Discussions on banning weapons in space remain frozen at the Conference on Disarmament due to a U.S.-Chinese dispute over whether a new space treaty should be the ultimate goal. It is unlikely there will be concrete results any time soon. International efforts for a new treaty governing space activities (and particularly weapons), or for an amendment to the Outer Space Treaty, remain almost exclusively at the proposal stage. There is very little evidence of consensus among actors and no discernable willingness among key players (such as the NATO states) to move forward with Russia and China (the main proponents of a new treaty) unless the United States is willing to go along. Several U.N. resolutions have been passed in recent years calling for the continuation of the ABM Treaty and the prevention of an arms race in outer space (PAROS), but none have made much of an impact because the United States has simply shrugged these efforts off. No effort has moved the Bush administration (or the Clinton administration before it, for that matter) to support any form of arms control in space.

---

Moltz, James Clay. "Reining in the Space Cowboys." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Vol. 59, No. 1 (January/February 2003). [ 2 quotes ]