Outer Space and International Relations: With Great Business Comes Great Conflict

Today, access to and use of outer space is no longer the prerogative of a few nations that are technically capable of launching and operating a spacecraft, as the proliferation of smaller and cheaper technology—most of them serving civilian/commercial as well as military purposes, often at the same time—has enabled more players to engage in spatial activity. Therefore,  space-for-Earth economy—that is, goods or services produced in space for use on Earth—is booming. In fact, commercial activity in space has tripled, from $110 billion in 2005 to $357 billion in 2020 and projections for its future are optimistic as it is expected to rise to $1.1 trillion by 2040, according to Morgan Stanley. Moreover, the last report from the Space Foundation states the global space economy hit $469 billion in 2021. Again, most of the money generated by the space industry came in the commercial sector, which saw a 6.4% boost in revenues since 2020, with more than $224 billion coming from products and services delivered by space firms and nearly $138 billion spent on infrastructure and support for commercial space enterprises. Despite 2022’s economic slowdown, in the first half of this year 72 rockets inserted 1,022 identified spacecraft into orbit, more than the total number placed in the first 52 years of the Space Age.

In this context, private companies are meeting—and often exceeding—the capabilities of governments, giving not just technological but also geopolitical power to those who operate them while states keep on seeking to establish their presence and ascertain their strategic interests. In a policy decision that the US government did not make, the billionaire businessman Elon Musk gave a boost to Kyiv in the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine by allowing SpaceX’s Starlink satellites to broadcast in the country, giving Zelenski the chance to conduct its communication campaign, helping troops circumvent Moscow’s internet cut-off, perform drone attacks, receive vital intelligence updates and communicate with each other in areas where there were no other secure networks. Years of US policy accelerating and supporting private space companies have certainly led to this moment.

As the Ukraine war clearly shows, both commercial and national space-based assets are under threat as they can track and characterize events on the ground with significant accuracy. In fact, about an hour before invading its neighbouring country, Russia performed a cyber-attack targeting an American commercial satellite of an internet company. Despite banning nuclear weapons from being used in any way including being stationed in space, the Outer Space Treaty (OST) has no specific provision prohibiting the use of conventional weapons. And while the effects of a cyber-attack on space systems can range from loss of data to widespread disruptions, potentially leading to the permanent loss of satellites, other types of anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons could be effectively used. Kinetic physical attacks are specifically dangerous as they attempt to damage or destroy space assets, eventually causing the so-called Kessler syndrome, a condition in which space debris impacts other orbiting satellites to produce even more debris, resulting in a cascade that pollutes entire orbits with impassable fields for many years. (i.e., Chinese and Russian direct-ascent ASAT tests in 2007 and 2021 respectively). Unlike “hard kill” methods, “soft kill” techniques that do not create risks for everyone else operating in space also include ground-based lasers like Russia’s new Kalina system which will be able to deliver unattributable and scalable effects, from temporary blindness to permanent inoperability, low earth orbit all the way to geostationary.

On the other hand, regarding the wider commercial space industry, the space-for-space economy—that is, goods and services produced in space for use in space, such as mining for material with which to construct in-space habitats or supply refuelling depots—has struggled to get off the ground. Even though Japan conducted two successful sample return missions to the asteroids Itokawa and Ryugu, commercial asteroid mining will need someone with deep pockets to fund serious space-mining development in a way that enables them to absorb losses of billions of dollars year after year until the technology and mining operations can be scaled up to be profitable. Moon mining is more likely to have a future in the next decades, but even though the OST says outer space, including Earth’s only natural satellite and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, this could be the next source of tension between countries as many of the planned missions will likely be headed to prospect the same areas of the Moon, where current research suggests that there are both water and rare Earth elements.

In 2015, the US passed the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act granting American companies property rights to resources they mine in outer space. The Artemis Accords intend to elevate these values to the international level proposing a framework for international cooperation on the Moon under the aegis of the US. Their idea is to enable private and public entities to pursue commercial activities on the Moon that will be regulated by creating “safe zones” to deconflict lunar activities, a controversial concept for Russia and China who see a privatization attempt in it contrary to the OST. In an unclassified briefing to Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos on the power competition taking place in the space domain, it was noted that Chinese academics are forecasting that operations in cislunar space beyond Earth orbit is going to be a $10 trillion a year industry, which could turn this into a space economic zone, raising concerns whether it may becomes the celestial equivalent of the South China Sea.

Author Robert Pfaltzgraff considers that although space has a unique geography, strategic principles that govern terrestrial geopolitical relationships nevertheless can be applied. States have behavioral characteristics, notably a quest for national security, that exist on Earth but that may also govern their behavior in space, thus opening the way for consideration of those theories about national interest as states acquire interests and capabilities in space. In this regard, strategist Everett Dolman provides a theory based on a geopolitical model. He concludes that, rather than co-operation, political and economic rivalry will be increasingly commonplace as space exploration moves forward where there will be strong incentives to put aside wishful thinking when it comes to the pursuit of power, wealth, and prestige. Such tension will replace formal legal regimes with others based on a balance of power. Therefore, the necessity of capturing strategically advantageous positions in space if one wishes to establish control. Just like any other geopolitical theories of Mahan and Mackinder, Dolman considers the space as the heartland. He argues that by gaining control over this heartland, the outer space, one can gain control all over the world.

International Relations (IR) theories can help us understand the way the international systems work, as well as how nations engage with each other and view the world. One of them is structural realism, also termed “neorealism”, which concentrates much of its theorising around the central idea that a rational state adopts a worst-case perspective and always engages in balancing against rising states and adversaries to prevent the emergence of hegemonic powers, which endanger their security. Such an idea builds upon the fundamental concept of states existing within an anarchical system, where the absence of a hierarchical sovereign entity is the root of conflict and states are fully focused on maximizing security above all, given the risk of being annihilated or subdued. The examination of outer space through the lens of this IR theory sheds light on the salient structural imperatives for Russia and China to balance the US leading position in outer space due to the latent contingency that an imbalance in space would equate to significant detriments. Moreover, as an offshoot from structural realism, offensive realism considers anarchy in space requires states to strengthen their military capabilities to counter an opposing force and aim for space hegemony as the only way to assure their survival.

So far, in 2009 the human population of space reached its historical max of 13 people and, while it is still uncertain whether outer space will reinforce the competitive dimension or create the need for greater cooperation between contending groups, the proliferation of commercial space activity inevitably demands serious efforts on the international stage to update space legislation, work on de-escalatory solutions and deal with a space arms race so as to minimize political tensions which could easily spark conflict, considering war in this context would render available orbit unusable with devastating effects.