On July 27, a U.S. delegation led by the State Department but also including officials from the Defense and Energy Departments and the U.S. National Security Council, will meet with a similar delegation from Moscow, with representation from the Foreign and Defense Ministries as well as Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, for a U.S.-Russia Space Security Exchange (SSE). Christopher Ford, Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, explained in a briefing to reporters yesterday that the SSE grew out of the Strategic Security dialogue meeting with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov in January of this year. “Our hope is that this meeting will allow us to explore ways to increase stability and security in outer space, as well as to advance the cause of developing norms of responsible behavior in that vital domain,” Ford said. “We hope that this resumed channel for diplomatic engagement with Russia will complement the SSE that we are also — we also have underway with the People’s Republic of China, which is a bilateral dialogue in which we have already met three times.”
As for what the United States hopes to accomplish in Vienna, Ford mentioned “whether it might not be possible to articulate norms of responsible behavior for outer space that are in some ways at least analogous to or perhaps inspired by some of the work that has been done by the international community already in connection with cyberspace.” That is, “perhaps we can look into making it clear that outer space is not a lawless and ungoverned territory, but in fact is — is one in which in wartime, for example, all the usual international humanitarian law or Law of Armed Conflict rules will apply there as well — principles of necessity and proportionality and distinction and humanity, for example; that space is not exempt from all of those elementary considerations in time of war.”
