Destructive Anti satellite system (ASAT) tests are rare. The Pentagon’s destructive anti-satellite test in February 2008 followed thirteen months after China used one of its aging satellites for target practice. The previous voluntary, global moratorium on destructive ASAT testing lasted 22 years. Only a few ASAT tests are needed to generate insecurity among space-faring nations, clarifying the vulnerability of satellites that are essential for national and economic security.

Destructive ASAT tests are the most visible aspects of larger, space warfare programmes that proceed beyond plain view. While the US and China are the primary focus of attention at present, Russia is surely gearing up its efforts in this field. It is also likely that Israel, India, and France are focusing more attention on ASAT capabilities. Each test acts as a prod: Nations that feel most threatened by ASAT capabilities will accelerate hedging strategies when their essential satellites are placed at risk. They need not race to compete with each other, since modest ASAT capabilities can still do great harm.

While the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) apparently did not seek to hide its ASAT test preparations, neither did it provide advanced public notice of this threat to manned and unmanned space operations in low Earth orbit.  The Pentagon, in contrast, provided advanced notice, and sought to greatly mitigate the debris resulting from its ASAT test.

These differences are important, but the central fact is that both the Pentagon and the PLA tested destructive ASAT technologies. The Bush administration’s public rationale for the ASAT test – to promote public safety against a potential chemical spill – lacked credibility, since the probability of public harm from the failed US satellite was very low for such a severe and costly remedy. If Beijing or Moscow had used a similar rationale for carrying out a destructive ASAT test, few in the US would  believe them.

The Bush administration delayed its public announcement of an imminent threat of a chemical spill to the eleventh hour. Nor did it release unclassified assumptions and probability risk assessments used to justify the ASAT test. To have done so would, most likely, have clarified how unusual and unnecessary the proposed remedy was. Media outlets faithfully reported the administration’s case, and congressional overseers were quiescent, unwilling to buck the public safety argument. There was very little public debate over the administration’s proposed remedy or its down-side risks.

The administration has used these tactics before, and they have led to larger misadventures, followed by widespread buyer’s remorse. But these tactics continue to work. Advocates within the Bush administration succeeded in carrying out a destructive ASAT test that would have otherwise not been approved by the Congress. The Navy demonstrated how ballistic missile defence capabilities could be quickly adapted for ASAT purposes. And the Pentagon sent a thinly-veiled rejoinder to the PLA's destructive ASAT test.

The immediate consequences of the US ASAT test include the loss of credibility of US government spokespersons who have long claimed that the Bush administration was innocent of charges that it sought to demonstrate and build up “offensive counter-space” capabilities. The Bush administration’s argument that new space diplomacy initiatives are unnecessary has also become even more threadbare. In diplomacy, as in politics, you cannot beat something with nothing. But the Bush administration still has not, and will not, offer a substantive alternative to the draft treaty banning space weapons proposed by Russia and China.

This draft treaty has serious deficiencies, but to many nations, it is more appealing that the Bush administration’s weak offerings of transparency and confidence-building measures. Because the rationale for carrying out an ASAT was flimsy, the transparency offered by the Pentagon undermined, rather than built confidence in US credibility regarding its intentions in space. And other Confidence Building Measures (CBM) that the Bush administration has wisely championed, such as voluntary international constraints on debris mitigation and space traffic management, will be vitiated if ASAT testing continues.

In most aspects of national security, effective diplomacy is as important as a strong military posture. When diplomacy is denigrated, heavy burdens can be placed on US military forces. The Bush regime’s rejection of diplomatic initiatives that constrain US military options in space warfare, even after testing ASAT capabilities, is unwise and unsustainable. This is a sure-fire recipe for the further acceleration of ASAT capabilities and additional ASAT testing by others.

Diplomatic activity is admittedly an imperfect indicator of space security. Negotiations, for example, can be perfunctory, or they can focus on unwise objectives. At present, the diplomatic choices facing the international community are the treaty proposed by Beijing and Moscow, and the Bush administration's nay saying. These are not sound choices. The next administration will have the responsibility to offer a better choice to enhance space security.

(The writer is co-founder of the Henry L Stimson Centre, an NGO that works on problems of international security.)