By Dave Jarvis
May 03, 2008
Space weapons have the ultimate strategic military advantage: the highest of high grounds.
1962 -- July 9. The United States of America detonated the first space-based nuclear warhead. The resulting energy triggered household burglar alarms and affected street lights in Oahu, Hawaii, nearly 400 kilometres away.
1967 -- April 25th. The United States Senate ratified the "Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space." Article IV reads, "States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner."
1983 -- March 23. Ronald Reagon proposed space-based defense systems to protect the United States from nuclear ballistic missiles. Yet to build a system that can reliably detect incoming nuclear weapons was demonstrated in September of 1983 to be practically, financially, and precariously impossible.
1983 -- April 25. "In America and in our country there are nuclear weapons -- terrible weapons that can kill millions of people in an instant. But we do not want them to be ever used. That's precisely why the Soviet Union solemnly declared throughout the entire world that never -- never -- will it use nuclear weapons first against any country." -- Yuri Andropov, responding to Samantha Smith's letter.
1983 -- September 25. US-Soviet relations epitomized tension. A Soviet advanced-warning missile detection system mistook sunlight reflecting off clouds for vapour trails of American nuclear missiles. Stanislav Petrov was alerted of an incoming nuclear warhead, but, answering his instincts, told superiors that it (and the four detected soon after) was a false alarm. He doubted the warning system; he may have helped avert a nuclear war.
Dear Senator Barack Obama,
"You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes; it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years." -- Bertrand Russell, on the subject of nuclear war.
Proliferation of nuclear weapons frightens me.
Combining nuclear weapons, automated defense systems, and outer space fills me with such an oppressive dread that I wonder not if, but when will we tumble from Russell's tightrope?
I beseech you, after your inevitable inauguration, to honour the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. I ask you to seriously ponder the price to hold the highest of high grounds. Can humanity handle another Cold War, or another Cuban Missile Crisis? What of dishonouring agreements when their noble purpose aligns no longer with the vaporous morals and ethics of the United States?
I hold in you much hope for the United States, and in consequence, the free countries of our planet.
Peace.
Sincerely yours,
Dave Jarvis