Star Wars: US Tools of Space Supremacy

Book Description
The expansion of space militarization forms a common thread with the explicit unilateral empire-building of the Bush administration. But just as Star Wars did not begin with the Missile Defense Agency, preventive war theory did not originate with Donald Rumsfeld. Advocates of military space always were on the front line of those demanding global dominance. Loring Wirbel argues that the seeds for the current space supremacy doctrine were sown at the end of the Cold War, in the early days of the Clinton administration. Examining the evolution of space-based tools, Wirbel shows that missile defense strategy is part of a dangerous US move to wage endless preventive war and demand global supremacy over allies and adversaries alike. Star Wars: US Tools of Space Supremacy provides a fresh look at the role of space as an enabler of the Bush administration's plans for endless preventive war. It debunks the benign notions of missile defence, and expands the definition of space supremacy beyond that of weapons in space, to include the unilateral misuse of space-based intelligence, communications, and targeting technologies.

About the Author
Loring Wirbel has been involved in military conversion and peace work for 25 years. He is currently editorial director for communications initiatives at CMP Media LLC, headquartered in New York and London. Wirbel worked with Mobilization for Survival in the American southwest on campaigns to end the mobile basing strategy for the MX missile, and to phase out Rocky Flats as a plutonium factory. His cover story on the National Security Agency for The Progressive magazine took a top Project Censored award in the early 1980s. A series on Reagan's Star Wars programs won a Scripps-Howard award in 1984, and in that same year, Wirbel had one of the first press interviews with NSA Director Lincoln Faurer. In the 1990s, Wirbel developed studies on Buckley and Schriever bases for Citizens for Peace in Space, pointing out the bases' role in unilateralist strategies even prior to the publication of US Space Command's Vision for 2020 in 1996. He has written on joint NSA/NRO plans and on space unilateralism in features for Electronic Engineering Times, and has spoken on space militarization in the UK, Germany, and several US cities.


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Star Wars: US Tools of Space Supremacy provides a fresh look at the role of space as an enabler of the Bush administration's plans for endless preventive war. It debunks the benign notions of missile defence, and expands the definition of space supremacy beyond that of weapons in space, to include the unilateral misuse of space-based intelligence, communications, and targeting technologies. Loring Wirbel shows how space militarization forms a key part of the explicit unilateral empire-building of the Bush administration. The book is also a stark reminder that preventive war theory did not originate with Donald Rumsfeld. First used as a term by Reagan, 'Star Wars' was an idea rooted in the Cold War. Wirbel argues that the current space supremacy doctrine was first developed in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, in the early days of the Clinton administration. Giving a historical overview of government policies through the 1980s and 1990s to the present, Wirbel shows that 'Star Wars' is an idea that never went away. Examining the evolution of space-based technology, and the way it is now used in a variety of settings including intelligence operations and on-the-ground military campaigns, this is a comprehensive critical guide to the real aims and capabilities of US space technology and the missile defence program.


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