Are junk clearing lasers the first step towards weaponizing space?

Space junk is old fragments of booster rockets or satellites that remain in orbit around the Earth. It is a huge problem because there is an increasing amount of space junk. There is an estimated 170 million pieces of space junk, some are tiny slivers or fragments, others are much larger. NASA estimates there are over 20 thousand pieces at the least the size of a softball. They travel at a speed of about 28 thousand kilometres per hour. Most of the millions of pieces of space junk are the tiny fragments. These are biggest problem because they are the hardest to detect. More

(Source: CBC.ca - Feb 3)