The United Nations General Assembly recently passed a draft resolution on No First Placement of Weapons in Outer Space (NFP) proposed by Russia. This is yet one more tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The UNGA has passed resolutions on the prevention of an arms race in space (PAROS) anually since 1981. PAROS is the quintessence of naive blue sky wishfulness. Be careful what you wish for; a desert always has a blue sky. It plays into Sino-Russian diplomatic duplicity to hamstring US research on missile defense systems while they conduct similar research in secret. The Sino-Russian PPWT is a Preposterous Propaganda Weapon faux Treaty.
Meanwhile, space lawyer Michael J. Listner asks, "What the heck is a 'space weapon?'"
What a softball question that is! A "space weapon" is any space object that can be used with the intent to cause harm to anything or anyone in outer space or on Earth, as distinct from a "non-space weapon," which is any non-space object that can be used with the intent to cause harm to anything or anyone not in outer space. For example, although unintentionally, the lethality of a cricket ball was demonstrated in Sydney on 25 November, and there can be no doubt that it could be used as a lethal weapon.
"How many times must the cricket balls fly before they are forever banned?"
2 comments:
From an academic standpoint your definition of "space weapon" works. From a practical standpoint it fails miserably.
Obviously it does. My argument was reductio ad absurdum, and I thought that too was obvious. I'm ridiculing the UNGA PAROS resolutions and the Sino-Russian PPWT.
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