国际太空法与太空军事利用

Space Military Use and International Space Law

太空治理是全球治理的重要领域。太空治理难度非常大,主要缘于《外层空间条约》允许太空军事利用,但是《外层空间条约》对太空军事利用的规制存在诸多模糊之处,导致太空军事化和武器化程度越来越高,产生严重的太空安全问题,影响太空可持续利用。《外层空间条约》规制太空军事运用方面存在的缺陷,包括对一些术语没有界定,没有确立有关程序,给缔约国随意解释有关术语提供了空间,也便利了缔约国利用没有超国家权威的存在评估和监督太空活动(实验)的事实,进行太空军事化和武器化。一般来说,一个领域军事化了,甚至武器化了,就很难逆转。而且,随着太空及其技术运用于军事领域,卫星逐渐成为军力'倍增器',国防战略的'赋能器',一些太空强国千方百计维持太空优势,拒绝修改《外层空间条约》,或者用其他倡议补充现有国际太空法律机制,无疑又给太空治理增加了政治难度。太空治理需要世界大国、强国拿出政治意愿,解决太空法律机制问题。

Space governance is an important area of global governance. Space governance is very difficult,mainly due to the outer space treaty(OST) which allows the use of space for military. The outer space treaty has a lot of ambiguity in the regulation of military use of space,leading to a higher degree of militarization and weapons in space and having impact on long sustainable use of space. OST, which regulates the use of space for military has defects, including having definition of some terms, nor establishing relevant procedures, providing room for States parties interpreting the terms at will,and facilitating them to make space militarization and weapons by the fact that there is no supranational authority to assess and monitor space activities(experiments).Generally, if a field is militarized and weaponized, it is difficult to reverse. Moreover, with the use of space and its technology in the military field, the satellites have gradually become a multiplier for military force,and enabler for national defense strategy, Some space powers do everything possible to maintain space superiority,refuse to modify OST, or reject supplement the existing international space legal mechanism with other initiatives,which increases the political difficulty of Space Governance without doubt. Space governance needs great powers to solve the problem of the legal mechanism for space with political will and political courage.