An Invitation

But an invitation to what? An arms race or treaty talks?

NYT - Flexing Muscle, China Destroys Satellite in Test

China successfully carried out its first test of an antisatellite weapon last week, signaling its resolve to play a major role in military space activities and bringing expressions of concern from Washington and other capitals, the Bush administration said yesterday.

Only two nations — the Soviet Union and the United States — have previously destroyed spacecraft in antisatellite tests, most recently the United States in the mid-1980s.

Arms control experts called the test, in which the weapon destroyed an aging Chinese weather satellite, a troubling development that could foreshadow an antisatellite arms race. Alternatively, however, some experts speculated that it could precede a diplomatic effort by China to prod the Bush administration into negotiations on a weapons ban.

It is kinda funny to me that the US likes to act like everyone else is causing the problems and we are just so virtuous and peace-loving, when in reality others are often just reacting to the threat we are posing in the international arena.

In late August, President Bush authorized a new national space policy that ignored calls for a global prohibition on such tests. The policy said the United States would “preserve its rights, capabilities, and freedom of action in space” and “dissuade or deter others from either impeding those rights or developing capabilities intended to do so.” It declared the United States would “deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests.”

The logic seems to be that the world should just trust us to do whatever we want, where ever we want, but few others in the world should be granted that freedom. Hypocrisy!