Eli Lake, Columnist

Why the U.S. Needs Russian Rocket Engines to Spy on Russia

It was once a sign of cooperation for the two nations' space programs. Now it's a weakness in U.S. national security.

June 6, 2016 at 4:23 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

Can I get a lift?
Photographer: Aubrey Gemignani/NASA, via Getty Images

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When President Barack Obama came into office, the fact that Russia sold the U.S. the rocket engines it needed for launches was a feature of U.S. foreign policy, not a bug. Obama was trying to reset the U.S. relationship with Moscow, and that meant finding areas where the two former Cold War rivals could cooperate. If the U.S. would rely on Russia to deal with Iran and supply troops in Afghanistan, why not rely on Russia to get satellites into space?

But that was 2009. In 2016 this dependence is very much a bug. Today, Russian aircraft buzz U.S. vessels on the Baltic Sea and bomb U.S.-supported rebels in Syria. Today, the U.S. sanctions officials close to Russian president Vladimir Putin for his invasion of Ukraine.