Monday, April 4, 2011

India, CD and Space Security


Here's the summary of my recent paper presentation on "India, Conference on Disarmament and Space Security" at the IDSA-MEA Conference on Space and International Security (March 30-31, 2011).

India has been active at the multilateral fora on disarmament as well as on narrower issues such as the prevention of weaponisation of outer space. Its active involvement in negotiations of treaties such as the Outer Space Treaty (OST) is testimony of its commitment to limiting the use of space for peaceful purposes. India, however, has been less than satisfied with the role of major powers in reaching a consensus on these critical issues and there is now a momentum toward weaponisation of outer space, which have serious implications for India’s security.

My paper looked at India’s experience at the Conference on Disarmament (CD) in general and its views on PAROS (Prevention of An Arms Race in Outer Space) in particular. Divided into three sections – the first section of the paper looked at India’s general experience within the CD on a number of treaties; the second section looked at India’s growing challenges in the arena of space and the final section looks at developments relating to OST and PAROS and how these can tackle the challenges in space. In conclusion, the paper analyses the status and ability of arms control regimes to tackle the current challenges. Because this is a major crisis facing the multilateral regime, be it about the fissile materials or outer space weaponization. The paper finally made a few recommendations to improve the functioning of the CD as well as on the need for India to become proactive in shaping the regime that it may have to be part of.

If anyone is interested, I can send the full paper.





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