An extremely important cover story, "The Coming Space War," featured in The New York Times Magazine (Sunday, August 5, 2001 confirms what the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space has been stressing: that the U.S. space military program goes far beyond "missile defense" and is, in fact, part of a scheme through which the U.S. intends to deploy weapons in space, "control space" militarily and turn the heavens into a war zone. Having this reported in depth in The New York Times presents something of a media watershed because there are some who only believe something is true when the "paper of record" of the United States reports it. 

Now, in depth in The Times, is what we've been saying, and extensively reported. The magazine's cover is dominated by the kind of crawl featured at the start of the Star Wars movies and relates: "Very, very soon, in a galaxy not far away (in fact our own), the U.S. military will begin a campaign to conquer space. This radical appropriation of the heavens would extend beyond even missile defense to include laser cannons, hyperspectral spy cameras and satellite-destroying robots." 

The article begins: "Battlefield: Space. Space-based warfare used to seem pure fantasy. Now, to the delight of war planners, and to the dismay of many civilians, it's closer to reality than you'd think." 

 The article, midway in, emphasizes that "the political attention devoted to national missile defense, which is an updated version of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, has obscured its larger purpose. According to the Strategic Master Plan [of the U.S. Air Force], N.M.D. is but one part of a triad of technololgies...that, the Air Force hopes, will lead to total 'space control.' George Friedman, an intelligence consultant and the author of 'The Future of War,' calls the national missile defense plan a 'Trojan horse' for the real issue: the coming weaponization of space." The writer, Jack Hitt, says that "at some point the future of space will emerge as a great American debate. Over and over, as I interviewed military scientists and generals assigned to space, I was reminded that the decision to move into space will, at the end of the day, be made in Washington."' U.S. Senator Bob Smith, author of the legislation that created the Rumsfeld "Space Commission," repeats to The New York Times what he told us for our TV documentary, "Star Wars Returns." Says Smith, again: "Space is our next manifest destiny." 

And "on the other side," the article goes on, is Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and it tells of his bill to "ban completely the wepaonization of space." The Times quotes him as saying: "It's bad enough that we've turned space into a junkyard, but they want to turn space into a place of death." 

The article closes by saying that "if we" [the United States moves into space to] "plan, test and deploy aggressively as the lone superpower, we make certain that after a brief respite from the cold war's nuclear competition, we will once again embark on a fresh and costly arms race. And with it, assume the dark burden of policing a rapid evolution in battlespace." The article communicates what we have been saying for some time. It omits some important material: especially the years of grassroots opposition in the U.S. and around the world to the U.S. scheme. But, The Times, being an "establishment" journal, always focuses on that strata. Nevertheless, by deciding (at long last) to present the story of the U.S. seeking to make space a new arena of war and so prominently in The New York Times, the publication has brought the issue to great prominence. 

Convenor, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space 
PO Box 90083 Gainesville, FL 32607 
(352) 337-9274 
http://www.space4peace.org globalnet@mindspring.com