Especially funny in this context as recent efforts to created a code of conduct for space have largely been rejected by the US in favour of the unstructured status quo.
It does have a point - a structured code of conduct would restrict USA more than others because they would at least try to cover up any violations and at least openly try to follow them for internal political reasons, while the potential adversaries do have the practical capability to just flount the restrictions whenever suitable, as internal political battles or budget allocation will not risk exposing such violations like USA did - if they had something like the equivalent of Nixon's Pentagon Papers event, they would just execute everyone involved and it would not get published.
Things like USA-USSR nuclear disarmament treaties only worked because they included mechanisms for strict verification by the other side. For not developing space arms, you would have to rely on trust, and (as the article mentions) international trust is in very short supply.
Why would you have to rely on trust? As the nuclear treaties show, its perfectly possible to include verification as part of the treaty.
No, the true reason too many in the USG sees a code of conduct as undesirable is that they believe the US is so far ahead its dominance would be restricted if it had pledged to no do whatever the fuck it wants in space.
And because opposition is grounded in maintaining dominance, something that's not yet entirely edible in today's political climate, they cannot muster more persuasive arguments than "we can't have common rules because then the US would have to follow them but the others wouldn't".
This is obvious trash: if the opposition breaks the treaty the US would not respect it either, and in any case the US has not shown hesitancy to withdraw from treaties even without violations as of late.
Things like USA-USSR nuclear disarmament treaties only worked because they included mechanisms for strict verification by the other side. For not developing space arms, you would have to rely on trust, and (as the article mentions) international trust is in very short supply.