceful purposes only. There shall be prohibited, inter alia, anymeasures of a military nature such as the establishment if military bases and fortifications, the carrying out of military manoeuvres, as well as the testing of any kind of weapons’.
The Approach of the Space Powers
In the early days of space exploration, the only countries with space capabilities were the USSR and the United States and it was clear that their primary goals were military based. Consequently, both these Space Powers were placed in the difficult position of having to appear receptive to the desire to keep the peace in outer space whilst at the same time wanting to protect their own military interests.
Fortunately for the USSR, they were at the time an exceptionally closed society with little desire for international cooperation and so it was fairly easy for them to either deny the existence of their military projects while preventing the United Nations from inspecting their activities.
The United States on the other hand, not being able to avoid international interest in their activities, chose to skew the interpretation of the word ‘peaceful’ so that its meaning switched from ‘non-military’ to ‘non-aggressive’. Despite the signing of the Antarctic Treaty, Senator Albert Gore Sr., representing the United States to the UN, commented:
“It is the view of the United States that outer space should be used only for peaceful – that is, non-aggressive and beneficial – purposes. The question of military activities in space cannot be divorced from the question of military activities on earth.”
The United States was clearly already attempting to justify its alternative reading of the word ‘peaceful’.
An Unworkable Peace
It was clear that an informal peaceful purposes reservation would not work and that further legislative steps were needed, steps that would eventually lead to the Outer Space Treaty 1967.
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