Building “Space” into Multi-Domain Deterrence Strategy

There’s no such thing as war in space; there’s just war. General John Hyten, USAF[1]

Deterrence, as it applies to the space domain, presents some interesting challenges as more countries recognize the benefits of and from space, but they are far from new. History shows us the way. The United States has been here before when adding new tools to enhance deterrence policy. By taking lessons from deterrence success and passing them through the lens of today’s strategic calculus, the United States can create stable and effective deterrence in all domains. Deterrence is as old as war itself. If war is politics, why do we think it should be different in space? If the Cold War has taught us anything, it is this: deterrence works when done right. Space as a global commons allows a multi-domain approach to deterrence with unaffordable non-compliance that eliminates escalation ambiguity while increasing assurance to all.

Deterrence is Just Deterrence

‘Space’ deterrence is a myth. Deterrence is just deterrence. The domain is irrelevant because deterrence is a concept that includes all types of tools, or deterrents. Those who claim we have nuclear deterrence have misunderstood the term. Nuclear weapons are a deterrent, not the deterrence itself. To expand further on to General Hyten’s words, there is no nuclear war; there is no space war, there is just war. During the Cold War, deterrence policy was nuclear-focused, but it was also multi-domain. The existential threat nuclear weapons brought to war traversed domains and geography; as so it required a comprehensive approach to deterrence. The redefined role of deterrence taught the United States it could not be constrained within artificial boundaries.

Deterrence policy and strategy are concepts too big to be constrained in a single domain. The United States employs a multi-domain deterrent strategy that includes all warfighting domains (land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace) and instruments of national power (diplomatic, informational, military, and economic.) The space domain has advantages and disadvantages just like the other domains. Open conflict in space will not occur in a political vacuum. Conversely, the policies regarding how one deters such conflict will also not happen in a vacuum. Limiting the concept of deterrence to ‘space deterrence’ mistakenly isolates the space domain from the other Earth-bound domains. Deterring action in any domain requires a proper accounting for the role of all military systems and capabilities in a multi-domain, joint-focused deterrent policy.

Focusing space deterrence in the space domain exclusively focuses retaliation solely on the space domain. ‘Space’ deterrence leads an adversary to deduce any attack on ‘our’ space asset will result in retaliation on ‘your’ space asset. That kind of thinking is not true. The United States does not abide by a ‘tit-for-tat’ retaliation policy. Instead, the United States responds to crisis and breaches in deterrence in the manner and timeline that best suits its national interest.

Non-Compliance is Unaffordable

Deterrence is, at its root, a cost-benefit decision. Before nuclear weapons, the cost of warfare was, for many nations, affordable. Littering the 1800s are small wars that could move political boundaries but were not what Clausewitz would consider absolute war, but regarding these nations’ treasuries “affordable.”[2] In addition, Germany’s ‘cost’ of invading Poland after the German-Soviet non-aggression pact in 1939 was also ‘affordable.’[3] Nuclear weapons added more cost in the cost-benefit analysis. Suddenly, attacking other nations with the possibility of nuclear retaliation became unaffordable. The United States did not militarily break the Iron Curtain, but by using multi-domain deterrence, the cost of military action was prohibitive. However, in space, the cost-benefit equation is not equal among nations.

The United States is by far the biggest beneficiary of space effects.[4] Disrupting services from space or destroying space assets hurts the United States far worse than other countries. This leaves no reason for any adversary NOT to attack United States space assets. However, when viewing space through the lens of multi-domain retaliation, the United States as a target becomes less attractive. The United States being capable of retaliating in any way necessary to protect or respond to space threats or actions in any domain makes the cost of non-compliance unaffordable. The credibility of deterrence propagates from the capability to threaten retaliation anywhere, in any domain. While the United States has the most to lose in space, it is the only nation capable of enacting deterrence in space. To make non-compliance unaffordable, the costs must be clearly communicated.

Eliminate Escalation Ambiguity

One of the best lessons learned from the Cold War was providing the adversary with predictability in actions and outcomes. Certainty was created in their actions by detailing their values. The United States communicated to the Soviet Union that an attack on “this” would be viewed as a precursor to “that.” Both countries defined their own the escalation ladder. A miscalculation on either side had severe ramifications and would not be tolerated.

Space escalation was also conceived in a Cold War context. From the beginning, Space was viewed as a domain where escalation could not be controlled. Space in the 1960s primarily had strategic communication and nuclear early warning. Any attack on those systems would reasonably be viewed as a precursor to a first strike and inevitably lead to Mutually Assured Destruction. It was unavoidable. Dedicated efforts by the superpowers were enacted to avoid this, namely the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. The treaty was unanimously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly calling for the refrain from placing nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies.[5] The Superpowers agreed to the Treaty because any escalation in space was unaffordable.

In today’s context, the United States must explicitly communicate values that include space to make the cost of non-compliance is unaffordable. This currently is not the case as no escalation ladder in space has been communicated as official national policy. In the past, these values were not reinforced with action. General Kevin Chilton called the 2007 Chinese shoot down of their defunct weather satellite an “act of war,” the United States did not back that assertion up with action.[6] It was not treated as an act of war. While the act taught many nations about the dangers of kinetic action and the subsequent debris in orbit; it also told the world the United States was not ready to escalate.

The United States must clarify and validate what it considers a provocation or escalation in space. During the Cold War, this was done concerning nuclear weapons and command and control systems with stark clarity. There was no question what was important and how the United States would view any particular action. The United States must do this with its space systems to ensure allies, adversaries, and our forces understand how we view our space systems and capabilities. This must be followed up with public demonstrations of our resolve to these newly defined bounds of behavior. However, there is another way to demonstrate deterrence without such a hardline.

Deterrence Starts with Assurance

Achieving space dominance, or superiority is nonsensical as pursuing this objective ultimately reduces the security of the domain. Space dominance requires the weaponization of the space domain. Weaponization leads to conflict in the domain. The United States must avoid conflict in that domain as a kinetic end-state leads to a debris-filled unusable space. To avoid it, do not weaponize space and do not permit others. Space weaponization is not a foregone conclusion; it can be avoided. It did not happen in the Cold War due to dedicated efforts to ‘assure’ adversaries and allies. United States efforts to ‘dominate space’ unequivocally turn space into the battlefield the Pentagon is trying to avoid. Instead, space assurance allows commercial gain and the continued, unencumbered utilization of space to assist terrestrial military operations.

The easiest, cheapest, and most beneficial way for the United States to protect the space domain is to change policy to assurance over deterrence. Assurance and deterrence, while linked, have decidedly different tones. Deterrence is insistent, whereas assurance is softer. While space would benefit from both, assurance should be the focus. The United States should immediately enact a policy of ‘space assurance’ while at the same time abandon the concept of space dominance.

The basis of assurance is the concept of ‘mutual vulnerability.’ During the Cold War, mutual vulnerability created an element of stability. Each nation was vulnerable to attack, and that was okay. Today the United States accepts mutual vulnerability explicitly with Russia, implicitly with China, and entirely rejects the concept with everyone else. Mutual vulnerability is inherently unavoidable in space. Physics overcomes politics in this domain. Because there is no way to avoid mutual vulnerability, the United States must embrace it. Assurance is the way.

Assurance is less about preventing outcomes and more about achieving and maintaining a strategic balance. With nuclear weapons and missile defense, our actions must assure our near-peer adversaries that our advancements or deployments are not intended to upset the strategic balance or interfere with mutual vulnerability. If we go too hard and too fast in space, we will invite conflict.[7] To enable assurance, we need more access in, to, and through space.

Space assurance requires better situational awareness to know where assets are located. Space assurance requires hardening the links between space assets and ground stations to be able to command satellites when necessary. Space assurance requires cheap access to orbit to quickly and cheaply replace and enhance current capabilities. Space assurance requires established international norms to create reliable outcomes. In this domain, a good space defense does not require a good offense, as previously discussed, the weaponization of space must be avoided to eliminate ambiguity. The United States must not test or deploy space weapons on orbit as it does not reinforce assurance. Instead, it must hedge against other nations developing offensive capability with continued laboratory research and development programs consistent with stated assurance policies. Assurance requires international norms which can be created through a global commons.

A Global Commons Way of Tying It All Together

The United States alone can establish absolute dominance over space. However, such a course of action would alienate allies, enrage adversaries, create a space arms race, turn world opinion against what might be noble intentions, and ultimately create an unusable domain. The only way to enact policies that will not turn into international condemnation is to build them upon the only thing the international community can agree: money. Space must be recognized and treated in all policy as a global commons, a resource that is not owned by anyone but shared by everyone. Shared economic benefit creates the connective tissue to bind the other three policies of unaffordable non-compliance, eliminating escalation ambiguity, and assurance together.  To capitalize on the space domain, the term ‘unaffordable’ is not a metaphor. The solution is economic. Embarking on a dedicated campaign to get as many nations as possible economically involved in space expands the dependence on space and makes treating space as a global commons more important. While the United States must have dedicated military-use space assets, it should also build redundancies with allies and partners by leasing bandwidth and capabilities on commercial and foreign satellites. This move would build resilience, and as a byproduct, create a ready-made coalition should deterrence fail. Space as a global commons is not a view shared by all.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty enshrined the idea of space as a ‘global commons.’[8] However, the Executive Director of the US National Space Council specifically stated in 2017 that “space is not a global commons.”[9] This statement could allude to the vagueness of the treaty. Its 17 articles are significantly less detailed than similar treaties on the Open Seas or Antarctica, which include hundreds of articles. While the treaty was never intended to be comprehensive, it nonetheless, remains the bedrock of all space law. The application of the treaty has become fundamental to international support.[10] No nation-state can claim to sovereignty or national appropriation over the space domain. The United States must lead the international community toward collective international management of space and establish international security norms for space.

Recognizing space as a global commons enables deterrence and assurance. The internationally shared economic interests in space enables a true multi-domain approach to deterrence as the economic benefits and space are intertwined. In all global commons, activities in these domains are economically viable because there is little need for expensive security measures. The White House, while insisting space is not a global commons, is loosening regulations and pushing to relax laws that will jump-start space capitalism, pouring billions more into the space economy. Space can be profitable but stops being profitable if it requires dedicated and kinetic protection.

 

Conclusion

Building upon Cold War lessons learned is dangerous. Applying direct analogies from time periods with vastly different strategic contexts can lead to erroneous outcomes easily.  These lessons must be passed through the current strategic lens to assess their applicability. However, the lessons of the Cold War are far too valuable to toss aside.

The Cold War fight was for national survival. There was no aspect of foreign policy that did not play into the United States’ holistic deterrence strategy. The Cold War taught us true deterrence must be multi-domain. The United States cannot take the easy way out and build ‘space’ deterrence; it must build upon multi-domain deterrence that includes space.

A multi-domain deterrence policy hinges on unaffordable outcomes. Projecting a true multi-domain deterrence policy to hold retaliation in all domains ensures any missteps in space can be dealt with at the time and place of the United States’ choosing. However, to have effective multi-domain deterrence, that includes the space domain, the United States must eliminate any ambiguity in what it values in space. Communicating these values eliminates the ambiguity leading to a confrontation. Centering the space domain on economics ties in more and more nations, creating ready-made alliances and solidifying international norms. The designation of space as a global commons with enhanced definitions and norms allows economic benefits to all. By ensuring space is profitable for all, it reduces the chance any nation-state will act militarily against their financial interests.

Space is not nearly as unique as policymakers would have us believe. Warfare is universal, across all domains. Space deterrence is a logical extension of terrestrial deterrence. If the Cold War taught us anything, it was how to deter large-scale conflict properly. There is no need to re-write this book. Add a ‘space’ chapter to the multi-domain playbook, and we can build some ‘space’ into the strategy.

 

[1] Air Force Magazine, “There is no War in Space,” http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2018/July%202018/There-is-no-War-in-Space.aspx.

[2] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 145–47.

[3]  Timothy Lee, “75 years ago, Hitler invaded Poland. Here’s how it happened,” Vox, 1 Sep 2018, https://www.vox.com/2014/9/1/6084029/hitlers-invasion-of-poland-explained.

[4] Dr. Allison Astorino-Courtois, “Space and US Deterrence” NSI,  December 2017, http://nsiteam.com/social/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/NSI_Space_ViTTa_Q14_Space-and-US-Deterrence_FINAL.pdf

[5] United Nations, “Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies” https://www.state.gov/t/isn/5181.htm

[6] General Kevin P. Chilton, “Land War Net Speech.” Transcript of Keynote Speech, 21 Aug 2008, http://www.stratcom.mil/Media/Speeches/Article/986368/land-war-net-speech/.

[7] David Santoro and John K. Warden, “America’s Delicate Dance Between Deterrence and Assurance” National Interest,  1 February 1, 2016,  https://nationalinterest.org/feature/americas-delicate-dance-between-deterrence-assurance-15076?page=0%2C4.

[8] Cassandra Steer, “Global Commons, Cosmic Commons: Implications of the Military and Security Uses of Outer Space,” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 27 December 2017, https://www.georgetownjournalofinternationalaffairs.org/online-edition/2017/12/11/global-commons-cosmic-commons-implications-of-military-and-security-uses-of-outer-space.

[9] Dr. Scott Pace, “Space Development, Law, and Values.” Transcript of the Keynote Speech at IISL Galloway Space Law Symposium, December 13, 2017, https://spacepolicyonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Scott-Pace-to-Galloway-FINAL.pdf?utm_content=buffer66778&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer.

[10] Loren Grush, “How an International Treaty Signed 50 Years Ago Became the Backbone for Space Law,” The Verge, January 27, 2017,  https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/27/14398492/outer-space-treaty-50-anniversary-exploration-guidelines.