Space Security Governance Seen Favoring Focus on Behaviors: SWF Panelists

Rather than focusing space security discussions on capabilities, increasingly those talks are focusing on space behaviors, or how those capabilities are used, space governance experts said Thursday in a Secure World Foundation panel talk about the state of space security diplomacy. U.N. member states haven't had success in addressing space security concerns because there still is a lack of consensus on what the Outer Space Treaty bans, and as some nations have struggled to define what a space weapon is, said Almudena Azcarate Ortega, U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research space security researcher. But that shift toward a focus on behavior "could be a good recipe for success in the future," she said. That the U.N. Open-Ended Working Group on Reducing Space Threats ended its work last month without reaching any consensus shows "a profound deficit of trust" among the major space nations, said Claudio Medeiros Leopoldino, Brazil Ministry of Foreign Affairs head-disarmament and Sensitive Technologies Division. "We are still trapped in a circular debate" about what aspects of space security should be foremost, he said. He said there's a particularly big schism over the issue of pursuing nonbinding norms versus legally binding instruments. He said there also is disagreement over what kind of space threats need to be addressed, with some states prioritizing the prevention of weapons in space while others want to focus on anti-satellite weaponry.