China joins the battle for space.

• Author: Berrigan, Frida

On January 11,537 miles above our heads, a rocket collided with an aged weather satellite, demolishing it completely. As shards of debris floated through space, the world learned that China possessed anti-satellite technology.

Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the National Security Council, had the first official word from Washington on the Chinese test, saying it was "inconsistent with the spirit of cooperation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area."

"How lame is that?" asks Michael Krepon, author of Space Assurance or Space Dominance and the co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center. The United States is in no position to "put China in the dog house," he explains, because of Washington's own military doctrine to dominate space as the next frontier. The Pentagon has grown increasingly dependent on satellite technologies for military operations. And the Bush Administration has abrogated international treaties to pursue a hugely expensive missile defense system that seems aimed at China and Russia as much as North Korea.

This U.S. aggressiveness was the "primary driver" of Chinas decision to test anti-satellite technology, Krepon says.

But Chinas test only emboldened the hardcore advocates of missile defense in the United States.

The "argument to prevent weaponization of space is really silly," says Hank Cooper, who led the Strategic Defense Initiative under Reagan and who chairs the promissile defense research organization High Frontier.

Representative Duncan Hunter, the Republican from California who is exploring a run for the Presidency, urged Bush in a January 31 letter to prepare for a "new era of military competition in space" in the wake of the Chinese test.

Frida Berrigan is a senior research associate at the World Policy Institutes Arms Trade Resource Center and co-author of the forthcoming "Complex 2030: The Costs and Consequences of the Plan to Build a New Generation of Nuclear Weapons. "

That preparation is well under way. In August 2006, the Bush Administration unveiled its National Space Policy. It advocates establishing, defending, and enlarging U.S. control over space resources, argues for "unhindered" rights in space, and asserts that "freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power."

As the policy's introduction states: "In the new century, those who effectively utilize space will enjoy added prosperity and security and will hold a substantial advantage over those who...