Japan is now embarking on a historic and potentially dangerous journey into space.  Urged on by the U.S., who wants Japan to become a more heavily armed and militarily active partner in the Asian-Pacific, the Japanese people must quickly move to become engaged in the space issue before it is too late.

It is helpful to think back to the 15^th century when Christopher Columbus sailed on behalf of Spain looking for the “new world.”Upon his return with news that he had accidentally found the Americas, Queen Isabella of Spain initiated the 100-year process building the Spanish Armada in order to project power and control the shipping lanes to the new discovered lands.  This essentially created the global war system that we experience today, as soon all the European powers were building navies and contesting each other’s claims to the resources and lands in the new world.

This is where we are today when we look at space.  Space technology is being developed for two primary reasons.  One is to give nations the ability to see the Earth and to better coordinate warfare on the planet – using space to project power for military benefit on Earth.

The second reason is that many nations and corporations view space as the “new world.”  Gold on asteroids, water and helium-3 on the moon, magnesium, cobalt, and uranium are believed to be on Mars.  Corporations intend to venture to these planetary bodies and secure massive profits in the years ahead.  But first new space technologies have to be created that make it possible, and cost effective, to “mine the skies.” [1]

If citizens can be convinced that their nation must use space technologies to “protect them” from enemies, real or imagined, then this investment in space technology can also be used to create the infrastructure that will allow these same aerospace industries to lead the way in mining the heavens.  Thus space technology becomes “dual use.”  With the development for military use also comes the development for corporate use.  The question is who benefits?  Who pays the freight and who reaps the profits?

In this sense Japan is working on both military and civilian space technologies.  Japan is developing so-called “missile defense” systems, new generations of military spy satellites, and plans for manned stations on the moon.  All of these programs will come at a tremendous cost to Japanese taxpayers and will set the course for a more aggressive foreign policy in the coming years.  Most importantly of all, Japanese military space developments dramatically link Japan and the U.S. military together in a dangerous course of confrontation in the region as the U.S. moves to counter China’s development as a global economic competitor.

In an article entitled For Pentagon, Asia Moving to Forefront the Washington Post reported that “The Pentagon is looking at Asia as the most likely arena for future military conflict, or at least competition.” [2]  The article goes on to state the U.S. will essentially double its military presence in the region.  For example, on Guam today the U.S. has lengthened and widened runways to handle the B-1 and B-2 bombers.  Cruise missiles have been prepositioned on Guam and new fighter squadrons are planned to make it a “power projection hub.”  New, small “lily pad” bases are being developed throughout the Asian-Pacific by the Pentagon for rapid interventionary capability.

Theatre Missile Defense (TMD), also called boost-phase defense, is a key program in the U.S. arsenal to surround China.  Based on ships and sold to the public as a “missile defense” system to protect allies like Japan and South Korea, new interceptor missiles (SM-3) are planned that will be deployed on Navy Aegis destroyers in Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Taiwan.  Ground-based (PAC-3) interceptor missiles would be deployed in Japan. Converted Boeing 747 aircraft, called the Airborne Laser (ABL), are in development that are envisioned to fly round-the-clock giving the U.S. complete air coverage of China’s coast.  The ABL would have a laser beam on the airplane’s nose and would fire at any missile launched by China or North Korea.  The ABL, though, is having huge technological development problems and is enormously over budget.  The U.S. is trying to sign Japan up as a partner on this program to help cover the cost.

All of this is being done to give the U.S. the ability to essentially surround and neutralize China. China, of course, is furious over these developments which they view as offensive in nature.  In recent years Japan has sought to avoid angering China but Tokyo’s shift in policy, as a U.S. proxy in the region, is signaling to China that it intends to play a more aggressive role in the region.

More and more of the war games played by the Pentagon take place in Asia and feature China, or the “red team,” as the enemy.  U.S. missile defense strategy has been largely created as a way to neutralize China’s small nuclear deterrent capability giving the U.S. first-strike advantage.  “I think that, however reluctantly, we are beginning to face up to the fact that we are likely over the next few years to be engaged in an ongoing military competition with China, says Princeton University political scientist Aaron L. Friedberg. [3]

The U.S. fears that its influence in the new Asian community will fade.  The plan to regain influence intends to rely heavily on military muscle.  A military ally is needed in the region for the U.S., and Japan appears to be the top choice.

The U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee met in Washington DC on February 19, 2005 and a joint statement was issued concluding the one day meeting.  The statement identified “new threats” emerging in the Asian-Pacific region and called for the “modernization of military capabilities” in response.  U.S. and Japanese ministers “expressed their confidence that ballistic missile defense (BMD) enhances our ability to defend against and deter ballistic missile attacks.”  The joint statement concluded that the “U.S. is reorienting and strengthening its global defense posture to provide it with appropriate, strategy-driven capabilities in an uncertain security environment.” [4]

BUSH’S LARGER PLAN FOR SPACE

George W. Bush is now embarking on a historic and dangerously destabilizing plan to deploy so-called ground-based “missile defense” interceptors at Ft. Greely, Alaska and Vandenberg AFB, California.  Although the systems have yet to be successfully tested Bush is deploying them anyway.  We are told that these new interceptors will protect the U.S. from attack by the “rogue states” that so far have shown zero military capability to hit the continental U.S. with nuclear weapons.  And why would they want to?  The U.S, with over 7,500 weapons of mass destruction, could easily and quickly annihilate any “rogue” that fired a lonely missile its way.  Even China, with 20 nuclear missiles capable of hitting the U.S., would not likely attack one if its best trade partners.  Then what is this “missile defense” scheme really all about?

To comprehend the answer to this important question we can quickly come to a clear understanding by reading Pentagon planning documents like the Space Command’s Vision for 2020 that outlines the need for the U.S. to “control and dominate space” and to “deny” other countries access to space. [5] Once it is recognized that all warfare on earth today is essentially coordinated and directly by space military satellites, the reader can begin to understand why the Pentagon wants to control space and deny access to other nations.  The U.S., with only 5% of the world’s population, plans to deny other countries the use of space.

The U.S. military has introduced a doctrine called Full Spectrum Dominance. [6]  This notion is that the U.S. will dominate conflict at every level – control the Earth with conventional military forces; control the seas with the Navy; control the sky with the Air Force; and now control space with new technologies under development today.

Thus the so-called “missile defense” system, the idea of having a bullet-hit-a-bullet in space to protect the continental U.S. or Japan is a Trojan horse.  The massively costly and destabilizing military space program underway today is not really about defense.  That’s why the Bush team is not concerned that missile defense testing has not gone well.  The true purpose of this arms program is to “control and dominate space”.  And who ever controls space will control the Earth to the benefit of the multi-national corporations.

In one of their latest planning documents, called Strategic Master Plan FY06 and Beyond, the Air Force Space Command boldly states, “While our ultimate goals are truly to ‘exploit’ space through space force enhancement and space force application missions, as with other mediums, we cannot fully ‘exploit’ that medium until we first ‘control’ it.”  The report goes on to say, “The ability to gain space superiority (the ability to exploit space while selectively disallowing it to adversaries) is critically important and maintaining space superiority is an essential prerequisite for success in modern warfare.” [7]

Another recent Pentagon planning document reiterates the military’s intention to develop such plans.  “The ability to deny an adversary’s access to space services would be essential if future adversaries choose to exploit space in the same way the U.S. and its allies can,” the 2004 Transformational Flight Plan states, which is signed by Gen. John Jumper, Air Force chief of staff. [8]

Once you connect this language about space “control and domination” with the idea of mining the sky for precious and valuable resources you begin to see the connection to Columbus, the Spanish Armada, and the U.S. and Japanese rejection of the United Nation’s Moon Treaty in 1979.  The moon treaty outlaws any “military bases” on the moon and states that no country, no corporation, nor any individual can make land claims on the Moon’s surface or subsurface.  The U.N. rightly was concerned about creating a body of international law in order to preempt any conflict in space as humankind inevitably moved off the planet.

The U.S. Congress commissioned a study entitled Military Space Forces: The Next 50 Years that suggested with U.S. bases on the moon and armed space stations on either side of the moon, “Armed forces might lie in wait at that location to hijack rival shipments on return.” [9] The author of the study, John Collins continues, “Military space forces at the bottom of the Earth’s so-called gravity well are poorly positioned to accomplish offensive/defensive/deterrent missions because great energy is needed to overcome gravity during launch.  Forces at the top, on a space counterpart of ‘high ground,’ could initiate action and detect, identify, track, intercept, or otherwise respond more rapidly...” [10]

A formerly secret U.S. Army document called U.S. Army Study for the Establishment of a Lunar Outpost was created in 1959.  The study stated that, “The lunar outpost is required to develop and protect potential U.S. interests on the moon; to develop techniques in moon-based surveillance of the earth and space, in communications relay, and in operations on the surface of the moon; to serve as a base for exploration of the moon, for further exploration into space and for military operations on the moon if required; and to support scientific investigations on the moon.”

It is quite clear that planning is underway to create the military infrastructure to control the pathways, or shipping lanes, on and off the planet Earth.  Thus whoever controls and dominates these pathways in years to come has the ability to determine which countries or corporations can profit from mining the sky.  This military control would also determine who militarily controls the planet Earth because we now understand that whoever controls the space medium thusly controls everything.

COSTLY AND DARK PAST

It has been estimated that the U.S. has spent well over $120 billion on space research and development since the creation of the U.S. space program following WWII.  After the war was over the U.S. smuggled 1,500 of the top Nazi scientists into the U.S. under a program called Operation Paperclip.[11]   Under this secret military program the Pentagon brought in the key leaders of  Hitler’s V-1 and V-2 rocket team, along with 100 copies of the V-2 rocket.  Together this team of  Nazi scientists created the U.S. military space program and the civilian space exploration program that became known as National Aeronautic Space Administration (NASA).

In Germany the Nazis had a concentration camp called Dora where 40,000 Jews, French resistance fighters, homosexuals, communists and other prisoners of war were brought to build the V-1 and V-2 rockets inside a mountain tunnel called Mittelwerk. By the time the slaves were liberated by the allies, over 25,000 people had perished at the hands of the Nazi rocketeers. [12]

The very first director of  NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida was former Nazi SS member Kurt Debus who was the V-2 program launch director for Hitler.  Wernher von Braun, also a Nazi SS member and head of Hitler’s rocket team, became the first director of NASA’s Marshall Space Center in Huntsville, Alabama where the entire Nazi team brought into the U.S. was initially based.

Maj. Gen. Walter Dornberger, Hitler’s military liaison to the rocket team, also came to the U.S. during Operation Paperclip.  Dornberger was appointed as a vice-president at Bell Aviation Corporation in New York and went on to serve on the first military oversight committee that ensured that the Pentagon from the first days controlled the “civilian” NASA program. It was Dornberger who first came up with the idea of "missile defense" as an offensive program that would have nuclear powered satellites orbiting the planet and able to hit targets on Earth.  Testifying before a U.S. congressional hearing in 1958, Dornberger insisted that America’s top space priority out to be to “conquer, occupy, keep, and utilize space between the Earth and the moon.” [13]

In a recent book called The Hunt for Zero Point, respected military journalist Nick Cook talks much about the "black" (the Pentagon's secret) budget. For 15 years Cook has been a defense and aerospace writer for Jane's Defence Weekly, which some consider the sacred journal of the international weapons community. Cook spent the last 10 years researching secret military programs in the U.S. and believes that over $20 billion a year is spent on these programs outside the purview of the U.S. Congress. Cook states, "It (black programs) has a vast and sprawling architecture funded by tens of billions of classified dollars every year. The height of its powers was probably in the Reagan era. But it has not stopped since then. In fact, under the Bush administration it is having something of resurgence. Stealth technology is a primary example...research into anti-gravity technology...has been going on for quite some time." [14]

Cook traces the roots of the U.S.'s secret programs back to the Nazi scientists brought to the U.S. after WW II in Operation Paperclip. He states, "We know the size and scope of Operation Paperclip, which was huge. And we know that the U.S. operates a very deeply secret defense architecture for secret weapons programs...it is highly compartmentalized... and one of the things that's intrigued me over the years is, How did they develop it? What model did they base it on? It is remarkably similar to the system that was operated by the Germans - specifically the SS - for their top-secret weapons programs." [15]

"What I do mean," says Cook, "is that if you follow the trail of Nazi scientists and engineers who were recruited by America at the end of the second world war, the unfortunate corollary is that by taking on the science, you take on - unwittingly - some of the ideology...What do you lose along the way?" [16]

The aerospace industry has stated that plans for space control, popularly called Star Wars, will be the largest industrial project in the history of the planet.  The profit potential for the space weapons industry is astronomical.  But how will it be paid for?  In 2005 the U.S. Pentagon is spending $10 billion on space weapons research and development.  Clearly the U.S. cannot afford to fund these programs alone.  Thus George W. Bush needs to recruit allies to help cover the expense of this new arms race.

So far Japan, Australia, England, and Italy have signed up as part of this plan.  In recent weeks Canada decided not to join the Bush “missile defense” scheme.  Canada’s Prime Minister Paul Martin, with strong urging from his country’s aerospace industry, wanted to join Bush’s program but popular opposition (54% of Canadians are opposed to their missile defense involvement with the U.S.) put an end to any cooperation. [17]

INTERNATIONAL TENSIONS WILL RESULT

Early in the Bush administration the U.S. walked away from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with Russia.  This treaty outlawed all missile defense testing and deployment.  Bush knew that international treaties like the ABM constrained his dream to create a new space arms race.  The treaty had to go.

Southeast Asian countries were concerned when Washington withdrew from the ABM Treaty.  They feared that the decision could lead to a new arms race in the region.  In a communiqué, following their 2002 meeting, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers called the ABM Treaty, “one of the main foundations of global security that is essential in maintaining stability and the global strategic balance.” [18]  Japan is a member state of ASEAN.

A profound rearrangement is under way, with China and its growing economy leading the way, and in some cases to the exclusion of the U.S.  “The fact is American clout in Asia is decreasing,” says Morton Abramowitz, a former U.S. ambassador to Thailand and Turkey. [19]  The U.S. understands this and intends to try to regain its former clout with military power.

What is not clear is why Japan would want to tie itself to the sinking U.S. ship of state.  China is now replacing the U.S. as Japan’s top trading partner.  Does Japan intend to get in the middle of a provocative military rivalry between the U.S. and China?  Does it serve the security interests of the Japanese people to ride with the cowboy posse of George W. Bush, the man who now leads the most unpopular country in the world?  Already Tokyo’s participation with Bush’s chaotic war in Iraq has been a source of conflict in Japan.  How would the Japanese people react if they realized the full extent of their country’s cooperation in Star Wars?

In an opinion editorial written in 2001, conservative commentators Roger Handberg and Joan Johnson-Freese state that, “Clearly, the U.S. cannot maintain its current power projection profile without Japan as a partner.” [20]

WHAT IS JAPAN DOING?

Spread among six Japanese ministries and agencies involved in space programs, the government has allocated $3.4 billion for fiscal year 2005.  Japan will devote nearly one-third of its space spending in fiscal 2005 to developing military reconnaissance and war fighting satellites manufactured by Mitsubishi Electric Corp.  Nearly as much will go to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) for all of its space exploration, manned space and operational programs.   Japan’s share for its participation in “missile defense” is expected to cost another $1 billion. [21]

Japan decided in December 2003 to adopt a U.S. developed missile defense system in response to the exaggerated North Korean missile threat.  Second, third, and fourth generation spy satellites are planned for launch in 2006, 2009, and 2011.  These new smaller and more maneuverable satellites will increase Japanese ability to target and direct war in the region.  The estimated lifetime cost for the Japanese Defense Agency (JDA) missile defense program is near $30-50 billion. [22] As of 2002 the JDA had spent over $30 million on missile defense research and development.  Can Japan’s economy afford to continue to waste such large amounts of money on this new arms race?

The recent successful launch of the H-2A rocket is the centerpiece of Japan’s space program.  Japan was the fourth country to launch a satellite, in 1972. It now has a space probe on its way to collect and retrieve samples from an asteroid, and a major lunar exploration mission in the works.  In a major policy move last year a government panel recommended that Japan begin studying the possibility of establishing its own manned space program. [23]

Militarists in the U.S. and Japan see the present global war on terrorism as a big opportunity to get the Japanese people to agree to a more active role for their military. The current debate over changes to the Self-Defense Forces Law indicates these pressures are at work.  Sold to the Japanese people as “international security” what we are really witnessing is an expanded Japanese role in the U.S. military plan to contain and manage China. [24]

ARMS RACES NEED ENEMIES

More than anything else, the weapons corporations in the U.S. are looking for new enemies.  The war on terrorism is one thing, but it is hard to claim that Star Wars would stop airplanes from hitting tall buildings in New York City.  What the U.S. Pentagon really needs are nations that have nuclear weapons to appear as though they are a direct and serious threat to the people of America.  Iraq, as it turned out, had no weapons of mass destruction.  Iran today has no weapons of mass destruction capable of hitting the continental U.S.  Neither does North Korea.  But China does.  China today has 20 nuclear missiles that could hit Los Angeles or San Francisco.  But are 20 Chinese nuclear missiles enough to justify the U.S. spending another $100 billion or more on Star Wars?

If China were to build more nuclear weapons, then the threat might become such that the American people would be willing to turn over social security, health care, and education funding so the military can spend more on “missile defense” to protect from an “aggressive” China.  But how does one get China to go along with such a game?

If the U.S. military, with the help of Japan, can successfully surround China, then it is likely China will build more nuclear missiles.  Already, with new U.S. bases along China’s inland border in Central Asia, the U.S. is causing China and Russia to fear its intentions beyond the “war on terror” in that region.  It is not China, the communist nation, that the U.S. fears.  It is China’s embrace of a modified capitalism that is quickly outpacing the U.S. economy, and shows every indication that it will soon dwarf the U.S. economy, that the U.S. desires to contain. Could it be that by controlling the pipelines for oil in Central Asia and the Middle East, the U.S. would be well on its way to managing China?

The Chinese find it hard to believe American claims that its missile defense program is intended only to counter threats from small “rogue” states.  The U.S. systems under development would destroy China’s ability to deter nuclear attack by neutralizing its relatively small force of nuclear missiles.  That would leave China dangerously vulnerable to bullying or attack, a Chinese arms negotiator told the New York Times in 2000.  If it appears likely, he added, “We will not sit on our hands.” [25]

Similarly a U.S. intelligence official, in a classified report leaked to the media in 2000, reported that deployment of a U.S. missile defense system would spur a response by China, India and Pakistan and lead to the spread of missile technology in the Middle East.  “We can tell the Russians that (the missile defense) won’t affect the viability of their deterrent forces,” a U.S. intelligence official was quoted as saying.  “I don’t know how we can say that to the Chinese with a straight face.”  If the U.S. deploys a missile defense, the CIA believes China will deploy multiple warheads on its missiles to overwhelm the anti-missile shield. [26]

Jonathan Pollack, director of the Strategic Research Department of the U.S. Naval War College, told the New York Times that while China did have the largest standing army in the world and was in the process of modernizing, "I don't see these capabilities as the leading edge of a more comprehensive, long-term plan to either supplement U.S. military power in the Western Pacific or challenge U.S. power on a global scale," adding, "Let's not make them out to be 10 feet tall." [27]

If it is accepted that in order to “sell” Star Wars to the public in America then a new arms race must first be created, then the U.S. military is well on its way to achieving its goal.  There is historical evidence for this method of operation.  During the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, it is now common knowledge that the U.S. military routinely over estimated the Soviet military capability as justification for massive U.S. investments and development of new weapons technologies.  Such is now the case with China and North Korea.  The U.S. exaggerates their threat and in doing so creates the momentum to expand its own, with Japanese help, in the Asian Pacific region.  U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, referring to North Korea in 2002 called the regime, “The merchant for ballistic missile technology around the world.” [28]  Could it not be said that rather, it is the U.S., with its new agreements to sell “missile defense” technologies to Japan, Australia, England, and Italy that is the “merchant for ballistic missile technology” around the world?  It is a fact that the number one industrial export product of America today is weapons.  The more tensions in the world, the more money American weapons corporations will make.

THE OPPOSITION GROWS

In order to make Star Wars work the U.S. is now upgrading key radar facilities in Greenland, Germany, England, Australia and other locations around the world.  In addition the U.S. is working to base missile defense systems in many countries including Poland, Romania, England, Japan, South Korea and Australia.  The U.S. is offering many of those same nations a piece of the Star Wars bounty by extending an open hand to aerospace corporations in those nations, suggesting they will make enormous profits from the program. 

Ordinary people who live in those countries are being drawn into the Star Wars issue as they protest the use of their nations as bases to implement the U.S. space control and domination program.  The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space was created in 1992 to build an international constituency that would work to protect the heavens from this new and deadly arms race.  Today the network has over 170 local affiliated peace groups spread throughout the world.  During recent years two of our space videos have been translated into Japanese and spread throughout the country by Hiroshima-based activist Satomi Oba, who sadly and unexpectedly died in February 2005.  Each year our organization holds an international conference in a different part of the world to expand our outreach to interested citizens.  We believe that the people of the world, once they understand this issue about the militarization of space, will move to block all nations from moving warfare into the heavens.

Space is the place where our dreams, hopes, fears, and joys reside.  It is a sacred place that must be protected.  For the last several years an attempt has been made at the United Nations Conference on Disarmament in Geneva to create a new global ban on weapons in space.  (The current U.N. Outer Space Treaty of 1967 is limited by its out of date definitions that prohibit weapons of mass destruction in space.)  But each year the U.S. government has blocked the attempts saying that there is no need for such a new treaty because there are no weapons in space today, and thus no problem.  But only a nation that has designs on space would make such a comment.  Only a nation that has long planned to take “control and domination” of space would obstruct such a noble goal as a new international treaty. 

The Japanese people do not have to be told about the catastrophic consequences of high-tech modern warfare.  I have been to Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the annual commemorations and have seen the pilgrimages of people from all over Japan who come to those cities to say “never again.”  Streams of folded paper cranes are left laying everywhere as signs of hope and sanity in memory of those who perished by the atomic bomb 60 years ago.  Is it not a shame that now today, in our time, with our tax dollars, our governments are working on the next round of the arms race in virtual obscurity from public review and comment?

Many of us have been working all our adult lives to end the nuclear arms race.  Even as the U.S. government now says that “nuclear proliferation” must stop around the world, it increases funding for development of new generations of nuclear weapons.  Instead of utilizing international arms control treaties to rid the world of nuclear weapons, the new Pentagon and Bush administration approach is the highly destabilizing “missile defense” program.

A new arms race in space is not in the interest of the Japanese or American people, or anyone else around the world.  Moving the arms race into the heavens will only make life here on Earth more insecure and will cost us our national treasuries.  We hope and pray the public will reject the notion of any country “controlling and dominating” space.  We hope the Japanese people will join with the growing numbers of people around the world who say keep space for peace.

Bruce K Gagnon works with The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He can be reached at globalnet@mindspring.com. The network was created in 1992 to build an international constituency that would work to protect the heavens from this new and deadly arms race. Today, the network has over 170 local affiliated peace groups throughout the world.