Air University Review, September-October 1983

On Direct Satellite Broadcasting

The concern raised by Lieutenant Colonel William J. Wallisch in his article is one that has received international attention for at least fifteen years now.* The Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, a standing committee of the United Nations, has sought since 1968 to develop a set of legal principles to regulate the use of direct satellite broadcasting (DBS) technology.

*Lieutenant Colonel William J. Wallisch, Jr., "Direct Satellite Broadcasting: You Haven't Seen Anything Yet!" Air University Review, March-April 1983, pp. 111-13.

On the one hand, the international community generally acknowledges that DBS technology offers the potential to broadcast educational, health, and public service programming to widely dispersed populations, remote areas, or even to countries without sophisticated communication infrastructures. This capability was amply demonstrated during the mid-to-late 1970s when the United States and India joined in a cooperative effort to bring farming, hygiene, and safety information to an uneducated population in largely inaccessible areas of the Indian subcontinent.**

**The cooperative effort was known as the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) and used a NASA-developed applications technology satellite (ATS-6) in geostationary orbit.

But DBS technology, as Colonel Wallisch aptly points out, is a two-edged sword. It can also be used to spread propaganda or misinformation across international boundaries; and it is the widespread international concern over this issue that has deadlocked negotiations within the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space these many years.

The principal obstacle to a consensus formulation of DBS principles has been none other than the United States, not because of any concern that the "national psyche" would fall prey to "slick Soviet TV" propaganda (as Colonel Wallisch implies) but rather because of the concern that these principles, unless carefully constructed, could actually inhibit the free international exchange of ideas and information that was affirmed in Article 19 of the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and again the 1975 Helsinki accord, and which long been a basic tenet of American foreign policy.

U.S. concern about this issue is not unfounded, given the fact that the vast majority of the international community which has spoken out on the DBS question strenuously objects to unrestricted direct satellite broadcasting. The Soviet Union, for example, has argued that broadcasting-across national boundaries violates a country’s sovereign rights unless prior agreements have been entered into by the broadcasting and receiving parties and has warned that, in the absence of such agreements, it reserves the right to destroy the offending satellite system. This is a threat not to be taken lightly in light of the demonstrated operational nature of the Soviet antisatellite (ASAT) system, and concern about possibility of future "illegal" broadcasts undoubtedly provides at least one "justification" for the very existence of the Soviet ASAT system.

Many Third World countries have similarly voiced support for a "prior consent" regime and additiona1ly have expressed a concern that DBS technology could be used as a tool of cultural or economic imperialism. These countries fear program content and unwanted exposure to the Ronald McDonalds and Cheryl Tiegses of the Western advertising world could disrupt the social fabric of their developing nations and thus create a demand for consumer goods that is inconsistent with national plans for social and economic development.

Colonel Wallisch’s implicit support for a "prior consent" regime, in my opinion, represents a stinging rebuke to the objectivity and reasoning power of the American citizen. If the Soviets were to beam "slick programming" direct to U.S. home receivers via direct broadcast satellites in geosynchronous orbit, an event I consider unlikely, such programming would probably attract a large audience at least initially. However, the appeal of Soviet programming would stem more from curiosity than latent ideological fervor on the part of the American public. As any reader of the Soviet press knows, or for that matter as any German-speaking American GI stationed in West Berlin with access to East German television can attest, the shallowness of Communist society and political thought is quickly exposed by sustained exposure. I venture that the same would prove true for Soviet programming regardless of how it was packaged.

The real concern, then, lies not with the potential susceptibility of the American public to Soviet propaganda but rather that the United States may be persuaded not to use DBS technology to exploit recognized Soviet vulnerabilities to such programming and thus in effect would abandon the large Warsaw Pact clientele that Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and Voice of America have so assiduously developed over the years—a clientele that seeks not propaganda but the truth and does so despite great personal risk.

Washington, D.C.

Colonel Harlacher is the Air Force research associate at Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic and International Studies and a lecturer on space-related issues.

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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