Space Sovereignty — incident
Carter's ASAT moratorium
President Carter unilaterally pauses American ASAT development, hoping to bring the Soviets back to arms-control talks. The talks collapse; the moratorium quietly expires and the work resumes.
Newly inaugurated President Jimmy Carter halts American ASAT development as an opening bid for arms-control talks with Moscow. Negotiations resume in 1978 — but stall on definitions, verification and the question of whether co-orbital weapons can ever be reliably distinguished from inspection satellites.
By 1980 the moratorium has quietly been allowed to expire as the Pentagon resumes work on the F-15-launched ASM-135 ASAT. The episode becomes a textbook case of unilateral restraint that fails to elicit reciprocal restraint — and one that is studied carefully in every capital that subsequently considers a sovereign space-weapons posture.