An outer-space war of words escalates

James Oberg NBC News space analyst

International frictions over space policy took a rising turn this week, with Russian President Vladimir Putin accusing unnamed countries — clearly meaning the United States and perhaps Israel — of "seeking to untie their hands in order to take weapons to outer space, including nuclear weapons."

Speaking Wednesday at a anniversary celebration at the headquarters of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, Putin continued: "Great harm to stability is caused by unilateral, illegitimate actions by some powers." In a separate newspaper interview, GRU Chief Valentin Korabelnikov echoed Putin’s specific warning: "Our attention is focused on the threats associated with the appearance of destabilizing weapons, including plans to launch weapons, including nuclear weapons, into space."

In semantics and timing, these warnings are tied to the worldwide uproar over the U.S. space policy released by the White House last month. Inflammatory accounts of that policy have hit a nerve in Moscow, Beijing and elsewhere.

Far more frightening than the purported U.S. deployment of space-based weapons — an eventuality that space experts generally consider remote — is the knee-jerk reaction in Moscow, fueled by cultural Russian paranoia, to the widely published press predictions of such weapons.

Thinking themselves justified by such rumors, Russian leaders could instinctively respond by fielding dusted-off and refurbished space weapons from the Soviet era, along with militarized versions of dual-use modern space technologies. But if they did so, they would be sparring with a phantom — and might realize that too late.

It almost happened once before. In the early 1980s, some hysterical Western press reports about NASA’s new space shuttle and its supposedly secret role as a space combat ship, bomb carrier and laser weapons platform apparently worried Kremlin chief Yuri Andropov enough to initiate responses. By the mid-1980s, Moscow was gearing up for a shooting war in orbit, using space combat stations to forbid astronauts the right of overflight of Soviet territory.

It was all a miscalculation then, and was avoided due to unexpected evolution of the Soviet leadership. But now Putin — like Andropov, a former official in the KGB spy agency — seems to be likewise spooked by alarming press reports.

Calming his nerves calls for a vigorous reality check, but that tactic is rarely to be found in the press coverage of a crisis that threatens U.S.-Russian relations and especially raises concerns over the political viability of the jewel in the crown of U.S.-Russian cooperation, the international space station.

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