Follow Up on the ASAT Talk [9]: "

Greetings from Dubai. Were I ever involved in a clandestine proliferation network I’d have meetings here too.

The Carnegie Endowment has a nice summary of Gregory and my talk — which is pretty amazing since I ramble and neither of us saw it or provided a draft of the paper:

Lewis then turned to the two dominant narratives of China’s ASAT test that have been popularized in the US. The first is that the ASAT test was part of an effort to optimize Chinese defense capabilities vis-à-vis the U.S. by ‘hitting the US where it hurts,’ he said. But Lewis and Kulacki said that the people they’ve talked to have not discussed the test in those terms. Kulacki noted that the so-called ‘soft ribs’ arguments rely on many of the same low-quality sources, published by graduate students in fringe journals. Others have speculated that the ASAT test was intended to force the U.S. into negotiations over the military use of space. Both of these explanations rely on the premise that China had accurately predicted the response of the US to the tests. The unpreparedness of Chinese officials in the aftermath of the ASAT test is not inconsistent with the statements of technocrats, who framed the development of the ASAT as part of a general drive to improve China’s military capabilities in space, not as an effort to provoke the U.S.

Also, Elaine Grossman wrote up the talk for Global Security Newswire.

Gregory and I are still finishing the paper, but you get the flavor of what we said. A few minor points of emphasis here or there are different — we didn’t put the Bush Administration at the center of the narrative at all, for example — but its close enough to start the discussion.

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(Via ArmsControlWonk.)

Follow Up on the ASAT Talk [9]