Aerospace: More Questions Than Answers For Milspace Norms

WASHINGTON: A new study by The Aerospace Corporation finds that there are four strategic decisions that US policy-makers will need to consider — and perhaps more crucially, weigh tradeoffs among –in developing norms of behavior for space, including domestic buy-in, and the choice of initial negotiating partners.

The new study, “Building Normentum: A Framework for Space Norm Development,” an advance copy of which was provided to Breaking Defense, comes as US Space Command (SPACECOM) is working to implement the first-ever official DoD guidance on norms for US military space operations. Breaking Defense was first to report on the existence of that guidance, signed by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin earlier this month.

Creating norms for military space operations could help reduce the chance of miscalculation, misperceptions and thus the risk of conflict. While there are sets of norms that guide military operations in both peacetime and conflict in the air, land and sea domains, there are few agreed internationally in the space domain.

In particular, the study cautions decision-makers that while many domestic stakeholders support both the concept of international norms and the need for US leadership in developing those tenets, the priorities and perceived needs among those stakeholders are widely disparate. The study notes:

“Military leaders indicate that norms are needed so that they can better interpret and judge appropriate responses to potentially hostile acts in space. Private space companies hope that norms can promote more predictable behaviors and make space a less risky investment. Diplomats and space sustainability experts call for norms to lower the chances of misunderstanding, escalation, or crises in space that could result in hazardous orbital debris and disrupt the vital services provided to Earth through space.

“I was a little surprised that the common thread wasn’t the solutions, it was the questions,” author Robin Dickey told Breaking Defense. “No one agrees on the solutions yet, but there does seem to be a bit more common interest in: ‘these are the things that actually need to be figured out in order to make progress’.”

Dickey noted that while there was a confluence of opinions on the rationale for norms within the various stakeholder groups, opinions on what specific norms might be required and how best to establish them varied even within those groups.

“Honestly, I found just as many differences or unique opinions within the lines than between the lines,” she said. “Maybe it was something that I was expecting, that there would be different sides having clear opposing stances, but … a lot of people I talked to are very aware of the complexity and nuance. … Like I said, I could find just as many differences and as many similarities, kind of all across the board. I didn’t see a super lockstep pattern.”

The four strategic questions to be answered, according to the study, are:

1. Establishing domestic buy-in through interagency coordination.
2. Selecting initial international negotiating partners.
3. Choosing diplomatic mechanisms for generating international commitment.
4. Setting a target for which and how many states need to support the proposal for it to be considered a norm, referred to in this paper as the critical mass.

And while these may seem to be very basic, the study suggests that answering those questions will actually be quite complicated.

In part, this is because what might be the best answer to one will actually undercut the other, Dickey explained. For example, it may be easier to reach agreement between US allies and partner nations, but doing so might cause other nations to reject the conclusions as not inclusive of their concerns — a political problem that finally tanked the European Union’s effort to find international acceptance of its “Draft International Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities.”

In addition, she said, the balance among those decisions might be different depending on the specific norm being discussed.

Further, the paper notes, there are different ways to establish norms, and stakeholders, including at the international political level, differ about which of these approaches is best. These range from extremely informal gentlemen’s agreements based on unilateral decisions or public diplomacy like that surrounding the use of destructive, debris-creating anti-satellite weapons, to voluntary international agreements such as the 2007 UN Guidelines on Debris Mitigation, to legally binding treaties.

“There isn’t a one-size-fits all approach, necessarily,” she elaborated. “You probably can’t solve all your norm problems with one solution. And so that’s why I give this framework, so that at each decision point you have multiple options, and which option works best might differ.”

Dickey praised the move by the United Kingdom to push the UN General Assembly on a resolution, UNGA 75/36 adopted this past December, urging countries to outline their threat perceptions and ideas for how to mitigate risks of conflict in space.

“Just opening the conversation, I think, is huge,” she said. “And that’s what I’m trying to do in the paper, too, is just open the conversation on the ‘how’.”