Russia accused the United States on Tuesday of seeking to deploy weapons in space, the day after the UN Security Council rejected a Russian draft resolution on this subject, and after similar accusations of Washington towards Moscow. These accusations and counter-accusations revive the fear, disappeared since the Cold War, of a possible arms race in orbit despite the existence since 1967 of a treaty on outer space calling for “not to develop nuclear weapons or any other weapon of mass destruction designed specifically to be placed in orbit.
Preventing the militarization of space
With the rejection of the Russian text on Monday by Washington and its allies, the United States demonstrated that it aims to “place weapons in outer space and make it an arena of military confrontation”, castigated the spokesperson for Russian diplomacy, Maria Zakharova. “A new opportunity to prevent an arms race in space was missed due to the fault of the United States and its allies,” continued Maria Zakharova, defending the Russian draft resolution as a “constructive initiative”.
At the end of April, the United States and Japan presented their own draft resolution to the Security Council to prevent the militarization of space, but Russia vetoed it, criticizing the fact that the text only focused on only one type of weapon, nuclear weapons.
The text not adopted
The draft resolution presented by Russia and China on Monday, which partly repeated the text blocked in April, also called on all member states to take “urgent measures to forever prevent the placement of weapons in space and the threat or use of force in outer space.
With seven votes in favor (notably Russia, China, Algeria), seven against (notably the United States, United Kingdom, France) and one abstention (Switzerland), the text did not gather the nine votes necessary to be adopted. Deputy US Ambassador Robert Wood called the Russian initiative “hypocritical”, saying Moscow wanted to “divert attention from its dangerous efforts to place a nuclear weapon in orbit”. The White House assured in February that Russia was developing an anti-satellite nuclear weapon, accusations rejected by Moscow.