China's Space Program

This was written in response to an article in Space News.

In the March 26 issue, Dean Cheng complains that the Obama administration regards China's expanded space activities as a potential threat while advocating cooperation with the Chinese space program. Mr. Cheng sees this as inconsistent and confused. Perhaps Mr. Cheng has not considering the fact that the Soviet Union's thousands of nuclear tipped ICBMs and stated goals represented an imminent mortal threat to America, but a series of U.S.-Soviet/Russian cooperative space programs has played an important role in reducing that threat significantly. President Obama's Chinese space strategy is not confused, as Mr. Cheng asserts, it is intelligent. It recognizes that short of the mutual suicide of nuclear war we cannot destroy the Chinese space program, or even slow it down much. We can forge cooperative links with this program, as we have with the Russian program, to our mutual benefit while simultaneously reducing the threat to America.