Geneva’s Mojo Tested In A World Without Bank Secrecy

Flags stand outside the United Nations (UN) building in Geneva, Switzerland, on Tuesday, May 14, 2019. (Stefan Wermuth/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A discussion this week by a United Nations working group on space security highlighted emerging international accord about the importance of norms and data sharing for space operations, but also became a forum for complaints by China, Russia and Iran targeting everything from US military space activities to the role of commercial firms in the war in Ukraine to the very existence of SpaceX’s Starlink constellation.

The Jan. 30-Feb. 3 meeting in Geneva was the third session of the UN Open Ended Working Group (OEWG) on Reducing Space Threats, created to hopefully hash out recommendations for new norms of behavior for on-orbit activities, especially those of national militaries, in order to reduce the risks of conflict.

“Most states feel the need for better access to SSA [space situational awareness],” Jessica West of Canada’s Project Ploughshares, who attended the meeting, told Breaking Defense today. “And the US did a good job of pointing to the need for common standards and better accuracy, given use of different software and algorithms” by different national and commercial space data providers.

A significant number of nations also rallied around concepts related to information exchange, such as the proposal put forward by jointly by the Philippines and Germany for the establishment of a “permanent” communications channel for countries to share pre-launch notifications, updated notifications in changes of planned launch, reentry notifications and warnings regarding space debris.

And in a win for the US, many delegations also expressed support, at least in principle, for the concept of a ban on testing of destructive, direct-ascent anti-satellite (DA-ASAT) missiles, first proposed by the Washington last April and given a seal of approval by the UN General Assembly in a Dec. 7 resolution calling on all nations to make a similar pledge. Further, the Netherlands announced its intention during the meeting to formally commit to the ban, following in the footsteps of Canada, New Zealand, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Switzerland, Australia and, most recently, France.

“One thing that struck me is that several delegations who have historically been very pro-legally binding solutions have embraced the idea of a destructive DA-ASAT test moratorium — at least, insofar as the UNGA resolution goes,” said Secure World Foundation’s Victoria Samson, who also participated in the meeting.

The US also offered a number of additional ideas for norms during the OEWG meeting, several of which echoed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s July 2021 memo outlining a set of five “tenets” for responsible US military behavior in space. The proposals, which include the concept of maintaining “safe separation” of satellites, were presented to the OEWG on Jan. 26 by the new US ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament, Bruce Turner.

At the same time, Russia and China remain reluctant, to say the least, to accept new norms of behavior on orbit. Not only did they reject the growing consensus about the need for new SSA sharing mechanisms, they also continued to push back against the application of globally accepted international humanitarian law to actions in space. In addition, both countries continue to spat with the US about military space activities, which each side hurling accusations that the other has moved to “weaponize” the space domain to the detriment of all.

Moscow’s delegation, in particular, was exuberantly obstructive during the session, to the point of effectively strangling substantive discussion on the opening day with aggressive nitpicking about procedural matters that had been hashed out at the beginning of the process last year.

China also sported a newly stroppy attitude during the OEWG discourse, speaking up more often than in previous meetings and taking shots at US positions.

Beijing’s delegation railed against recent US Treasury Department sanctions on Spacety, a Chinese operator of commercial synthetic aperture radar satellites. Treasury has charged that Spacety has been providing, via a shell company, imagery to the Wagner Group, the infamous Russian mercenary unit heavily involved in the Ukraine war. The Chinese government, as well as Spacety itself, argues that no such deals have taken place.

China’s delegation further spent a good deal of floor time during the OEWG complaining about SpaceX’s Starlink megaconstellation. With an eye toward winning the sympathy of developing nations, Beijing charged that SpaceX’s plans to orbit some 40,000 satellites in low Earth orbit will effectively block future use of the coveted orbital regime by newcomers, as well as threaten all those currently operating nearby with possible collisions.

Iran’s delegation echoed China’s concerns with Starlink, further charging that SpaceX is “illegally” providing internet services to the Iranian populace, violating the country’s sovereignty.

Russia and China also vehemently decried what they in effect called the proxy use of commercial satellite firms by US and Western governments to assist Ukraine’s military in the ongoing war.

The head of the Russian delegation, Konstantin Vorontosov, spent almost 20 minutes on Jan. 31 reciting a litany of outrage at the numerous Western satellite firms providing products and services to Ukraine, calling each of them out by name and type of assistance. That assistance, he said, is evidence of “the growing involvement of the United States and the NATO countries in the armed conflict on the side of Ukraine, which constitutes a direct threat to Russia’s national security.”

He, too, specifically lashed out at SpaceX, saying the Starlink communications terminals in Ukraine are being used “not just for communications, but also for guiding drones and also amending the trajectory of artillery shells.”

Vorontosov further warned that the intervention of commercial firms as military adjuncts means “no one can guarantee that any satellite, [even those] which [are] meant for purely commercial purposes, won’t be used for military purposes or in the context of a specific armed conflict,” thus raising tensions and “undermining” peace and security in outer space.

The antagonism of Moscow and Beijing to the OEWG’s mandate raises questions as to whether the OEWG will be able to realize its goal of coming up with report to the UN General Assembly that includes a set of recommended norms, given that the final product must be agreed by consensus. The next, and final, meeting will be held Aug. 28-Sept. 1. That session, according to one diplomat involved, is likely to be “difficult” to say the least.