“Assault on the Sky”

from Limes 5/2004

By Lucio Caracciolo

There is no sovereignity on the earth without access to space. Since October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite into orbit, geopolitics has acquired a fourth dimension. It is not limited to the analysis of conflicts for the control of terrestrial space—land, sea, air—but must integrate the cosmic Space into its reflections, in particular the area of orbit. Far from representing the “province of all mankind”, as in the Treaty on Outer Space baptized by the United Nations in 1967 (see note 1), the cosmos is a stake in the competition between states.

The spatial projection of the planetary conflict is demonstrable primarily a contrario. If pushing ourselves to know and travel the universe was the greatest glory of the human race, bound together by the impulse to know, we should not stress the relation between geopolitical competition on Earth and development of space missions. Instead, the scientific exploration of the cosmos is a function of the contest for its control. The greater the tensions between earthly powers, the stronger their investments in Space. Neil Armstrong’s involuntary oxymoron, when with the gesture of a conquistador he plants the American flag on the Moon just after having described his undertaking as “one giant leap for mankind” (June 20, 1969), expresses the interlacing of science and power that marks the epic deed of the astronaut.

Without the Cold War, we would not have experienced the intense cosmonautical activity of the 1960’s and 70’s. Perhaps man would still not have set foot on the Moon. Thus, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the investment curve and space missions have declined towards their lowest point. Public opinion in America and other space powers is concerned with more earthly matters. The Columbia shuttle disaster ( February 1, 2003) and the inglorious decline of the International Space Station symbolize the crisis. America needs to feel the pressure of challengers to hurl itself into conquest of the cosmos: China, Russia and even the European allies.

Why does space interest the protagonists of planetary geopolitics? For reasons of prestige, wealth and security. Sputnik and Jurij Gagarin gave pride and radiation to the Soviet Union. The fascination of communism and the myth of the Soviet superpower had multiplied. Some American leaders feared that the imminent Soviet overtaking of the US prophesized by Nikita Khrushchev had come to pass. Today, now that the United States dominates the orbital Space, Bush has felt the need to soothe his compatriots about the determination of the American government to defend its primacy in that sphere: US astronauts should return to the Moon before 2020 to launch themselves towards Mars and beyond.

A place at the table of Space powers is the ambition of a variety of countries. Thus, China has celebrated the first orbital mission of the taikonaut, Ywang Liwei (October 15, 2003), as an exhibition of its ascent within the international hierarchies. Russia defends, as much as it can, its rank as great space power inherited from the Soviet Union. Analogous ambitions animate France, space leader in Europe. More recently, further down the list, are states upheld by a certain idea of “greatness”, like Brazil, India, Japan and even Kazakhstan, who in the words of Prime Minister Daniyal Akhmetov aspires to “become a real space power” (see note 2). And Iran will be the first Islamic nation to launch itself into the cosmos when, next May, it sends its satellite Mesbah into orbit (see note 3).

As for economic interests, they are already today notable and could prove enormous if the hypotheses of utilization of the resources of celestial bodies were demonstrated as feasible.
The moon is rich in minerals like aluminum, iron, calcium, titanium, besides silicon and perhaps gold. One dreams of the use of lunar Helium-3 to build nuclear fusion reactors destined to forever relieve our worries over clean energy. Without going far beyond the terrestrial atmosphere, satellites for telecommunication, navigation and observation of the Earth form the indispensable strategic nerve system of the more developed economies and favors their interdependence. The global space sector valued at about 144 billion dollars in 2003, with the United States safely in the lead, followed by the Europeans in the civilian field (see note 4).
Of the three poles of space activity dominant today—launch, observation of our planet and telecommunications—the first remains a bastion of public support, the second widens the synergies between the state and private sectors, while the last is the most open to the free market (see note 5). In the not-too distant future space tourism could develop as well based on its ability to arouse the interest of courageous entrepreneurs. Sir Richard Branson has launched Virgin Galactic, space version of his airlines, and expects to launch his first vessel into the cosmos, the VSS Enterprise, by 2007. For just 115 thousand pounds, one will be able to spend more than four minutes in Space, at about 100 kilometers above (see note 6).

To link grandeur with economy, the strategies of security. In American military jargon, Space is the ultimate high ground (see note 7). The planners at the Pentagon concentrate on terrestrial Space—from the lowest possible orbit to the geostationary altitude (about 36 thousand km)—because there they operate observation and navigation satellites and there future spatial weapons should be arranged in order to hit earthbound targets. This spatial region is presently subdivided into two categories: the low orbits, between 150 and 800 km high, and the medium orbits, from 800 to about 36 thousand km. In the first section, among other things, earthly reconnaissance satellites operate and astronauts navigate; in the second is the GPS satellite system (Ground Positioning System), the American standard that allows them to determine the position of people and objects on the ground—a decisive resource for controlling the field of battle.

Officially banned by international law, the military use of space is now underway.
Today, Space-based intelligence is above all regarded as a strategic aspect of field operations. The Gulf War of 1991 is considered the first satellite war in history. Twelve years later, in the course of campaign against Saddam, the United States had to confront rudimentary attempts to disrupt GPS—the first attack on the American domination of terrestrial Space. As far as the positioning of weapons of kinetic energy and lasers in the lower orbits, for many it is only a matter of time. If then the US missile defense project (NMD) takes form, the domination of near Space will be vital, given that enemy vectors should be intercepted and destroyed from there.

In 1996, the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Space Command, General Joseph Ashby, had explained that the American armed forces were so dependent on satellites, as to encourage future enemies to hit them. Thus the imperative to protect them: “We will fight from Space and in Space…One day we will hit earthbound targets—ships, aircraft, objects on the ground—from Space. We will hit targets in Space from Space.” (see note 8). The objective is to maintain total control of orbital Space. The “stellar sheriff” will thus be able to monitor all traffic from and on the Earth and if necessary block it, hitting the launching pads.

To prevent a “Space Pearl Harbor”, evoked by the American Commission on Space chaired by Donald Rumsfeld (2001), the Bush administration has sought to coordinate the efforts of the Pentagon and the giants of the industrial sector (Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and Raytheon). The civilian programs of NASA at times have a military function: the Sea-Wide Field Studies satellite systems, for example, were used to identify the Taliban militias during the Afghan campaign. The proliferation of dual technologies—used for pacific as much as military reasons—reveals the American effort to conserve and rather accentuate supremacy in the cosmos, assuring its own firms a dominant market quota in the satellite industry. It is the extraterrestrial face of American unilateralism.

Every empire has its bards. The American one in Space is no exception. Scholars like Dandridge Cole, James Oberg and more recently Everett C. Dolman have theorized ends and means, mixing the ascetic prose of the scientist with the poetry of the prophet, in the wake of precursors of modern geopolitics like Nicholas Spykman or Halford Mackinder. What they all have in common is the ambition to draw conclusions from description and to set down “scientific laws” of Space power as an extension of its terrestrial counterpart. The metaphors go on ad infinitum. The most abused represents the penetration of orbital Space as a modern version of oceanic exploration and thus of the maritime expansion of the British and later the American power: “Space is the high seas of tomorrow”, recites a document from the Heritage Foundation, an influential think tank of the Republican right (see note 9).

The prototype of these elaborations is the Panama Hypothesis of 1961. Cole sounded out 423 leaders of the astronaut community about his theory by which in Space there would be found areas that would one day do for cosmic transportation what the Panama Canal did for transoceanic navigation. According to the author, 80% of those he interviewed agreed with him. Transferring the theories of maritime power of Alfred Thayer Mahan into Space, Cole ventured to sketch out the human colonization of certain celestial bodies, according to the strategy of “stepping stones”, useful here for fording the cosmos. Cole and his disciples set the course for the concept of the “ultimate high ground” (see note 10).

Meanwhile, Dolman—a teacher at the School of Advanced Airpower Studies at the air base in Maxwell, Alabama—in his Astropolitik, drafts a general theory of spatial geopolitics, also modeled on the classics, including the Politische Geographie of the German school. Its motto “neoclassical astropolitics”, projects Mackinder and Spykman into Space: “He who controls the lower orbits controls the near Space around Earth. He who controls that Space dominates the Earth. He who dominates the Earth determines the future of mankind.” (see note 11). A thesis totally irrefutable in its perfect circularity.

But Dolman, like every academic who seeks the ear of the powerful, is not interested in ideas alone but in their application. His philological precision (spoiled by citations that claim to be Latin but share little with the language of Cicero) aims to awaken America from the torpor that succeeded the victory over the USSR, that threatens to undermine its Spatial primacy. For Dolman, US supremacy is morally just, a celestial amplification of Manifest Destiny. As he puts it, “the keeper of Space is the most benign State that has ever attempted to dominate a major part of the world.” (see note 12). Besides, Dolman sharply adds, the strategic monopoly of Space is the best guarantee of peace—for lack of adversaries. To guarantee it, it is necessary to occupy the strategic nodes of future commercial Space routes and guarding the lines of military communication in the cosms, according to the paradigm experienced in the oceans by the US and British maritime powers. It is the case, for example, of Hohmann’s orbits of transfer and especially the Lagrangian points, where the gravitational fields of the Earth and the Moon reciprocally cancel each other out, allowing an object to remain permanently stable—an optimal position for future Space colonies (see note 13).

But to revitalize American interest in the cosmos it is necessary to make profits, essential for maintaining strategic dominance. Dolman suggests to his government that they withdraw from the current judicial Space regime—a fictio like any branch of international law, of course, though a useful fig leaf for propagandistic of ideological employment. With its self-legitimated dominance of Space near to the Earth, Washington would provide for parceling it out “like the common pastures of Old England. The “regions of Space” would be divided amongst nations on the basis of parameters such as population or GNP, in order to render them profitable in the eyes of aspiring cosmic entrepreneurs. The geostationary belt could be divided into 360 slots, each one assigned to one state recognized by the UN (a perhaps involuntary incentive for geopolitical disintegration, seeing that the United Nations covers only 191 members). Furthermore: “We could section the Moon in some thousands of segments” and assign them to industrious private citizens (see note 14).

Dolman’s astropolitics is not all eccentric given the Bush administration’s orientation. Especially its most inspired neoconservatives, like Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who made public reference to the imperative of controlling the “ultimate high ground”. As Secretary of Aviation James G. Roche said, Space “is a wartime area of growing fascination”, a “three-dimensional chessboard” (see note 15) on which the Pentagon will have to wisely move its pieces, coordinating them with ground, naval and aerial weapons.

So too, even for the allocation and the commercialization of Space. It may be the memory of the colonization of the Far West, that made this subject such a fascinating one for American experts. A model of this thought is a recent article by Sam Dinkin in Space Review, dedicated to a ingenious mechanism for indirectly affirming property rights in the cosmos using NGOs (naturally sponsored by the US government). In such a way “we will extend an American way to Space business.” (see note 16).

“For the United States, Space is an instrument of domination. Europe should propose a different model: Space as a public good” (see note 17). In these words of Jean-Jacques Dordain, head of the European Space Agency (ESA), are distilled decades of communitarian rhetoric, referring not just to the cosmos. Conflict, not necessarily military, seems to have been erased by our mental horizons. As if a commendable act of will—the European negation of war—produced universal peace. The prescription becomes description: since in our mode of understanding relations among peoples one aims to delegitimize war, we therefore incline to deny its existence. Thus it happens, that for many Europeans, the “war on terrorism” seems an American peculiarity.

The European pacifist ideology, rooted above all in Germany and in Italy, has long prevented us from defining security objectives for Space programs. Still today, the taboo is not completely obsolete. The sum total of the European national budgets in this field was just 650 million euro in 2003, against 17.5 billion dollars spent by the US.A much greater difference than that between European public spending in the civilian Space sector (5.3 billion euro) and the corresponding US budget (16.5 billion dollars) - (see note 18).

Only recently have European political and industrial leaders—not public opinion—begun to correct the damage. The European Union proclaims its intention of acting as “global actor”, freeing itself from American tutelage. Gradually they are affirming the view that for us Europeans, there can be no sovereignty if Space power is relinquished. This conviction is historically strong in France, where the sage of European military projects in the fourth dimension, Air Brigade General Daniel Gavoty, last year produced a document, eloquently titled: “Metasysteme Spatial Global Europeen de Securite et de Defense. ”For Gavoty, there is no alternative to the military use of Space if we want to regain “the strategic independence of Europe.” (see note 19).

This policy has two names for now—the Galileo (satellite radio-navigation) and GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) programs—and a provisional strategic laboratory, the Spasec panel, that reflects on how to combine military and civilian Space projects in the name of security (which is to say defense from enemy threats, improper terminology as far as Europeans are concerned).

Galileo and GMES have painted the respective dual technologies—civilian and military—with an economic, environmentalist and universalist veneer. That has not prevented the United States from reading a sinister intent to compete with GPS into the desire for European emancipation from American capabilities. A much more dangerous temptation after China carved out its niche in the Galileo ambitwith the help of a great amount of euro (200 million). Washington does not tolerate the transfer of technology, in some cases more advanced than their own to the Middle Kingdom, considered the only obstacle to American global supremacy in the 21st century. The Bush administration’s style of issuing a series of public and private threats followed by diplomatic reconstruction has only reinforced the European conviction to develop their own capacity for collecting satellite information with high strategic value.

If France remains the mainstay of European Space politics, seconded by Germany, Italy defends its tradition of excellence and reliability given evidence to since the San Marco Project, that has made it number three on the continent in this sector. Our country has a significant role in Galileo and GMES. And it intends to reinvigorate it, also favoring integration between public and private. A rather ambitious idea is codified in the acronym Limes (Land/Sea Integrated Monitoring for European Security, or better Limitum Instrumenta Maximam ad Europae Securitatem). It is desirable to construct an Italian-led European consortium for the development in the manner of GMES of our capacity for surveillance of the European Union’s maritime and land borders. Because the threats of terrorism, the diffusion of weapons of mass destruction and organized crime, often interconnected, merit being watched by European eyes and with European instruments.

Europe builds itself from the height, or so teaches classical Europeanism. The house of the European Union was designed from the roof. In fact it appears unstable. While waiting to establish the foundations, an enlightened few think to anchor it to space, confederating scientific, technological, industrial and military resources in the name of security. The umpteenth illusion of replacing a European state that no one wants or no one can construct, or a genial diversion that will bring us closer to the objective of a European player on the global scene?

At the rear of the pack, we Europeans seem finally disposed to admit that the near Space is not the one the treaties recite, but a place of competition—and thus also of collaboration.
A political environment, not a more natural one, contaminated by the incursions of man and his celestial objects. The geopolitics of Space is an extension of that on the ground. It is rather in fact its handmaiden. Those who think of Space rest their feet on the ground and reason from national and subnational points of view.

The cosmos is the ultimate chessboard on which political actors on Earth exercise their ambitions, promote and break alliances on the basis of benefits they provide. Such and approach is practically universal, independent of the power of the subject that exercises it. In December of 1976, some equatorial countries—Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, Uganda, Zaire (today Congo), Kenya and Indonesia—extended motu proprio their respective sovereignty over the sky above them, up to the geostationary belt. The relative “Declaration of Bogotá” refers to the “principle of the hinterland” evoked at the time of the discoveries, on the basis of which he who possessed the coast could claim for themselves the internal regions, however indeterminate. For Brazil and associates, the atmosphere is the regione costiera of Outer Space, which they hold to be correlative cosmic hinterland. It is a widespread opinion that such symbolic appropriations violate the operative Space regime—a very common sport, since they don’t risk sanctions—and have no hope of ever being recognized by the rest of the world. It remains that a handful of former terrestrial colonies intend to make good their losses colonizing Space (see note 20).

As far as the protagonists who follow the US superpower are concerned, their Space geopolitics are less symbolic and more bellicose. For a power still militarily fearful like Russia to arm itself in Space is a serious business. So too for China, whose military considers star wars inevitable and is hurriedly equipping themselves, especially in the field of anti-satellite weaponry. That Moscow and Beijing are promoting a new treaty at the United Nations designed to publicly announce each armament of the cosmos is a diplomatic polemic designed to gain time to advance on America and sympathy among world public opinion. They are betting that it will come to nothing or that the “law” will be easily avoided.

Will the intentions of the sincere advocates of turning Space into a sanctuary as res communis find application one day? Or is the hope that the celestial vastness will push men to collaborate for the pacific exploitation of resources only smoke and mirrors? It is not written. But it would be necessary to reverse our point of view, watching the Earth from Space, not Space from the Earth, with the eyes of astronauts. Images of our fragile planet recorded from the cosmos—a Noah’s Ark floating in the universe—could induce us to reconsider the millennial rules of territorial competition among rival groups and awaken in each of us a sense of belonging to the species. Even more so if we encountered other forms of live, other intelligences in the universe.

Sun Laiyan, administrative delegate from the Chinese Space Agency, perhaps animated by similar suggestions, proposes to put thinkers in orbit: “If a philosopher flies in the cosmos, this experience will give him a new point of view”. And he adds: “Especially if it is a Chinese philosopher.” (see note 21).

No, the cosmos is not cosmopolitan.


  1. Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, 27/1/1967, strongly endorsed on 10 October 1967, ratified in the end by 98 countries and signed by 27. See http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/SpaceLaw/outersptxt.html
  2. “Kazakhstan Intends to Become ‘Real Space Power’—Premier”, BBC Monitoring Service, 10/9/2004.
  3. “Iran Plans to Launch Satellite in 2005”, Los Angeles Times, 4/9/2004.
  4. EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY – COUNCIL, The European Space Sector in a Global Context. ESA’s Annual Analysis 2003, Paris 2004, p. 24.
  5. Cfr. A.-M. MALAVIALLE, X. PASCO, I. SOURBES-VERGER, Espace et puissance, Paris 1999, Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, pp. 11-12 e passim.
  6. R. WRAY, “Virgin moves its empire into space”, The Guardian, 28/9/2004.
  7. Cfr. B.S. LAMBETH, “Mastering the Ultimate HighGround. Next Steps in the Military Uses of Space”, Santa Monica-Arlington-Pittsburgh 2003, Rand.
  8. Cfr. J. HERONEMA, “A.F. Space Chief Calls War in Space Inevitable”, Space News, 12-18/8/1996, p. 4.
  9. B.T. JOHNSON, “The New Space Race: Challenges for U.S. National Security and Free Enterprise”, The Heritage Foundation, Backgrounder n. 1316, 25/8/1999.
  10. Cfr. D. COLE, D. COX, The Challenge of the Planetoids, Philadelphia, PA, 1964, Chilton Press, pp. 5- 6.
  11. E.C. DOLMAN, Astropolitik. Classical Geopolitics in the Space Age, Portland, Oregon, 2002, Frank Cass Publishers, p. 8.
  12. Ibid., p. 158.
  13. Ibid., pp. 72-76.
  14. Ibid., p. 178.
  15. D. MILES, “Iraq Jamming Incident Underscores Lessons about Space”, Department of Defense, 15/9/2004.
  16. S. DINKIN, «Property Rights and Space Commercialization», Space Review, 10/5/2004.
  17. Cit. in J. WILDSON, «Mission to Planet Rumsfeld», The Guardian, 1/3/2004.
  18. Cfr. EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY – COUNCIL, op. cit., pp. 44 e 46.
  19. EUROPEAN COMMISSION, “Daniel Gavoty – Space and European Defence”, 24/6/2003, in http://europa.eu.int/comm/space/interviews/article_610_en.html
  20. Cfr. E.C. DOLMAN, op. cit., pp. 74 e 134-135.
  21. Cfr. “China Surpasses Japan in the Space Race”, The English Pravda, 14/8/2004, in http://english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/379/13758_china.html