America's "dangerous display of space warfare"! (quotes made up!):
Thomas P.M. Barnett makes the following point in the post linked above:
Chinese shoot down satellite and we see threat. We do same and it's just a "routine safety issue."
Rewind a couple of months.
China decides that it would like to shoot down an old weather satellite in a stable orbit and it does so without consulting other space powers and whose result imperils the operation of other satellites in orbit due to the space debris generated. It does so under the "auspices of its highly secretive, military-dominated space program". Add this that this test came a few months after it tested a laser that could blind U.S. satellites temporarily. It only confirmed the shootdown after the Aviation Weekly broke the story. Even the Bush Administration kept its knowledge of the test under wraps for a week.
In contrast, the U.S. openly discusses its shootdown, despite the target being a new and highly secret spybird. It keeps other space powers abreast of its decisions. The shootdown order is given by Robert Gates, the civilian leader at the Pentagon. The shoot down of its spybird does not imperil satellites of other nations. There was a clear public safety issue involved in the shoot down given that the satellite held tonnes of hydrazine. It then provides visual of the shoot down. And finally as Richard Fernandez points out, there has long been testing of ASAT technology. He also notes that "If America were upping the ante in ASAT platforms, they might have chosen a more impressive platform than the SM-3".
Compare the secretiveness of China's test and the inordinate transparency by the U.S. Compare China shattering a stable weather satellite in orbit endangering many other satellites to the U.S. shooting down an unstable, hazardous and secret satellite that endangers no other satellites. No I don't think you can argue moral equivalence here.
Peter Boston commenting over at The Belmont Club observes that the U.S.'s ASAT test is:
...is a very big deal because the technology instantly obsoletes everybody's ICBM inventory. For the techies: Can this technology be defeated? It also makes each and every US Carrier Group the personification of Shiva - the Destroyer of Worlds. Liberal heads will be exploding across academia as the implications of this awesome demonstration of US exceptionalism settles in. I don't want to trivialize the Chinese shootdown but as I understand it the Chinese shootdown hit a satellite in a stable orbit with a secondary vehicle. Impressive but not an ICBM killer. The USN shot hit a target in a decaying orbit. Perhaps the analogy is that the Chinese hit a running gunman and the USN hit his fired bullet. If I'm correct the qualitative difference is enormous.
(Via Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog.)
Update 25/02/08 7:15AM AEST: The U.S. is even offering to share data from its successful hit. That seems to be a bridge too far in my books. After all, the Chinese are not even interested in installing a direct military hotline to the U.S. despite repeated overtures by the U.S. Who's the world's lone superpower?
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