What is the plan/policy for what happens on the International space station if the US and Russia happen to go to war for some reason?
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Not many people know it but on the ISS there are enough uniforms from each country to outfit all the astronauts. This way if we go to war they just all put on whoever’s uniform won and get back to the science.
So there are laws of each country, which apply to its nationals and its property; customs that we optimistically call “international law,” some of which are enforced by some countries’ courts (theoretically also by the UN Security Council, but the US and Russian vetoes make that moot if they go to war); regulations of each space agency, which apply to all the crew members it provides (of their own nationality or not); and a Crew Code of Conduct agreed among the space agencies that emphasizes keeping the ISS multilateral and civilian.
Could US or Russian law order their citizens on the ISS to start fighting? It could try. International law says wars are fought by warships, and it would probably treat ISS modules as analogous to merchant ships on the high seas, in which case people who actually boarded the other nation’s modules by force would be committing piracy. Piracy is one of two things you can do that make you a *hostis humani generis,* an enemy of all humankind; the other one is slaving. So making national laws like that would be an extremely public way to bomb your own moral high ground and turn the world against you.
International law also says wars are fought by militaries, not civilians. Even the ISS crew members that have military commissions aren’t on active duty. It might be legally easier (in domestic law, not international) to order them into combat than the civilian ones, I’m not sure. But independent thinking and personal responsibility are requirements for the job, so I have every confidence ISS crew would do what James Blunt did at the battle of Kosovo (yes, *that* James Blunt, and he *was* unquestionably on active duty) and refuse that stupid-ass order.
Meanwhile, the Crew Code of Conduct (see https://www.esa.int/esapub/bulletin/bullet105/bul105_6.pdf ) requires everyone assigned to ISS to “maintain a harmonious and cohesive relationship among the crew and assure an appropriate level of mutual confidence and respect,” without interpersonal or group harassment. There is a Multilateral Crew Operations Panel that has authority to make judgments and apply discipline about that, and in the direst case, “where necessary to ensure the immediate safety of the Crew Members of the ISS, reasonable and necessary means may include the use by the ISS Commander of proportional physical force or restraint.” The conduct code is made binding through the space agencies, which gives its enforcement at least a bit of distance from international politics.
Lastly, if any ISS Partner country got so belligerent as to put another country’s crew members in danger, every signatory of the Outer Space Treaty or the Rescue Agreement would be obligated to give them all possible aid.
There isn’t a plan.
In general, both countries have tried to keep politics out of the ISS, so no matter what disputes and even sanctions have been happening on the ground, both countries’ space agencies have tried to cooperate on keeping the ISS functioning.
There’s no plan for what would happen in an all-out war. It would be impossible to plan for (both countries might say today “we would of course try to keep the ISS running”, but there’s no guarantee they’d stick to that promise if ditching it could give them an advantage in this hypothetical war.
But additionally, if those two countries went to war, pretty much everything would change. Both countries have enough nukes to destroy the world several times over. If they go to war, all bets are off. Any thing might happen, including much worse things than the ISS being abandoned.
However, both countries do have plans for evacuating the ISS, and they can do so on fairly short notice.
So in practice, if either country (or both) deemed continued operation of the ISS to be too risky, they’d order their people on the station to head to the docked spacecraft and head home.
The astronauts on the ISS are civilians. None of them are combatants. The worst that will happen might be a political discussion between some scientists in space. If the war between USA and Russia comes to a point where they attack eachother’s civilians, the ISS might be evacuated by another, neutral space agency like ESA or JAXA, safely ferrying the astronauts home.
ISS is quite literally above politics on the ground. The whole crew understands this. Also the agreements that make ISS possible are such that every party, the governments, involved is tied to it in a way that they will not really get out of it nor do they have interests in it.
Also USA and Russia are major part of it, but they are only two of 15 participating in it.
I think there is official policy for this leftover from Skylab or Mir or whatever. Basically they remain officialy non combatants and isolate as much as possible until whichever side doesnt own the station can be returned from orbit
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They won’t. There’s a thing called Mutually Assured Destruction. Both countries have plenty of nuclear weapons.
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