In Geopolitics Today - Thursday, February 10th
Slovakia Enters into Defence Treaty with the United States, Growing Support for International Norms on ASAT Testing, Ukraine’s Constitutional Constraints
Slovakia Enters into Defence Treaty with the United States
Slovakia’s parliament has approved a new 10-year defence treaty with the United States. The Defense Cooperation Agreement was passed with 79 votes to 60 in the 150-seat Slovak legislature as the governing four-party coalition managed to pass the bill despite opposition. The deal was first signed by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Slovakia’s defence minister Jaroslav Nad in Washington earlier this month, and was ratified by President Zuzana after the parliamentary vote had taken place.
The treaty stipulates that the US military can use two Slovak air force bases — Malacky-Kuchyna and Sliac — for 10 years, while Slovakia will receive an estimated $100 million from the US for the purpose of modernizing the bases. While specific details about what the US intends to use the base for are unclear, any particular deployment of US forces to the bases will still need to be approved by the Slovak government and parliament. The US has similar agreements with 23 other NATO members, including Poland and Hungary, all of which allow a certain flexibility to military deployments in Europe that no other country enjoys. Slovakia's plans to sign the agreement was preceded by protests, and the deal came under criticism from the country's opposition. Former Prime Minister Robert Fico said his party would not back the agreement in parliament and wanted a referendum on the issue, while Slovakia’s prosecutor general criticised it citing legal grounds.
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Growing Support for International Norms on ASAT Testing
The most recent kinetic anti-satellite (ASAT) test conducted by Russia in November last year has brought about a broader and more engaged international push for establishing internationally-agreed norms regarding the testing of ASAT weapons. Since that test took place, discussions about a moratorium or ban on destructive ASAT tests have increased considerably, and signals a momentum among the international community to curb the increased creation of space debris as a consequence of testing kinetic ASAT weapons.
Current discussions regarding a potential ASAT test ban have been energized by an upcoming Open-Ended Working Group, established at the UN, that will work toward “reducing space threats” through a series of “norms, rules and principles of responsible behaviour.” As more and more states are cultivating ambitious space programs, there appears to be a rising demand for a set of customary practices for conduct in space. However, geopolitics has a way of disrupting cooperation and creating roadblocks to any meaningful agreement. Today, relations between the world’s major military space powers are tense, with US-Russian relations extremely volatile due to the ongoing crisis over European security, and with US-China relations in a downward spiral since 2016. Nevertheless, if discussions surrounding norms for conduct in space remain limited in scope, an international agreement may be reached in the interests of all space-faring countries in the international system.
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Ukraine’s Constitutional Constraints
In February 2019, as Petro Poroshenko’s government was on the way out and two months before Volodymyr Zelensky won the presidency, the Ukrainian parliament constitutionally enshrined Ukraine’s future as belonging to the EU and NATO. The consequences of that decision may be felt for years to come, as any president (or indeed any government official) of Ukraine must now serve as a “guarantor” of the country’s strategic course to “acquire membership in the EU and NATO,” with any attempts by Ukrainian officials to move toward any alternative affiliations for Ukraine now legally enshrined as unconstitutional.
Given this legal contraint present for current and future leaders in Kiev, and given the resolute nature of Russia’s resistance to a Ukraine in NATO, the leadership in Kiev faces choices that can realistically only be answered with deeper involvement with the EU and NATO. Even a position of neutrality may not even be feasible when leadership is constitutionally constrained and neutrality is increasingly viewed in Kiev as part of bargaining with Moscow, which has long demanded neutral status for Ukraine. Kiev would be right to remain sceptical of any legal agreement with Russia given the country had already received security assurances from Moscow via the 1994 Budapest Memorandum and the 1997 Russian-Ukrainian Friendship Treaty. However, the fact that all internal debates over Kiev’s security are now constitutionally bound to the EU and NATO could cause severe political dysfunction at a time when Ukraine’s survival as a state is threatened. This reality is all the more concerning given that NATO would likely not come to the defence of Ukraine.
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