The Washington Post reports the Biden administration has added outer space as another area in which the U.S. must fear China.
Bill Nelson, President Biden’s new NASA administrator, has carried on that hawkish rhetoric, casting China as “a very aggressive competitor” that has big ambitions in space and is challenging America’s leadership. “Watch the Chinese,” he recently warned. …
Some doubt the wisdom of Nelson’s approach, however.
“Making the Chinese space station out to be such a serious threat is a mistake as it plays into China’s own political goals,” said Brian Weeden, the director of program planning at the Secure World Foundation, a think tank whose mission statement calls for the promotion of “ideas and actions to achieve the secure, sustainable, and peaceful uses of space benefiting Earth and all its peoples.”
“China is trying to use its space station to show that it, too, is a space power, and these constant allusions to a space race and concerns about the threat posed by their space station are reinforcing that message,” Weeden said. Thursday’s launch, he said, was “an important achievement, but it does not mean China has equaled, let alone surpassed, the U.S.”
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