Space Security Trilemma in South Asia

ABSTRACT

The peculiar nature of bilateral relations between the United States and China in space is the triggering point of a space security trilemma in South Asia. The spill-over effect of a misperception-misunderstanding dynamic between the United States and China in outer space has brought strategic transformation between the bilateral relations among India-China, India-Pakistan, and China-Pakistan, accentuating a security trilemma. All three states give high importance to their national space programs to achieve socioeconomic goals and to fulfill their national security needs. All three states also recognize the strategic importance of space as a new arena of war. However, the power asymmetry in South Asia has highlighted space-related capabilities as a potent medium of progress and power accumulation. As a result, the challenges in space have triggered and magnified the security trilemma for the South Asian rivals, interconnecting China, India, and Pakistan in the context of an international security complex.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

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4. Ibid.

5. Jervis, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” 198, 211–214.

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7. National Defense Strategy Sharpening the American Military’s Competitive Edge (Washington, DC: The Department of Defence, 2018)

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11. Ibid.

12. Einhorn and Sidhu, “Strategic Chain,” 1.

13. Ibid.

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15. Ibid.

16. Ibid., 65.

17. Ibid., 47.

18. Ibid., 62.

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20. Ibid., 7.

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22. Betts, “Is Strategy an Illusion?” 8.

23. Ibid., 9.

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27. The strategic chain project report, published by the Brookings Institute, can be viewed so as to understand all four actors’ relational security—the US, China, India and Pakistan. See Einhorn and Sidhu, “Strategic Chain,” 1–59.

28. The project was supported by the Eisenhower Center for Space and Defence Study of the United States Air Force Academy. This dialogue project was a Track 1.5 Dialogue, which involved U.S. officials and representatives from the Department of Defense. See Eligar Sadeh, “Report: United States-China Space Dialogue Project,” Astropolitics 8, no. 2–3 (2010): 7–18.

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33. On regional and international cooperation see presentation of Deputy Director-General of the Department of Department of Treaty and Law Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, Xinmin MA, “China’s Space Diplomacy: Policies and Practices,” (presented at, UNISPACE+50, High Level Forum (HLF), Dubai, November 20–24, 2016).

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36. Ibid., 30.

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40. For example Russia and China drafted PPWT in CD. The main purpose of China and Russia was to breathe life into the CD and preserve their soft-power advantage among Third-World nations. See Michael Listner and Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, “The 2014 PPWT: A New Draft But with the Same and Different Problems,” The Space Review, http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2575/1 (accessed August 11, 2014).

41. James Acton (Acton holds the Jessica T. Mathews Chair and is a co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) in discussion with the author, March 1, 2018.

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43. William Hagestad, 21st Century Chinese Cyberwarfare (Cambridge, England: IT Governance Publishing, 2012), 10; Joseph Nye and Brent Scowcroft, Foreword to Security Cyberspace: A New Domain for National Security (Washington, DC: Aspen Institute, 2012), 30-60; Scott Warren Harold, Martin Libicki, and Astrid Stuth Cevallos, Getting to Yes with China in Cyberspace (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corp., 2016), 1-20; Terrence Kelly et al., The U.S. Army in Asia, 2030–2040 (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corp., 2014); Kenneth Lieberthal and Peter Singer, Cybersecurity and U.S.-China Relations (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institute, 2012); Robert Potter, “The U.S-China Cybersecurity Disconnect,” Modern War Institute, https://mwi.usma.edu/us-china-cybersecurity-disconnect/ (accessed November 16, 2016).

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45. National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC: The White House, 2018), 4.

46. See Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017).

47. Dinshaw Mistry, “India’s Emerging Space Program,” Pacific Affairs 71, no. 2 (1998): 161.

48. Ibid.

49. Sobia Paracha, “Military Dimensions of the Indian Space Program,” Astropolitics 11, no. 3 (2013): 156–186.

50. Joint Indian Armed Force 2017 (New Delhi, India: Ministry of Defence, India, April 2017), 25–26, http://ids.nic.in/dot/JointDoctrineIndianArmedForces2017.pdf

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52. Ajay Lele, “India’s Space Security Policy: A Proposal,” IDSA, policy brief, https://idsa.in/policybrief/indias-space-security-policy_alele_280416 (accessed April 28, 2016).

53. Ibid.

54. See The Military Balance 2018: The Annual Assessment of Global Military Capabilities and Defence Economies (London, England: IISS, 2018), 261.

55. Mistry, “India’s Emerging Space Program,”167.

56. “India vs China: How their Space Programs are Matching Up,” Times of India, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/india-vs-china-how-their-space-programmes-are-matching-up/articleshow/63577767.cms (accessed April 3, 2018).

57. Cameron Hickert, “Space Rivals: Power and Strategy in the China-India Space Race,” Schwarzman Scholars, https://www.schwarzmanscholars.org/news-article/space-rivals-power-strategy-china-india-space-race/ (accessed December 24, 2018).

58. Sudha Ramachandran, “Chinese and Indian Competition in Space Heats Up,” The Jamestown Foundation, https://jamestown.org/program/chinese-indian-competition-space-heats/ (accessed October 20, 2017).

59. Ibid.

60. “Space Silk Road: Pakistan and China Enhance Space, Science and Technology Cooperation,” Space Watch, https://spacewatch.global/2018/11/pakistan-and-china-enhance-space-science-and-technology-cooperation/ (accessed December 24, 2018).

61. Mian Zahid Hussain and Raja Qaiser Ahmed, “Space Programs of India and Pakistan: Military and Strategic Installations in Outer Space and Precarious South Asian Regional Strategic Stability,” Space Policy (2018), doi:10.1016/j.spacepol.2018.06.003.

62. Ibid.

63. Martand Jha, “Fifty Years of TERLS,” The Hindu, March 1, 2018, and October 14, 2018, https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/fifty-years-of-terls/article22882696.ece