Abstract
Outer Space is increasingly congested, contested and competitive. If this American statement from 2011 is increasingly true, it doesn’t necessarily imply that war in space is inevitable. While satellites play an important and, for some, strategic role from a national interest perspective, the characteristics of the space environment prevent such a simplistic prognosis. Sovereignty, whether for legal or simply physical reasons, has no place in space. Likewise, potential large-scale offensive operations present serious drawbacks for international security. The issue of States’ relationships in space ought to be considered beyond the self-fulfilling prophecy of war in space.
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Notes
- 1.
105 signatories in December 2022.
- 2.
This reference to peaceful purposes is found in Articles IV, IX and X.
- 3.
New York Times of October 5, 1957, Times Magazine of October 14, 1957, Life Magazine of October 21, 1957, «La petite Lune Rouge des Soviétiques», in Paris Match of October 12, 1957.
- 4.
UN General Assembly, document A/38/194, August 22, 1983, annexed to the OTA report “Anti-Satellite Weapons, Countermeasures and Arms Control”, September 1985.
- 5.
The very small number of ASAT tests, around ten, shows the fundamental difference in approach compared to the hundreds of nuclear weapons tests carried out by the two countries.
- 6.
“Executive Summary”, in Report of the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization (Washington, DC: Commission to Assess United States National Security Space, January 11, 2001), pp. vii–xxxv.
- 7.
The last American firing of the twentieth century with an airborne missile was on 13 September 1985. The Soviet Union had announced a unilateral moratorium in 1983.
- 8.
StratCom’s autonomous Combatant Command was reinstated in 2018 by President Trump. It was then transformed into the Space Force in 2019 (Space Policy Directive-4 of February 19, 2019) and passed by Congress in the National Defense Authorization Act for 2020.
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Sourbès-Verger, I. (2023). Outer Space, War and Sovereignty. In: Daho, G., Richard, Y. (eds) War, State and Sovereignty. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33661-4_10
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