Les scandaleux Chinois tueurs de satellites et leur utilité en général

Tollé occidental et général, c’est-à-dire essentiellement anglo-saxon, après la destruction par les Chinois d’un de leurs propres satellites. Le tollé a commencé par les Américains, puis les copains ont suivi (Blair of course, les Australiens du néo-conservateur Howard, les Japonais).

Le Guardian nous expose le flot d’indignation venu des principaux centres producteurs de vertu de la planète (la Maison-Blanche, Downing Street, Canberra en Australie, etc.). Il ajoute un bémol, tout de même…

«China faced a barrage of international condemnation from London to Canberra yesterday after it was revealed that it had launched a missile attack on an ageing weather satellite, a test that threatened to open a “Star Wars” space race.

»Formal protests were lodged with the Beijing government, accompanied by expressions of concern from world leaders, including Tony Blair. The Bush administration is privately seething over the event and is believed to be preparing to turn the incident into a major diplomatic spat.

»The concern in the US is that the satellite-killing missile test - said by the US national security council to have been carried out on January 11 - demonstrated China has the capability to knock out its military satellite system, which the Pentagon depends on for navigation and surveillance.

»American military and diplomatic analysts said a Chinese attack on about 40 to 50 satellites in low orbit round the world would leave the country's military blinded within a matter of hours.

»But others, more sceptical about US policy, insist China had a right to challenge the US's effective monopoly of space. They noted that Beijing has repeatedly pressed for the US to sign agreements outlawing arms in space, overtures Washington has repeatedly rejected.»

A propos du bémol… Effectivement, une autre approche est de considérer que l’indignation anglo-saxonne est tout de même culottée. Un excellent article du Times (on n’est jamais si bien servi…) remet les choses au point, — en l’occurrence, la chronique (World Briefing) de Bronwen Maddox, de ce jour. Cette chère Maddox nous dit au contraire que l’expérimentation chinoise, d’ailleurs faite dans ce but, va au moins forcer les Américains à se départir de leur scandaleux unilatéralisme en matière de militarisation de l’espace, suivie sans la moindre vergogne depuis des décennies, selon une vision sécuritaire absolument obsessionnelle du monde et de son voisinage proche. Bref, si on n’avait pas les Chinois il faudrait les inventer.

«If China has indeed shot down one of its old satellites, it has opened a conversation that the US never wanted to have. It would be wrong to call this the opening of a new front of confrontation in space. Such a strike, if confirmed, would be merely an inevitable step in the rise of both countries’ technological sophistication and occupation of orbital space around the Earth.

(…)

»[…S]uch a strike would put pressure on the US to do what it has so far refused: begin talks with other countries about limiting a so-called arms race in space. The US has declined to acknowledge that such a possibility exists, while, in a series of proprietorial-sounding statements, has challenged the right of any other country to move freely about space.

»It is no bad thing if the US now has reason to retreat from that isolated position, where it has absolutely no support from other countries within the United Nations, and to at least discuss the regulation of the increasingly crowded neighbourhood of space.»

Mis en ligne le 20 janvier 2007 à 17H42