Forty years after the “Star Wars,” the supposed development of space weapons with which Ronald Reagan's Administration (1981-1989) aspired to force excessive defense spending on Moscow and, with it, bankruptcy economy of the Soviet Union, Russia now has a novel “anti-satellite weapons system.”
This has been confirmed by the White House, a day after the House Intelligence Committee warned about a “serious national security threat.”
The presidential office has tried to downplay the importance of the project, which has been leaked at a time when Washington is immersed in a deep debate about where it should direct its foreign policy: whether it should maintain a global perspective or, as the former president believes, Donald Trump must turn the helm towards isolationism.
The alert "concerns a Russian anti-satellite weapons system," White House spokesman for international affairs, John Kirby, confirmed this Thursday in a press conference in which he did not allude to the new weapon being nuclear, as some American media had raised.
The senior official has tried to call for calm: although the Russian plans are “worrying” — he has acknowledged — that system “is not active” and “there is no immediate threat to anyone's security.
“We are not talking about a weapon that can be used to attack human beings or cause physical destruction.”
“We take the threat very seriously,” added the spokesperson, who assures that the president of the United States, Joe Biden, has been promptly informed of the case.
The tenant of the White House has ordered a series of steps, including briefings with parliamentarians in Congress and diplomatic contacts “with Russia and with our partners and allies, as well as with other countries.”
The existence of the Russian plans is something that the US spy services have been closely following for months, according to Kirby, and that had recently been communicated to several congressmen specialized in the area of intelligence.
The White House National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, had called for this Thursday a meeting with the so-called “group of eight”, the highest-ranking legislators for intelligence matters in both chambers, to address that project;
an indication of the rapid advances of Russian military technology on the war fronts of the future: space, artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons.
The Russian project is a nuclear system that from space could destroy satellites for civil communications, espionage and surveillance, and military coordination and control, both of the United States and its allies, as reported by
The New York Times
.
“At the moment, the United States does not have the capacity to confront such a weapon and defend its satellites,” a former senior official told the newspaper.
The alert about the case was raised on Wednesday, when the president of the Intelligence Committee of the House of Representatives, Republican Representative Mike Turner, issued a cryptic statement in which he warned of a “serious threat to American national security” and asked that All information related to it would be declassified, to “be able to openly address the actions necessary to respond to the threat.”
On Monday, the committee had almost unanimously approved disclosing the data it had to the rest of the legislators on Capitol Hill.
Turner's notice caused deep discomfort in the White House, where it was pointed out that declassifying this information would put very valuable intelligence sources at risk.
Sullivan, who appeared before the media on Wednesday to discuss another issue, aid to Ukraine, showed his surprise at the Republican's move.
“I am surprised that the committee has raised the issue in public before a meeting with me, with those responsible for Defense and Intelligence,” he commented.
Turner has justified his decision by assuring that the Committee “worked in consultation with the White House to notify Congress of this national security threat” and the White House agrees that this is a “serious” matter.
But his press release was released at a particularly delicate moment in Congress and in United States foreign policy.
The Senate approved this week a bill that allocates 95 billion dollars (88 billion euros) to national security, an amount that includes 60.1 billion for Ukraine and 14,000 for Israel, after four months of negotiations.
The measure has now passed to the House of Representatives, where its future is uncertain: a majority formed by the Democratic group and moderate Republican legislators supports aid to the invaded country.
But an increasing part of the Republican bench rejects it, aligning itself with the theses of Trump, the foreseeable Republican candidate in the November presidential elections.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican, has no intention of bringing the bill to the floor for a vote.
The dispute over aid to Ukraine encapsulates a much broader debate, which erupted during Trump's term and seemed resolved in the early years of Joe Biden's term: what is the role of the United States in the world and how it should respond to the threat posed by rivals such as Russia, China or other authoritarian countries.
The former Republican president, who during his term practiced, or threatened to practice, an isolationist policy, made it clear last weekend that his position has not changed.
In statements that have gone around the world—and sowed concern among NATO's European partners—he pointed out his willingness to let Russia “do whatever the hell it wants” with members that do not invest 2% of its GDP in defense.
He has also declared himself against any foreign aid that does not come in the form of loans.
On the contrary, US President Joe Biden has described Trump's statements as “stupid” and “dangerous”.
The Democrat defends the global involvement of the United States as necessary for the national security of the world's leading economy.
And part of that involvement involves maintaining economic and military aid to Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion.
In this context, several Republican deputies have called on Johnson to open an investigation into Turner's decision to issue a public alert.
Tennessee legislator Andy Ogles has accused his colleague of trying to block a reform of the powers of the intelligence services that the House of Representatives is working on.
“His action, at a minimum, represented an error in judgment and, at worst, a breach of trust, inflated by the pursuit of political objectives,” he noted.
In Russia, the Government of Vladimir Putin spoke in similar terms and attributed the alert to Washington's interest in approving aid to Ukraine.
Presidential spokesman Dmitri Peskov maintained: “It is obvious that Washington is trying to force Congress to vote on the aid bill (to kyiv) no matter what.”
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