Everett Dolman, Astropolitik
Summary:
- Mahanian argument for space power (space power=national greatness)
- Current US space strategy is “not decisive, guiding, or illuminating. In a word, it is not strategic.”
- 3-step strategy for US space dominance: (1) withdraw from current space regime; (2) Seize military control of low-Earth orbit; (3) Establish a national space agency to coordinate efforts of all space sectors.
Main points:
- Space can become a national power base for the country that is willing to conquer and exploit
- Astropolitik: A determinist political that manipulates the relationship between state power and outer space control for the purpose of extending the dominance of a single state over the whole of the Earth.
- Regime: principles, norms, rules and practices around which actor expectations converge
- Space Regime: Basis from Innocent Passage, Antarctic Treaty, International Outer Space Treaty, ABM Treaty 1972
- Principles: Beliefs of fact causation and rectitude
- - Space is the common heritage of all mankind
- - Space is to be used only for peaceful purposes
- Norms: Standards of Behavior defined in terms of rights and obligations
- - No state or person can lay claim to any part of space
- - Relations is space based on ideals of cooperation and nondiscrimination
- - State is responsible for the consequences of space activities that originate from it
- Rules and Practices
- - No placement of WMD in space
- - All spacecraft registered with the UN
- - No military bases/military exercises/weapons testing on celestial bodies
- - No interference with other states’ space activities
- - No harmful contamination on moon or other celestial bodies
- Current Space regime fosters collective inaction and needs to be changed
- Need re-establishment of a competitive, widely embraced, and recognizably astropolitical space regime (space exploration and competition without confrontation), for future growth