The Tuesday United Nations Conference on Disarmament in Geneva brought face to face three of the world’s biggest powers, China, Russia and the United States, in a discussion regarding the ban on weapons in space. The proposal forwarded by the first two aims at preventing a possible arms race in outer space, but Washington opposed the idea, saying signing the treaty would mean putting the U.S. in military disadvantage as opposed to Russia and China.

“Weapons deployment in space by one state will inevitably result in a chain reaction,” Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said at the convention. “This, in turn, is fraught with a new spiral in the arms race, both in space and on the earth.” The United States’ stance determined the Russian minister to also say: “The substantive work of the conference has been blocked for 10 years now.”

Dana M. Petrino, the White House press secretary, said even if signed, the treaty would be impossible to materialize, as any object transiting space could turn into a weapon, just by setting its course  onto a collision trajectory with another space object, and asked at the same time for more transparency and confidence-building measures to be taken.

The Russian-Chinese idea began circulating for the first time in 2002, but the chances for the United States to approve it are still very low. The United States consider it a mean of preventing them from installing a missile interceptor system in the Czech Republic and Poland and refused to speak at the Geneva conference.

Last year’s incident, when China shot down one of its old weather satellites with the help of a ballistic missile draw the United States’ attention on the necessity of ensuring the safety of their own satellites, as some nations of the world continue to increase their military capabilities. If the United States will not take the proposal into consideration however, other countries might, and that would disadvantage the U.S., Americans representatives say.