Why Did China Smack the Sat? (Updated)

So why did China blow up one of their satel­lites last week? The Times offers up a few pos­si­ble expla­na­tions:

Having a weapon that can dis­able or destroy satel­lites is con­sid­ered a com­po­nent of Chinas unof­fi­cial doc­trine of asym­met­ri­cal war­fare. Chinas army strate­gists have writ­ten that the mil­i­tary intends to use rel­a­tively inex­pen­sive but highly dis­rup­tive tech­nolo­gies to impede the better-​​equipped and better-​​trained American forces in the event of an armed con­flict over Taiwan, for exam­ple…
Some ana­lysts sug­gested that one pos­si­ble moti­va­tion was to prod the Bush admin­is­tra­tion to nego­ti­ate a treaty to ban space weapons. Russia and China have advo­cated such a treaty, but President Bush rejected those calls when he autho­rized a pol­icy that seeks to pre­serve free­dom of action in space. Chinese offi­cials have warned that an arms race could ensue if Washington did not change course.

Now, Beijing offi­cials aren’t even admit­ting they destroyed the orbiter, yet. But the China Matters blog uncov­ers a post by a self-​​proclaimed Chinese sol­dier, who seems to rein­force the scare-‘em-into-cutting-a-deal motive:

This over­ween­ing coun­try [the USA] began to regard space as its own back yard. The national space pol­icy it announced in 2006 non­cha­lantly regarded space as its pri­vate prop­erty. At the same time, when China at the United Nations pro­posed a spe­cial inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tion to resolve the actual prob­lems of a space arms race that were being faced, the United States, act­ing as a coun­try far in the lead in space, vehe­mently opposed, say­ing that there was no arms race in space…
We hope… [this] will smack the American car­ni­vores back to rea­son. History shows us that if you don’t hit Americans, they aren’t will­ing to sit down at the nego­ti­a­tion table.

This was actu­ally the fourth time the Chinese tried to destroy a satel­lite, GlobalSecurity​.org notes. And as “reck­less, self-​​defeating and stu­pid” as the test was, adds Arms Control Wonk Jeffrey Lewis, the test was legal, because there’s “cur­rently no pro­hi­bi­tion on destruc­tive ASAT [anti-​​satellite] test­ing. There should be.“
UPDATE 01/​21/​07: Last week’s test has given a “shiver of hope” to the “nations star war­riors, frus­trated that their plans to arm the heav­ens went nowhere for two decades despite more than $100 bil­lion in blue-​​sky research,” Bill Broad says in a tart opin­ion piece.
ALSO:
* China Tests Satellite Killer?
* China Space Attack: Unstoppable
* Beijing’s Next-​​Gen Sat Strike
* Satellite Killer’s Big Impact
* China Sat-​​Killer Not Yet Weapons Grade?
* Who Ordered the Satellite Strike?

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