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Taking Issue With The Outer Space Treaty
tekan writes: "The National Review has an interesting article about the challenges ahead for the settlement of Mars (or the Moon), as well as how Law and sovereignty issues factor into colonizing these bodies." Perhaps most interesting are the reasons cited for entering into the treaty at all -- which had little to do with keeping space a peaceful utopia.
Why can't we just colonize these planets for the good of mankind AS all of mankind. Why do we need more invisible lines in space?
You know, somone once said that you can't see national boundries from space, maybe that's something to think about...
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If we want to colonize space, and colonize it fast, the way to do that is to create viable land titles on the Moon, Mars, and any other body people want to live on. The value generated by making those title transferable at a distance ("the miracle of capital") will be more that sufficient to fund the trips to those places.
The Economic Viability of Mars Colonization
As to all those people who believe that "the world" should own space locations, and keep them as parks, or Utopias - that will be the easiest way to ensure that they remain completely unused by humanity, until it's *super* easy, whereupon those places will become slums and shanty towns, just like the unpropertied areas in third world countries today.
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It's interesting to think about how future colonists will view Earth, especially the first generation of humans not born on the home planet.
My guess is that many of the same tensions that pushed the 13 Colonies against England in 1776, as well as countless similar political situations before and since will come to bear again. The issue of sovereignty over space will be more or less moot to Earthbound nations. They will go into space, eventually find something they like, gain self-sufficiency, and eventually lose interest in restrictive relationships with Earth.
The United Nations on it's face seems like a decent and good thing. Underneath it's a messy, contrived political body that lacks real power. To do anything of importance it has to resort to the same politics as any government and many say it's more corrupt given the number of governments involved.
I see the U.N. as yet another malformed, underfunded, and corrupt extension of the "civilized" world. It seeks to limit the freedoms and rights of it's member countries despite those government's rights to sovereignty. And for those people who think a utopian society will every come of a political body formed in the aftermath of war are surely fooling themselves.
As long as there are differences of opinion, language, creed, religion, power, wealth, resources, race and freedoms, there will be different countries with different agendas. The United Nations could be the spring board for a better thing, but at this point it's pretty worthless.
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. -Samuel Johns
I would expect the US, China, Europe, Japan, India, and maybe others to each have their own "colonies" on Mars, for a while. But then cultural trends would start pushing these colonies to band together, and eventually declare independence from any and all Earth nations. They'd have much more in common with each other than each colony would have with its mother nation, after all (2/5 gravity, food scarcity, etc.).
Then there's the communications gap. Absolute minimum of, I forget, 20 minutes round trip to get a response from Earth? Going up to 40 minutes? Not a huuuge gap, but it's there.
The main thing tying Martian colonies to Earth would be dependence on resources and infrastructure - heavy machinery, for instance - until the means exists to produce it locally. But that would just be a matter of time.
In short, humans, by nature, will band together where convenient, and declare independence when convenient as well.
Lately democracy seems to be based on the skybox, the Happy Meal box, the X-box, and the idiot box.
...let's screw everything, antagonize everybody and unilaterally proclaim US sovereignity on a bunch of planets? What about proclaiming it on something where Americans ever stepped on? Or how about proclaiming it on unexplored areas of the planets? There is an american piece of junk on Mars => let's claim the whole Mars as an US territory! And why end with planets, US can claim that it owns the sun, Asteroid belt, all the space within Solar system (except one that is filled by other countries on Earth)? Or just claim the whole galaxy?
The point is, no one gives a shit who and why signed a treaty, it was and still is a right thing to do, and if US government will try to bite everything in its reach, they may find not only that they won't be able to chew it but that everyone else will be happy to help them to choke.
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Great idea.
The only problem is, at the rate we're going, your patent will expire before we get around to colonizing anything.
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Do you think that if humans go out into space there will suddenly become more noble creatures? They will be the same humans that we have here on earth, and act the same way. You must be a fan of Star Trek, where it appears that they have found a way to rip testosterone from males and whatever makes women so bitchy and catty. If I had to pick any thing that would be a good representation, it would be something like Babylon 5, where politics and greed are readly apparent.
In one of the few decisions of the Bush administration that I agree with, they're finally starting to look at nuclear propulsion again.
Heck, all you have to do is say that it'll help fight terrorism... people will buy anything that claims that, these days.
full of shit. A summary read of his article shows the main point to be a further continuation of US ultra-right-wing isolationist hysteria. Describing the United Nations as a "collection of dictatorships" should be a first clue.
He fails to show any _good_ reason to dump the treaty - other than "it was pushed by the state department to further their own interests" (such as helping smooth relationships between US and USSR), and "UN==the Devil!!!!!!!" (ho-hum, again) So this, er, moron, would rather toss out a treaty which thus far has prevented the earth from being encircled by orbital weapons platforms? Is he smoking crack?
Nope. I personally think that anyone who goes through all the trouble and considerable risk of travelling to another celestial body should be able to do so without being fettered with the need to claim that land in the name of some obsolete notion of political division. Read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein some time. It will point out some pretty good reasons why nationalizing a faraway celestial body is a bad idea.
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He's the President of the UNITED STATES. Obviously, he is going to protect the interests of the US. Now, certainly it is only responsible for him to consider the interests of the rest of the world too, but the wasn't give the job to look out for Uganda. I don't know if I, or even the majority of the American people agree with him on the ABM treaty, but we'll see in 2004. Contrary to what seems to be coming out of the European media, the US isn't going to nuke anyone. Some memo written by some low-level dufus in the pentagon doesn't equate to official foreign policy.
I personally think the International Criminal Court is something that scares U.S. politicians because they create more international crime more than anyone else.
Or it could be viewed as a direct threat to the soverignty of the US and the another move toward a world government. Pakistan didn't want the US to get too directly involved in the Daniel Pearl investigation because they felt it was a threat to their national soverignty - and we obliged.
The administration is also blasted for failing to sign the Kyoto global warming agreement, but it's hardly even known that the Senate voted unanimously not to sign. Why? Because it was grossly unfair to the US (it didn't consider our considerable forested areas that absorb a large quantity of greenhouse gasses, while at the same time letting other major producers off the hook). It was considered by many to be a socialist conspiracy to "Robin Hood" the US. Not to mention the proposed "world tax".
Let's look at John Walker Lindh. A boy who appeared to have his mind set on leaving the USA and going after the fundamentalist life he wanted. But even though he went half way around the world he was still trapped under U.S. law.
A "boy"? He is an adult and is responsible for his decisions - no matter how bad they are. He's not being tried for going to Afganistan and doing bad things to Afgans (though he was part of a group that did), he's being tried for trying to harm (or conspiring to harm, or actually harming) Americans. Weather or not he's guilty will be decided by the courts - but he should feel lucky that he has the right to a trial. If some guy in BFE kills some people in France, I have no problem with that guy going to trial in France. If some American kid vandalizes some cars in Singapore, I have no problem with him getting tried and convicted (and flogged) in Singapore.
I don't mean to defend Bush (heck, half of America voted against him), but Europeans should remember the old saying "Nobody beats up my little brother but me."
... "Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the w
I'd have thought that colonies, once they are of the size to sustain civilian populations (as opposed to being just researchers and scientists) would want to form their own government and laws, as opposed to being ruled by a bunch of `foreign' (alien?) beaurocrats.
Yeah, they might base their laws (and constitution?) on that of the US, cos it seems a pretty good starting place, but to be ruled by a far off land, and have to pay federal income taxes to a place tens of millions of miles away? Come on, you Americans must be in a uniquely qualified position to know that colonies don't like to do that!
K.
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Because if Antarctica is the future of off-world activity, we might as well stay home. I don't necessarily think it's a bad policy for Antarctica, but if anyone intends to view the entire solar system as one big Rock Preserve, they deserve to be ignored. Exploitation of resources in space is a bold, beautiful, fantastic thing. But if no country can claim sovereignty of any piece of it, if no individual or corporation can stake a claim, than absolutely no one will waste money trying to get us this planet.
All your cries about "soverignty" fall on deaf ears.
U.S.A. has been giving marching orders for years. We are no longer that backwards nation that needed to fight for it's own rights.
Wake up to the fact that you have no problem walking on the rest of the world. Are you your brother's keeper? Yes, that was the moral of that story... remember what happened to Cain?
On Lindh: "but he should feel lucky that he has the right to a trial"
Why? Because he committed a crime under U.S. law? You go in circles. Remarks like these (always from the far, far right which you seem not be from) are always odd to me because he is considered to be a citizen so they can try him - of course he gets his 5th Amendment rights.
Why bother with international treaties at all? I hope some Afghan warlords start taking hostages of U.S. Marines.
It's simple, the U.S. can't always have it her way. The Earth isn't Burger King. Other nations will get fed up and just destroy us if we don't implode first.
As far as the ABM... no one is going to nuke us. Face it, you don't have a gun fight at the Smith & Wesson factory. The only ones who would are the ones we need treaties with in the first place.
But since we can't and won't be subjected to fairness and these goobly-gook of living together nicely then we... well... fuck it.
I have no hope for this world.
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Slow down there. You seem a tad bit rabid. The point is the treaty has a chilling effect on possible future colonization by ANY country. The US is just one country that might have an interest in seeing it go bye-bye. Personally, I don't see any reason why the US *should* stay in this treaty. It clearly, and legally, gives us a way out that would allow US citizens to claim land rights on these other bodies. Any other nation is welcome to join us, it's not like we are saying "Well, it's ALL ours now just because we can see it in the sky or land junk on it!" No, the point is that if you can establish a colony on another planet, those people should have the right to choose whatever form of government they wish, including becoming another US state should they desire it (or a member of the British Commonwealth, etc).
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
It doesn't matter why or for what reasons the treaty was accepted by AMERICANS. What matters is what it does. The outer space treaty is basis for the outer space policy of the United Nations, and therefore of the 189 member states of the United Nations. But obviosly we know better than all of them.
Yeah, actually we do. Or at least most of them. That's like saying that Iraq and North Korea outweigh the US because they are two nations and we are one. Neither are democracies, their total voting populations (let's see, the two nations put together have, TWO voters, while we have 300 million) are a fraction of ours.
Remember that the real power in the UN is controlled by the five permanent members, three of which are long-standing democracies (excluding that little Vichy thing in the 40s), and one of which is a developing democracy (the Russian Federation). Also remember that there are countries like India (a democracy with four times the voting population of the US), Germany, Australia, and Canada in the UN.
Now that was one biased article. Let's see, we have UN slammed repeatedly, open source commie liberal trash berated, Bush looked up to for crapping on international treaties.. Almost good enough to be on /.! I especially enjoyed the part which equated foreign aid to funding kleptocracies. Personally I think much of the foreign aid is spent in ways that hurts the recipient nations more than helps them, but .. Hard to come up with something better.
Writer misses the point in any case. You need warships to claim a piece of soil as a private property. And as far as I know, US doesn't have spacegoing navy. Yet.
On the contrary, I am very much opposed to much of America's foreign policy. I would completely oppose (based on the current evidence) an invasion of Iraq for example. I do have a problem with the US walking all over the rest of the world (and we do it every day). I also have a problem being walked on.
remember what happened to Cain?
I take Bible wisdom on a case by case basis, and with a grain of salt, but I think you missed my point entirely. New Yorkers, for example, joke about taxi drivers, being mugged, that "smell," but when John Rocker does it, he's reguarded as a jackass (and rightfully so). Likewise Americans make fun of and criticize Bush (not enough actually), but when Europeans do it they're (verbally) attacking America.
Why? Because he committed a crime under U.S. law? You go in circles.
No, he should feel lucky because there are many places in the world today and in the past when he would not have had an opportunity for a trial. He'd just be dead (or worse). Don't you ever feel lucky and thankful that you have rights that you might not have somewhere else? Do you feel lucky to have been born here instead of some place where you're trapped in poverty, squalor and filth? America might not be the best country on Earth, but there are a plenty of places that are a helluva lot worse.
always from the far, far right, which you seem not be from
Is our two-party system so pervasive in our minds that we can only percieve things in such one dimensional terms? Do all points lie on a simple horizontal line?
Why bother with international treaties at all?
Did I say anywhere that I thought it was a GOOD idea to completely abandon international treaties? The US should simply act reasonably. Participate in treaties that make sense. The US should act in her best interest (within reason) as would any other country on Earth.
I hope some Afghan warlords start taking hostages of U.S. Marines.
That's not very nice. If you're referring to the "detainees" of the US, I agree they should be considered POWs and treated as such (according to the Geneva conventions), but I'm not in favor of "eye for an eye" (and what you suggest would be worse).
As far as the ABM... no one is going to nuke us.
Some would disagree.
... "Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the w
As for Vietnam and Cambodia, I fail to understand why I should sink into the morass of "we murdered fewer people than you!" Murder is murder, and I'm not proud that someone else posted higher numbers.
Regarding coups the US has instigated or backed, I've seen way too many lines of evidence, FOIA-gathered gov papers, and even congressional testimony supporting my claims to discard them in favor of your 4 word rebuttal.
As for Kyoto, I'm not going to chase your posts all over the board. Link or go away.