Tommy Denton

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New photographs released last week indicating evidence of water on Mars' surface led one scientist to applaud the new "squirting gun" revelation of possible life on the planet.

"Youngsters" for whom "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Star Wars" blunted much curiosity and awe about exploring the Earth's solar system may not understand what excites those of us who recall the stunning experience of Sputnik and the early, relatively modest triumphs of the U.S. space program.

With international relations dangerously tense during the Cold War, the early competition between the United States and Soviet Union to solve the mysteries of space could hardly avoid considering military leverage as an ultimate objective on both sides.

Fortunately, in time, a range of international treaties sought to establish universal, peaceful objectives in the interest of all the planet's inhabitants.

Almost as if fulfilling a prophetic mandate, the 1865 International Telegraph Union agreement established a uniform, globally accepted standard for allocating radio frequencies in the interest of open, worldwide service of the public good.

That much-amended treaty, still in effect, eventually laid the foundation for the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which banned nuclear weapons in space.

In keeping with that spirit of preserving the peaceful domain of space, former President Bill Clinton in 1996 tempered a creeping development by the U.S. government during the Reagan administration to unilaterally dominate space and reserve to its own judgment whether to militarize it.

Now, a decade after Clinton's post-Cold War update, the Bush administration has promulgated revisions of its own to the U.S. National Space Policy. Efforts by the White House to understate public release of information about those modifications suggest either an uncharacteristic humility or a characteristic determination to keep the lid on something that the administration considers none of the public's business.

Why, for instance, would President Bush quietly sign the policy changes on Aug. 31, the Thursday before the long Labor Day holiday? And why was the unclassified version of the policy released at 5 p.m. Oct. 6, the Friday before the long Columbus Day weekend?

Bush's revisions of the policy put the world on notice, quietly but forebodingly, that the United States will exercise "freedom of action in space" as it pleases, implicitly threatening armed conflict should America encounter resistance in the pursuit of its "rights."

So, this country will "preserve its rights, capabilities and freedom of action in space ... take those actions necessary to protect its space capabilities ... and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests."

Notice the departure from those earlier treaties in the acknowledgment and affirmation of other signatories, many also known as "allies"? Not a word in the new policy recognizes the implicit understanding that treaties bind all parties in common to achieving certain objectives in the interest of all.

As in so much else that defines the policy-making predisposition of the current Bush administration, the same unilateralist, dictatorial mindset culminating in the entire Iraq fiasco now shapes the U.S. posture before the international community with regard to space.

Retired Army Col. Daniel Smith, a West Point graduate, Vietnam veteran and senior fellow at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, wrote in a recent essay for MinutemanMedia.org that the amended policy now directs the defense secretary, under "National Security Space Guidelines," to prepare contingencies to secure U.S. freedom of action in space "and, if directed, deny such freedom of action to adversaries."

Unsurprisingly, Smith noted, no criteria define either how a nation becomes an "adversary" or "gets redeemed" as a former adversary. In effect, the United States, and it alone, will be the decider.

Diplomatic blowback from such unilateralism in the Iraq venture should have made clear in Washington that having respectful allies to support important common objectives is far preferable to leaving other nations alienated and resentful because of imperious superpower demands that they do as they're told.

Science and technology in the service of humankind's common good beyond Earth's gravitational pull not so long ago shone as a bright hope that now seems in jeopardy from a presidential administration apparently bent on monopolizing the militarization of space.

That's hardly a posture inclined to win friends and influence people, much less secure peace on Earth.

Denton's column appears in the Sunday and Tuesday editions of The Roanoke Times.