🤔 ‘Curious timing’: What’s behind US Security Council Resolution proposing ban on nukes in space?

“It’d be interesting to know the details of this proposed treaty by the United States,” retired US Army Lt. Col. Earl Rasmussen told Sputnik, commenting on a joint US-Japanese UN Security Council Resolution expected to be tabled next week proposing a ban on nuclear weapons in outer space.

“I’m often kind of cautious when they propose something, because the US is probably the one country that has reneged or withdrawn unilaterally from more treaties than any other country,” Rasmussen said.

The timing of the proposal is “interesting” and “curious,” and the details crucial, because there already is an international agreement banning the deployment of nuclear weapons in space – the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the observer said.

Rasmussen doesn’t rule out that the Security Council Resolution may be aimed at advanced space-based weapons which countries have developed but not fielded, with recent US diplomatic maneuvers in strategic arms control serving as a hint regarding how the US might fear other countries might behave.

“I mean if we look at the [1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty that the US pulled out of – they were developing missile defense systems prior to doing so and then they withdrew from the treaty and deployed them,” the observer said. The same goes for the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which the US quit in 2019, resuming medium-range missile testing immediately thereafter.

“I also think that the US probably has concerns over EMP,” Rasmussen said, referring to electromagnetic pulse weapons which can knock out satellite electronics. The US military is “highly dependent on satellites” for its operations, Rasmussen emphasized. “So I’m thinking they’re probably concerned as far as not really having a good defensive capability to counter some type of satellite killer or disrupter or something.”

https://t.me/geopolitics_live/20592