Be Careful What You Ask For

People often ask why, given that the US is the enparalleled monolithic global hegemon, we should engage with international institutions? The ICC is simply a way for ungrateful and bitter small countries to arrest our soldiers. Kyoto is a plot to cripple the American economy and create an unfair advantage for high density states (i.e. Europe - which is collectively the size of Texas - and Japan). International human rights instruments provide other states to impose their socialist models (through Socio-economic rights) and attack our values (guaranteeing abortions and aborting the death penalty).

These are undeniably crude charicatures of perfectly valid concerns, but they capture the essence of a twin notion. First, norms do matter; if not we would sign them all in exchange for some tangible short term gain then laugh our way to the paper shredder. Second, that that the US is immune to conventional forms of coercion - either military or economic - and so in any compromise scenario is only giving away something. It is this latter assumption that I find most foolish.

Today the Chinese knocked out a satellite. On the heals of a new DOD space strategy, which envisions a US militarized capacity (offensive? defensive? fortunately there is little practical difference) at some indefinite point in the future, apparently China is already deploying systems capable of destroying low orbiting satellites, such as the GPS network that is at the root of our modern situation awareness and battle management systems.

Now I know the obvious solution would be to give Lockheed a few billion dollars over a decade to create a success-proof solution (bless their souls, but for fun try googling lockheed and boondoggle). But for a minute let's imagine that you can solve a problem for less than nine zero's.

First, this revelation that a relatively cheap and quick tool could rapidly flush our very expensive but very real force superiority down the toilet will hopefully serve as a welcome wake up call to those who buy into the Superman mythology of the US. Were we still in napoleonic times and both sides calmly lined up in organized ranks upon the neatly demarcated field (complete with picnicing families on the adjacent hill!) the notion might have some validity. But in the modern era of Pearl Harbor, fifth columns, and indeterminate objectives we are far from invulnerable.

Yet what of our first assumption? The value of norms is that they affect a limitation upon both sides. This means they can be a tool against power asymmetry, but also that they can serve to consolidate asymmetries by outlawing potential (but not yet realized) areas that provide a relative advantage to weaker states. Stopping a US armored division requires either a few thousand tanks of your own (and even that doesn't guarantee success) or a single low-yield nuke delivered to their staging ground. The latter is a lot cheaper, more mobile, and less vulnerable to the other capabilities that come with that division (e.g. arial bombardment on the way to the battefield). Despite the best efforts of the Pentagon and Moscow it isn't ok to use tactical nuclear weapons - and thus American forces don't have to worry too much about running into a mushroom cloud (those of us back home aren't so lucky).

With regard to space, this isn't a new idea either. Only two years ago, in the framework of the existing Outer Space Treaty (which applies to the Moon and beyond), China was suppporting a treaty banning all space weapons.

Does that mean that given today's events they were disingenuous? Could be. Or they could simply be trying to ensure that they have their own systems before the US - remember that strategy that explicitly says we want to put weapons in space - develops another military advantage over them. If two guys are pointing guns at each other, either one would be an idiot to put down his gun first. In the long run, the only solution is to either pull trigger or agree to both put down their guns at the same time (preferably in a permanent, irreverable, and verifiable manner).

But what happens if they pick back up their gun - the equivalent of this test? The situation is far from perfect - politics rarely are. But if there is a norm you've got a lot more options than the current lone one of shaking our hypocrytical finger in disapproval.