Second, while it may be counterintuitive, it is unclear what is meant by Article III’s “not resort to the threat … of force against outer space objects”. This is because the concept of a “threat”—outside of a direct, declaratory statement of intent to do harm—is really a matter of perception. The current US National Space Policy says that the United States holds the right to “if necessary, deny adversaries the use of space”. Is that a threat? I suppose if one considers oneself as a potential US adversary, yes it is. Is the destruction of the Chinese satellite in 2007, even if it proves to be an isolated case, a threat of force? Arguably, yes—especially considering that such an event can instil fears of development and testing of destructive space capabilities. What about missile defences, or laser tracking stations, that could be tweaked to harm satellites? Are they threatening? Maybe, maybe not. The point is that what one nation might see as legitimately preparing to ensure its “right to self-defence” may be seen as “a threat” by another. How do you mitigate that? It strikes me that even finding an agreed definition of “threat” would be awfully difficult; but failure to define it would run the risk that charges of non-compliance would be a recipe for never-ending international dispute. Even the issue of the “use of force” in this article is not clear. Does the text mean that the use of positioning or communications jammers in wartime would be a prohibited use of force? While the draft treaty language defining “use of force” and “threat of force” seems to include them in its scope, such jamming devices already exist in large numbers and have been used in warfare; does anyone really expect nations in possession of such systems to just hand them over? And while this clause does some good to mitigate against the non-inclusion of terrestrially based ASATs directly, its vagueness leaves a great deal of room for concern about how it would or could be applied.

---

Hitchens, Theresa. Russian - Chinese Space Weapons Ban Proposal: A Critique. Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations - Conference on Disarmament, December 2008. [ 3 quotes ] [ page 155 ]