On July 17, 1975 the first international handshake was occurring in space between Russian Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov and American astronaut Thomas Stafford as the first official act kicking off the historic Apollo-Soyuz cooperative mission. Taking place during age of nuclear terror on Earth, the Apollo-Soyuz represented a great hope for humankind and was the first ever international space mission leading the way to the MIR-USA cooperation and later International Space Station. Starting on July 15 as both Russian and American capsules launched simultaneously and continuing until July 24^th, the Apollo-Soyuz cooperation saw astronauts and cosmonauts conducting joint experiments, exchanged gifts, and tree seeds later planted in each others’ nations.

As hope for a bright future of cooperation and co-discovery continued for the coming decades with mankind’s slow emergence as a space faring species, affairs on earth devolved in disturbing ways. A new era of regime change operations, Islamic terrorism and oil geopolitics took on new life in the 1980s and as globalization stripped formerly productive nations of their industrial/scientific potential, the Soviet Union collapsed by 1991. During this dark time, the consolidation of a corporatocracy under NAFTA and the European Maastricht Treaty occurred and transatlantic globalists gloated over the collapse of Russia and the rise of a utopian end-of-history, unipolar order.

In some ways, today’s world of 2020 is different from that of 1975 and in other ways it is disturbingly similar.

Today, a new generations of Cold Warriors has come to power in the Trans Atlantic Deep State who are willing to burn the earth under nuclear fire in defense of their utopian visions for world government which they see fast slipping away to the Multipolar alliance led by Russia and China. The clash of open vs closed system paradigms represented by the NATO/City of London cage on the one hand and the New Silk Road win-win paradigm of constant growth on the other has created a tension which is visceral and pregnant with potential for both good and evil.

This schism has also split American space policy between two opposing paradigms:

On the one hand a Deep State space vision for full spectrum dominance is defining Space Force (America’s newest branch of the military created in December 2019). Run out of the Pentagon and the most regressive neocon ideologues, this program calls for weaponizing space against the Russian Chinese alliance (and the rest of the world). Another, more sane vision for space is represented by leading NASA officials like Jim Bridenstine who have created NASA’s Artemis Accords calling for a framework for peaceful international cooperation in space. Bridenstine and other NASA officials have worked tirelessly to bring Russia and the USA into cooperative alliances on matters of space mining, asteroid defense and deep space exploration ever since President Trump’s 2017 directive to put mankind back on the moon for the first time since 1972 with plans to go to Mars following soon thereafter.

While U.S.-Russia space collaboration has moved at a snails pace even losing ground won in 1975, the Apollo-Soyuz spirit has expressed itself in another part of the world brilliantly, with the Russian-Chinese pact to jointly build a lunar base announced on July 23 by Roscosmos chief Dimitry Rogozin saying: “Recently, we have agreed that we will probably research the Moon and build a lunar research base together – Russia and China.”

This pact follows hot off the heals of the September 2019 agreement between both nations to jointly collaborate on Lunar activities over the coming decade which would begin with the Chang’e 7 lander and Luna 26 orbiter searching for lunar water in 2022. The Russia-China agreement also announced “creating and operating a joint Data Center for Lunar and Deep Space Research.”

On the same day that Rogozin announced the lunar research base, China’s Tianwen-1 (“Quest for Heavenly Truth”) launched on a Long March-5 carrier rocket from Hainan carrying an orbiter and rover scheduled to arrive in Mars’ orbit in February 2021. Once the rover lands on the surface of the red planet on May 2021, China will become the second nation to complete a successful soft landing after America (which has made 8 such landings since 1976, two of which are still operational). China’s orbiter will join the three American, two European and one Indian orbiters currently circling Mars.

Due to the fact that the Earth-Mars proximity is at it’s closest phase, several other important Mars launches have also occurred, with the United Arab Emirates launching the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission in history from Japan on Monday. This will be followed in short order by America’s Perseverance Mars Rover which will be launched from Cape Canaveral and will join the Curiosity rover that landed in 2012.

NASA has stated that Perseverance’s mission will involve seeking signs of microbial life, ancient life and subsurface water as well as “testing a method for producing oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, identifying other resources (such as subsurface water), improving landing techniques, and characterizing weather, dust, and other potential environmental conditions that could affect future astronauts living and working on Mars.”

What makes this Russia-China pact space pact additionally important is that it creates a potential flank in the anti-China space cooperation ban signed into law with the 2011 Wolf Act. By integrating into China’s advanced space program, Russia (which currently suffers from no similar bans to cooperation from western powers) may provide a lateral pathway for cooperation with China needed to bypass the ban. Russian-USA plans to cooperate on such programs as the Lunar Gateway station orbiting the moon still exists as well as other Soyuz-U.S. collaborative launches that have been planned through 2021 so hope on this level is not without foundation. Even though America has regained the capability to launch manned space craft with the Crew Dragon launch of this year, Bridenstine has said:

“We see a day when Russian cosmonauts can launch on American rockets, and American astronauts can launch on Russian rockets. Remember, half of the International Space Station is Russian, and if we’re going to make sure that we have continual access to it, and that they have continual access to it, then we’re going to need to be willing to launch on each other’s vehicles.”

Putin’s Strategic Open System Vision

We also know that since President Trump’s April 6, 2020 executive order making lunar and mars mining a priority of American space policy, he and President Putin have held four discussions in which space cooperation has arisen. While neocon war haws in the Pentagon and British military intelligence scream of Russian/Chinese aggression and accuse Russia of testing anti-satellite ballistic weapons, the first bilateral U.S.-Russia space security talks have restarted since 2013.

Four days after Trump’s executive order, Putin addressed American and Russian astronauts on board the ISS and said:

“We are pleased that our specialists are successfully working under the ISS program with their colleagues from the United States of America, one of the leading space powers. This is a clear example of an effective partnership between our countries in the interests of all mankind.”

Putin went on to say:

“I believe that even now, when the world is confronted with challenges, space activities will continue, including our cooperation with foreign partners, because mankind cannot stand still but will always try to move forward and join forces to advance the boundaries of knowledge… despite difficulties, people sought to make their dream of space travel come true, fearlessly entered the unknown and achieved success.”

The impending economic collapse has forced certain uncomfortable truths to the surface: 1) we will get a new global economic and security system soon, 2) that system will be of a closed system/unipolar nature or it will be an open system/multipolar character. If it is an open system then humanity will have learned that in order to successfully exist within a creative, evolving universe, we must tie our fates to becoming a self-consciously creative, evolving species locking our economic, cultural and political realities into this discoverable character of reality.

If the new system is of a closed/entropic order as certain advocates of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset are proclaiming, then a much unhappier fate awaits our children and grandchildren which would make World War II look like a cake walk.

The author can be reached at matt.ehret@tutamail.com

Amidst the confusion and fear driven by the global pandemic, President Trump passed a fascinating Executive Order on April 6 calling for the mining of asteroids and the Moon which may serve as the gateway to shaping a new system of economic relations, rules and values around a shared future for humankind. Trump’s Executive Order states in part that “successful long term exploration and scientific discoveries of the Moon, Mars and other celestial bodies will require partnerships with commercial entities to recover and use resources, including water and certain minerals in outer space.”

In stark opposition to those cynics who wish to analyse every event from the lens of simple geopolitics, the executive order goes onto reject unilateralism in space (promoted by the Space Force ideologues seeking to extend militarisation beyond earth) and rather calls for cooperation, stating that the USA “shall seek to negotiate joint statements, and bilateral and multilateral arrangements with foreign states regarding safe and sustainable operations for the public and private recovery and use of space resources.”

This potential for a shared future for global (and celestial) development stands in stark opposition to certain forces who would rather use the two-fold crisis of economic collapse and viral pandemics to usher in a new age of fascism and world government under a Global Green New Deal. As I wrote in an earlier paper, this clash is exemplified by the closed system thinking of Malthusians and neocons vs. the open system thinking of genuine patriots and world citizens.

How the Dream of Open System Economics Was Lost

It was once believed in the west that the future would be beautiful, just, and as plentiful as it was peaceful. Under John F. Kennedy’s bold leadership the idea of space exploration was more than a simple “space race” or plopping a human being on the moon “within the decade and returning him safely back home”. Far from this narrow view, JFK and many leading American scientists saw this goal as a springboard to a new age of creative growth for all humanity both on the Moon and beyond. These stirring forecasts of an age of reason can still be heard in recordings of Kennedy’s Rice University address of September 12, 1962.

Unbeknownst to many, JFK also called for a USA-Russia joint Moon landing in order to defuse the Cold War formula of MAD and had this plan not been derailed, the world would have found itself on a much different trajectory.

Unfortunately, history unfolded on a different course. After JFK’s murder (weeks after the above speech), his program to remove troops from Vietnam was reversed and the USA was plunged into the disastrous Vietnam war for over a decade. As the war grew, federal funds needed for science and exploration were increasingly absorbed by the military industrial complex.

By 1972, the last human mission on the Moon took place and by 1976, Russia’s last lunar project also occurred with Luna 6. Although small efforts to keep the dream alive continued in piecemeal form over the years, Apollo was scrapped and national support for long-term objectives slowly decayed and a generation of space scientists and engineers found themselves disillusioned by decades of broken promises and a lost dream. Russian scientists suffering the debilitating effects of Perestroika shared in this dismal experience and found themselves unemployed throughout the 1990s and in many cases forced to use their powerful mathematical skills in the financial services sector of London in order to make ends meet (giving rise to the age of quants and speculative high frequency derivatives trading).

During this period of disenchantment, China arose silently under the radar patiently building its capacities from scratch.

The Rise of China’s Space Program

Although its first satellite launch took place during the height of the Cultural Revolution in 1970, the Chinese space program grew much more slowly than its counterparts in Russia or the USA. Patiently learning from the best engineering feats of the west, under the wise guidance of Deng Xiaoping, China finally became the third nation to successfully send a human into orbit in 2003 and one decade later, became the first nation in 37 years to return to the Moon with the successful landing of the Chang’e-3 rover in December 2013. Lieutenant General Zhang Yulin called this program “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” and the world came to soon see what incredible plans were yet in store for China’s goals in space.

Soon China had launched the Tiangong 1 and 2 (Heavenly Palace) test space stations in preparation for the 2021 launching of the Large Modular Space Station named Tianhe (“Harmony of the Heavens”) which will be a vital platform for the earth-lunar economy for decades.

On January 3, 2019, China set a world milestone by becoming the first nation to successfully land a rover on the far side of the moon with Chang’e 4, which has begun topographical, resource and geological mappings of the lunar surface. Change’e 5, 6, and 7 will continue these explorations while adding the feature of returning samples to the earth and preparing the groundwork for a permanent lunar base by 2030. Chang’e-8 will be especially important as it will print the first ever 3D structures on the Moon by 2028.

Unfortunately, due to the Obama-era “Wolf Act” of 2011, American scientists could not participate in these achievements and had to watch from afar as China swiftly leapt to the forefront of space science dethroning America from the unchallenged stature she once enjoyed.

Asteroid Threats

Earlier in 2013, before Chang’e-3 landed on the Moon, another humbling event took place and served as a sort of divine slap in the face for many. This wake up call took the form of a 9000 ton asteroid which exploded 22 km over Chelyabinsk, Russia sending shock waves that shattered windows and injured over 2000 citizens. The Chelyabinsk incident served as a timely reminder that the universe offers enough existential challenges for humanity without the additional man-made calamities of regime change wars and fighting over diminishing returns of resources.

From this Russian incident, NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office was created to begin to establish a plan for asteroid threats from space alongside similar departments in Roscosmos, and the European and Chinese Space Agencies. Ouyang Ziyan (the father of China’s lunar program) stated that asteroid defense “is worth attention while we are devoted to building a community with a shared future for humanity… Scientists around the world should cooperate to monitor near-Earth asteroids.”

In November 2019, Roscosmos Director of Science and Long Term Programs (Alexander Bloshenko) stated that Russia’s lunar development goals which included a base on the underside of the Moon within a decade were intertwined with asteroid defense stating: “There are plans to install equipment on this [lunar] base to study deep space and special telescopes to track asteroids and comets that pose a danger with their collision with earth.”

By Summer 2019, NASA’s administrator Jim Bridenstine also announced his intention for USA-Russian cooperation on asteroid defense- joining the earlier call made by Roscosmos’ head Dimitri Rogozin for a “Strategic Defense of Earth” which Rogozin described as a way to redirect nuclear weapons towards a common threat in space rather than towards each other. This call for cooperation dovetails the two-fold space strategy unveiled by President Trump in December 2017 with Space Policy Directive 1: Reinvigorating America’s Human Space Exploration Program, where he called for 1) The creation of the Lunar Gateway space station to orbit the Moon and 2) the launching of the Artemis Project that will “lead the return of humans to the Moon for long term exploration and utilisation, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations.”

These developments were punctuated by Trump who took the time from his impeachment fiasco to call for an alliance that too many analysts have chosen to ignore saying on– : “Between Russia, China and us, we’re all making hundreds of billions of dollars worth of weapons, including nuclear, which is ridiculous… I think it’s much better if we all got together and didn’t make these weapons… those three countries I think can come together and stop the spending and spend on things that are more productive toward long term peace.”

Although the COVID-19 lock down has done major damage to the schedule for the Orion capsule and space launch system mega rocket needed to carry out the Artemis Project, the scheduled 2024 landing of a man and woman onto the moon’s surface is still on course.

A Revolution in Mining: Redefining “Resources”

But it doesn’t end there. Leading officials among all three Russian, Chinese and American space agencies have called for going beyond asteroid defense, and colonization with the call for lunar, mars and asteroid resource development strategies. These strategies require that humanity redefine the practice of “mining” as it has hitherto been known for thousands of years, but also re-define what a “resource” is, what “energy” is and what are the limits (if any) to human growth?

A helpful tool to conceptualize this revolution in thinking can be found in the 10 minute video All the World’s A Mine made in 2013:

In carefully mapping the lunar terrain with a focus on the far side of the moon, China wishes to come to a better understanding of the mineral distribution of vital resources like Titanium, Iron, silicon, aluminium, water, oxygen and hydrogen and especially Helium-3 which are abundant on the Lunar regolith. Helium-3, long called the “Philosophers’ Stone” of energy is the most efficient fuel source for fusion power when fused with deuterium or tritium in a plasma and though it is nearly non-existent on the earth exists in vast quantities on the moon due to the absence of a geomagnetic field. As the Moon’s far side never faces the earth or the earth’s magnetic field, there are far more abundant volumes of solar-produced Helium-3 that have accumulated there over millennia.

Ouyang Ziyuan stated clearly that Helium-3 could “solve humanity’s energy demand for 10 000 years at least” since “each year, three space shuttle missions could bring enough fuel for all human beings across the world.”

In 2013, Ziyuan stated “The Moon is full of resources- mainly rare Earth elements, titanium and uranium which the Earth is really short of, and these resources can be used without limitation… There are so many potential developments- it’s beautiful- so we hope we can fully utilize the Moon to support sustainable development for humans and society.”

China’s Premier Li Keqiang added his voice to the mix stating: “China’s manned space and lunar probe missions have a twofold purpose: first, to explore the origin of the universe and mystery of human life; and second, to make peaceful use of outer space… Peaceful use of outer space is conducive to China’s development. China’s manned space program has proceeded to the stage of building a space station and will move forward step by step.”

In September 2019, Russia and China signed a historical agreement to jointly collaborate on lunar development uniting the Chang’e-7 plans with Russia’s Lunar 26 Orbiter and lunar base development which both nations have on the agenda for 2030-2035.

A Word on the Moon Treaty of 1979

Donald Trump’s explicit rejection of the Moon Treaty of 1979 in his recent executive order, has garnered many angry criticisms which on closer inspection are completely unfounded. The 1979 Treaty requiring that all commercial activities in space must be defined by an international framework appears on the surface to be quite sensible. So is Trump’s rejection of any obedience to an “international framework” at this moment in history evidence of his selfish-nationalistic impulses to impose gangster capitalism onto the whole universe? Not at all.

As stated at the beginning of this report, President Trump’s order calls explicitly for “encouraging international support for the recovery and use of space resources” which is in no way characteristic of “narrow minded selfish nationalism” or “unilateral militarism” extolled by the many neocon ideologues struggling to take control of U.S. Space policy. Also when one considers that only 4 nations ratified that 1979 treaty (France, Guatemala, India and Romania), Trump’s refusal to obey it is not nearly as renegade and selfish as those critics make it appear.

Finally, when one considers who would define that “international framework” and considers the zero-growth paradigm currently dominant across the UN and European Union technocracy, then it quickly becomes clear that the Green New Deal agenda for shutting down industrial civilization is totally incompatible with the pro-growth, pro-space mining orientation of Russia, China and Trump’s USA alike.

The author can be reached at matt.ehret@tutamail.com

Unlike “international terrorism” or “man-made global warming” which are purely human-made concoctions driven by political agendas, the threat of asteroid collisions with the earth is very real, and provides a very serious basis for international cooperation on the common aims and in the interest of humankind.

Bridenstine opened his speech by saying “We have to make sure that people understand that this is not about Hollywood. It’s not about movies. This is about ultimately protecting the only planet we know right now to host life, and that is the planet Earth.” After announcing the launch of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), Bridenstine said “we know for a fact that the dinosaurs did not have a space program… but we do, and we need to use it.”

As these words were being spoken NASA had announced that asteroid 99942 Apophis (named after the Egyptian god of chaos) would come within 19 000 miles of the earth on April 13, 2029- which is closer than some satellites. The head of NASA’s presence at this forum was especially important since the White House had recently created a “National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan” which commissioned a simulation of Apophis colliding with the Earth with devastating results.

Currently only 8000 of the estimated local asteroids (which are 140 meters or larger) have been identified and nothing is even closely in place to change their trajectories any time soon. Even if a collision were to occur in several years’ time, humanity’s technologies and priorities are dismally far from preventing such a collision. Just to put things in perspective, Bridenstine reminded his audience that in February 2013, a meteor measuring only 20 meters in diameter and travelling at 40 000 mph exploded over Chelyabinsk Russia sending a shockwave that destroyed property and injured over 1600 civilians. The energy in that blast was the equivalent of 30 Hiroshimas. This incident caught the world off guard, since everyone’s eyes were pointed at the other side of the earth where a much larger asteroid came within 17 000 miles but missed that same day.

The Potential Russian-USA Alliance for a New Paradigm

Bridenstine, who has been a long-time advocate of US-Russia-China collaboration on science, described his experience in Russia at that time saying “when I was over in Russia, the head of Roscosmos Dimitri Rogozin said that was high on his agenda. As you can imagine with Chelyabinsk and Tunguska, Russia has been significantly impacted by these events, so they have keen awareness and intensity on this that I think is important.”

In 2011 Rogozin made headlines by calling for a policy which he termed “The Strategic Defense of the Earth (SDE)”. As the name implies, the SDE was a revival of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) which President Reagan had first made to the Russians in 1983 mediated by the fascinating figure of Lyndon LaRouche. Unlike George Bush Sr’s unilateral version of the SDI later, this first version was based upon joint US-Russia collaboration of a ground and space-based system of plasma-based advanced laser technologies which would have made nuclear war strategically impossible. While the Russians rejected the offer then, Rogozin’s reactivation of the idea three decades later was a stroke of poetic irony.

Rogozin’s new design called not only for international collaboration around an anti-nuclear war policy, but additionally included asteroid defense. Rogozin was very clear in 2011 that this policy would re-channel the trillions of dollars of military hardware being built up by the anti-ballistic missile shield around Russia (and China) into a function which protects rather than destroys life. Little known in the west, Russia Today reported in October 2011 that the program focuses on “fighting threats coming from space rather than just missiles. … It would be an integration of anti-aircraft, missile, and space defenses. The system would be targeted against possible threats to Earth coming from space, including asteroids, comet fragments, and other alien bodies… The system should be capable of both monitoring space and destroying any dangerous objects as they approach our planet.”

Today both Rogozin and Bridenstine are two leading figures behind Russian and American plans for lunar and mars colonization which alongside China’s pioneering commitment for space exploration offer one of the best gateways out of the “closed system” trap of British geopolitics. America currently has a commitment for a permanent lunar colony by 2024 as a platform for lunar mining and Mars development. Russia’s vision is nearly identical with plans for the first manned mission between 2025-2034 and a permanent colony established by 2040. The European Space Agency has plans for a manned moon colony by 2030 and China has announced its first manned mission by the same period. All four agencies have expressed a serious interest for asteroid defense.

Already, through Bridenstine’s leadership NASA has managed to crack the federal ban on US-China space cooperation imposed under the Obama presidency when NASA shared data with China during the Chang’e-4 landing on the far side of the moon on January 3, 2019. Leadership among Russia, China and American space agencies have made it clear that the Lunar-Mars development programs are heavily driven by opportunities for space mining (including the abundance of Helium-3 deposits on the moon which are unavailable on earth). Anyone serious about fusion technology knows that this isotope which has accumulated for billions of years on the Moon due to its lack of a magnetic field is the best source of fuel for fusion as the next phase in human development.

Of course this positive future can only occur on the condition that the NATO-driven paradigm of closed system geopolitics (aka: the management of diminishing returns by a technocratic elite) is overturned and replaced by a system of “win-win cooperation” more in harmony with the true nature of humanity. This fight between two paradigms must be kept in mind when reviewing such anomalies as the positive 1.5 hour conversation between President Putin and Trump on May 3^rd or the latter’s call to transfer the billions of dollars of Russia-China-US military spending into spending on “things that are more productive towards long term peace.”

Regardless of what we may wish to believe, humanity exists in a universe that demands we pay attention to its behavior. Galactically driven catastrophes have led to 5 mass extinctions since the Cambrian period and as Bridenstine noted above, we are the first species which has exhibited the potential capability to circumvent another one from occurring. The question remains: Shall we continue to tolerate being manipulated by an oligarchical system of geopolitics under sociopathic technocrats who demand depopulation under a fixed system of diminishing returns (entropy) or shall we recognize our higher destiny as a species of creative reason and unbounded powers of self-perfectibility?

But there was one item of good cheer which showed that friendly cooperation between the US and Russia continues, albeit unobtrusively. It concerned the International Space Station, about which it was reported on March 15 that “A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Christina Koch along with Roscosmos’ Alexei Ovchinin lifted off as planned from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan… Their Soyuz MS-12 spacecraft reached a designated orbit about nine minutes after the launch, and the crew reported they were feeling fine and all systems on board were operating normally.”

Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft docked with the International
Space Station about 250 miles over the Pacific Ocean.

The mission was successful, technically and professionally, but did not in any way diminish Washington’s anti-Russian bias or its determination to militarize space.

A forecast for the second quarter of 2019 by the analytical think-tank STRATFOR reflects the Washington Establishment’s line that “Military competition between the United States and Russia will prevail…” but does not record that the military budget of the United States is vastly more than that of Russia, or that, as headlined in the 2018 Report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, world defence expenditure “falls sharply in Russia, but rises in Central and Western Europe.” As is well-known, the US will spend 716 billion dollars on its military in 2019, but what is not publicised by the Western media is that Russia’s 2019 outlay is 45 billion dollars.

The word ‘competition’ (“the activity or condition of striving to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others”) is hardly appropriate when the figures involved are 716 compared to 45 whether these be dollars or coconuts, but the competition myth continues, supported energetically by Washington’s military-industrial complex — and especially by the generals, spurred on by the lure of lucrative post-retirement jobs with manufacturers of military systems. Stars and Stripes records that “major US defense contractors have hired hundreds of former high-level government officials in recent years, including at least 50 since Trump became president. The report lends new visibility to long-standing concerns about a revolving door between the government agencies that award massive contracts for military supplies and services and the businesses that profit from those contracts.”

Which leads us to General “Fighting Joe” Dunford, who at his Senate hearing for appointment as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said “my assessment today, Senator, is that Russia presents the greatest threat to our national security.” In October 2018 he reiterated that “the Russian challenge is not isolated to the plains of Europe. It is a global one” requiring the armed forces of the United States “to be able to project power to an area… and then once we’re there we’ve got to be able to freely manoeuvre across all domains… sea, air, land, space, and cyberspace.”

Naturally he didn’t mention that at the very time he uttered his confrontational challenges there was close cooperation in air, land and space between the US and Russia whose astronauts were “able to freely manoeuvre” in harmony, adding to world knowledge and engendering trust by jointly conducting research projects in the International Space Station.

This is in accord with the United Nations ‘Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space’, otherwise known as the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which, among other things “establishes basic principles related to the peaceful use of outer space. This includes that the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries…”

It is the wish of the world — or most of the world — that space should be forever free of weapons. The Treaty lays down that “States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner.”

But although the United States signed and ratified the Space Treaty in 1967, it strongly objected to later attempts to refine it. In February 2008 the New York Times reported that “The Russian foreign minister, Sergey V Lavrov, presented a Russian-Chinese draft treaty banning weapons in space to the United Nations Conference on Disarmament, an idea that was quickly rejected by the United States.”

It is a difficult to imagine why there could be any objection to a treaty aimed at “prevention of the placement of weapons in outer space,” but the White House responded that it opposes any treaty that seeks “to prohibit or limit access to or use of space.” Indeed the White House said that such a treaty would be impossible to enforce because “any object orbiting or transiting through space can be a weapon if that object is intentionally placed onto a collision course with another space object. This makes treaty verification impossible.” The US continues to be resistant to any treaty forbidding deployment of weapons in space.

It was therefore unsurprising when Trump put forward his plan for militarising space in March last year, and in August tweeted “Space Force All the Way!” Then he declared on February 19 that “we’re investing in new space capabilities to project military power and safeguard our nation’s interests, especially when it comes to safety and defense” and signed a directive ordering the Pentagon to create a Space Force as the sixth branch of the military.

The result of his brainwave is that the US is going to “project military power” in space, which is directly contrary to “the basic principles related to the peaceful use of outer space” noted in the Outer Space Treaty.

The US refuses to move onwards from the original treaty, and on March 20 Newsweek summed up Washington’s policy by noting that “the United States has blamed Russia and China for militarizing space, while refusing to sign their joint proposal against placing weapons there.”

On February 19, while preparations were in full swing for launch of the joint Russia-US mission to the International Space Station three weeks later, the White House announced that “President Donald J Trump’s Space Policy Directive-4 is a bold, strategic step toward guaranteeing American space dominance” by “establishing the United States Space Force which among other tasks will “organize, train and equip our space warfighters with next-generation capabilities.”

In the words of the US Administration, “space is now a warfighting domain just like the air, land and sea” so it’s goodbye to a future of harmonious exploration and scientific research in the regions beyond our globe. It had been hoped that the Treaty would go far to assist in “maintaining international peace and security and promoting international co-operation and understanding” but Washington has no intention of agreeing to any international law that would prohibit extra-terrestrial weaponisation, and Trump’s Space Directive has now set the seal on Washington’s preparedness to confront in space as well as by land and sea and in the air. Stand by for Space War. 

The statement made by Mr. Rogozin came on the heels of the meeting of the International Space Station (ISS) Exploration Capabilities Study Team, which was held in the United States  September 8-15. Moscow has not abandoned the plan as yet, but that possibility is under consideration. In August, Russia confirmed that it will stop flying US astronauts to the International Space Station in April of next year, once a contract promoting the bilateral partnership of that project comes to an end.

Last September, Roscosmos and NASA agreed to develop the Lunar Orbital Platform known as the Deep Space Gateway, which will function as a staging outpost for future missions. This was a rare moment of bilateral cooperation amidst an atmosphere of mounting tensions. The relay platform could then be expanded to act as a resupply station for manned missions to Mars or further exploration of the moon. The craft would be powered by NASA’s Solar Electric Propulsion — technology that draws power from the sun. Construction is due to begin in 2022, with the first modules of the Gateway expected to be completed two years later.

NASA wants its Russian partner to build a docking compartment and an adjacent module, but with both components meeting US-defined technical requirements. An airlock module through which astronauts would be discharged onto the platform would ensure the use of solely US-made space suits, making this more of  an American project with Russian input, rather than an equally shared joint program. Russia might make its own proposals as an alternative. The heads of the US and Russian space agencies are to meet at the Kazakhstan-based Baikonur cosmodrome during the preparations for the launch of a new crew up to the International Space Station (ISS), which is planned for October 11.

The US is an important partner but it’s not indispensable. After all, it’s NASA that depends on Russia for space travel (using the Soyuz spacecraft), not vice versa. The United Launch Alliance (ULA) cannot do without Russia’s RD-180 and RD-181 rocket engines that are needed to power the Atlas V rockets.

Roscosmos provides launch services using its own orbital-class rockets. Russia produces its own satellites and scientific payloads. It has achieved human spaceflight and interplanetary robotic science missions. It has the most space station experience. It is working to develop heavy-lift rockets that would allow it to build its own orbital platform near the moon. A private Russian company is working on a sea launch project. In July, the Russian Progress MS-09 cargo ship delivered a fresh load of supplies to the ISS in record time, docking at the station in automatic mode less than four hours after launch — the first time such a fast-track approach had been used.

The Russian Institute of Space Research (IKI) has five lunar missions planned between 2018 and 2025. The European Space Agency (ESA) will take part in three of them. Luna-27 will penetrate the moon’s surface a meter into the regolith—the surface layer of dust and rock debris—to take samples. The Russian Foundation for Advanced Studies’ (FPI) is working in partnership with Roscosmos and the United Aircraft Corporation to create a reusable rocket.

Russia can easily find willing partners. The Russian-European ExoMars, the first mission to move across the surface and to study Mars in depth, is to be launched in 2020. A Russian Proton rocket is to land a European rover and a Russian surface platform on the surface of the planet. One of their tasks is to search for signs of life. In 2009, a Russian neutron detector hitched a ride with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to spot pockets of subsurface water ice. 

In February, Roscosmos instructed its strategists to evaluate the idea of cooperating with China by supplying Russian hardware for the Chinese space station. In March, the Russian and Chinese space agencies signed a memorandum of intentions on a possible joint effort in the exploration of the moon using robotic probes.

Russia and India boast 71 years of extensive experience in joint space research.

Russia and the US have been working closely together in space ever since the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975. Both nations supported the ISS. The US space program has largely survived thanks to Russia’s rocket engines. Russia’s Soyuz capsules transport American cargo to the ISS. With the sanctions war raging, a lack of progress in arms control, and greatly differing approaches to all major international problems, space exploration remains the only area where the two powers continue to work together.

The future of this cooperation is uncertain. It could end soon. The parties might go their separate ways. Russia can afford to. It has cutting-edge technology and extensive experience to lean on. It also has a lot to offer to other space-faring nations. Together with its partners, it can steer an international effort. Losing Russia as a partner will hardly benefit the United States. Its defense spending dwarfs that of other nations but it is losing its edge in emerging technologies to Russia. It could fall behind in the same way when it comes to space research. The hope that space cooperation could become a building block to improve that relationship in general appears to be fading.

The fast pace of dialog between the two countries testifies to the active preparations for the summit among the Russian and Iranian leadership. The period of December 2013 – April 2014 saw an exchange of visits of foreign ministers and intergovernmental contacts in the area of economics. Among the latter, one should note the visit of Russian Minister of Energy Aleksandr Novak to Tehran. The productivity of the visit of the head of Russia's Ministry of Energy, who is also the co-chairman of the Permanent Russian-Iranian Commission for Trade and Economic Cooperation, was closely linked with earlier agreements between the parties on the highest political level. Presidents Vladimir Putin and Hasan Rouhani met on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Bishkek on September 13, 2013. The agreements reached at that time between Moscow and Tehran were not set down in a written document, but the idea of the «Bishkek Agreements between the two presidents» has become part of expert assessments and politicians' statements. The Iranian ambassador in Moscow, Mehdi Sanaei, described the Putin-Rouhani meeting as «a vivid event which in the future will be inscribed in the history of relations between the two countries». During a conversation with the president of the IRI on April 28, Minister of Energy Novak emphasized that the Russian president is personally monitoring the implementation of the agreements reached in Bishkek and paying special attention to relations with Iran in general. 

Within the scope of the agreements between Russia and Iran are the resolution of the dispute over shipments of Russian S-300 missile defense systems to Iran and construction of a second power producing unit at the nuclear power plant in Bushehr, Iran by Rosatom. Now the parties' attention is focused on an oil deal in which Russia could take on the unaccustomed role of a large importer of energy resources from the Middle Eastern region. A shift toward the resolution of any of these issues will bring the parties closer to progress in related areas as well. Moscow and Tehran are trying out the package method of achieving results, comprehensively encompassing all relevant areas of cooperation. For example, the following scenario is possible: Iran would withdraw its arbitration claims against Russia in connection with the breaking of the 2007 contract (for the delivery of five divisions of S-300 PMU-1 systems), after which the parties would launch extensive military technical and economic cooperation with an emphasis on energy. 

The Iranians are inviting companies from Russia to take part in projects for developing their railroad system. The package format for future agreements can be seen here as well. Russia could set up joint production of rails with its Iranian partners, supply rolling stock, and work on the electrification of the IRI's main rail lines. In 2012 Russian Railways completed the electrification of a 46-km line between Tabriz and Azarshahr. New projects are on the agenda for Russian rail workers and their Iranian colleagues.

The West's course of imposing sanctions against Russia objectively brings Moscow and Tehran closer together. One of the West's goals for its policy of isolating Iran in previous stages was maximally complicating its relations with Russia. This goal has not lost its relevance even after the process of improving relations between Western states and Iran started on November 24, 2013. Washington is reacting very nervously to the oil contract being discussed by Moscow and Tehran. After all, Iran will not simply send a certain volume of black gold north (Russian companies are prepared to acquire 500 barrels of oil a day from their Iranian partners) and receive needed goods for it; the possibility of Iran paying for other services from Russia with oil is also under consideration. For example, those related to the implementation of projects for building a second power producing unit at the Bushehr nuclear power plant, the laying of power lines from Russia through Azerbaijan to northern provinces of Iran, and the construction of new generating capacities for Iran and the modernization of existing ones. Russian-Iran projects in the field of electric power alone could amount to $10 billion (construction of a hydroelectric plant and export of 500 MW of electric power from Russia to Iran). 

Iran could pay for part of potential orders of Russian goods and services with oil in such projects under discussion as shipments of grain and technical equipment to Iran as well. Circumventing systems of paying for Iranian oil with «cold cash» is made necessary by the continued regime of harsh financial and trade limitations imposed on the IRI in relations with foreign partners. If you add the attempts of Russia and Iran to transition to using their own currencies in their payments, U.S. fears of «losing control of the situation» becomes even more pronounced. After all, if the Russian-Iranian oil contract is implemented, the total export of Iranian oil could exceed the threshold of 1 million barrels a day agreed upon in the interim agreement reached with the P5+1 on November 24, 2013.

As far as one can judge from statements made by Washington, the U.S. administration has no clear-cut plan with regard to improving relations with Iran or in its policy of pressuring Russia with sanctions with the goal of isolating it. In taking steps to hinder closer relations between Tehran and Moscow, the U.S. is reminiscent of a tightrope walker who has frozen midway across and risks losing his equilibrium. It is doubtful that it will be able to balance in this position for long. The Americans emphasize that the sanctions against Russia are a process of which even the interim results cannot be assessed. As for Iran, it has already built up a certain immunity to the problems which arise in connection with the imposition of sanctions. It also has experience in counteracting sanctions. 

By broadening and deepening their ties, Russia and Iran will demonstrate the futility of attempts by outside forces to affect this process. The relations of the two natural partners can be slowed, and even for a long time, but the superpower, which has lost its sense of reality, is unable to hinder their development. The sanctions which Washington would like to make a show of the United States' power will have the opposite effect; they only reveal the uncertainty of the American «tightrope walker's» steps in resolving acute international problems.