Space Strategy in the 21st Century

Theory and Policy

Eligar Sadeh, Eligar Sadeh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136226236
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This book offers an overview of space strategy in the 21st century.

The purpose of space strategy is to coordinate, integrate, and prioritize space activities across security, commercial, and civil sectors. Without strategy, space activities continue to provide value, but it becomes difficult to identify and execute long-term programs and projects and to optimize the use of space for security, economic, civil, and environmental ends. Strategy is essential for all these ends since dependence on, and use of, space is accelerating globally and space is integrated in the fabric of activities across all sectors and uses.

This volume identifies a number of areas of concern pertinent to the development of national space strategy, including: intellectual foundations; political challenges; international cooperation and space governance; space assurance and political, organizational, and management aspects specific to security space strategy. The contributing authors expand their focus beyond that of the United States, and explore and analyse the international developments and implications of national space strategies of Russia, China, Europe, Japan, India, Israel, and Brazil.

This book will be of much interest to students of space power and politics, strategic studies, foreign policy and International Relations in general.

1Space and Strategy

From Theory to Policy

James Clay Moltz¹

An increasing criticism of U.S. space activities – especially, in the context of China’s emergence as a significant actor in human spaceflight and military space activities over the past decade – is that the United States lacks a space strategy. U.S. programs seem to proceed in fits and starts. There are arguments about whether or not to go back to the Moon and how to do so. Heated debates take place in the United States Congress and the Department of Defense (DOD) about how best to defend U.S. space assets in a future environment described by the 2011 National Security Space Strategy as “increasingly congested, contested, and competitive.”² Some analysts argue that the United States has “gone soft” in what will inevitably be a military-dominated competition, where losing will mean facing ultimate submission to a superior and better-organized space power.³ Gordon Chang argues that China already possesses an effective strategy for space: to “dominate” this new environment.⁴ Some analysts argue that the United States should have a similar strategy, even at the risk of setting up a titanic struggle for eventual “control” of space.⁵

By contrast, other analysts see the United States’ failure as not lying primarily in the security arena, but, instead, as caused by its excessive expenditure of funds on the military and intelligence space sectors, when compared to broader civil and commercial space activities. They argue that the United States should reorder its priorities by adopting “a comprehensive space strategy that simultaneously addresses its leadership in manned space exploration, maintains a healthy aerospace industry to accomplish its goals, and protects its security interests.”⁶

What these two very different schools of thought agree on is that the United States is floundering in space. Yet there is considerable debate as to where it should focus its funding, what cause-and-effect relationships will affect future space activities, and what its ultimate goals should be.

This chapter tackles both the conceptual and empirical dimensions of this general topic through a series of four linked questions: (1) What is “strategy” and how does it relate to space? (2) What relevant lessons might we learn from analyzing a better-known field, specifically, nuclear strategy during the Cold War? (3) What attempts have been made to develop a U.S. space strategy to date and why have they not been successful? (4) What are the prerequisites for constructing a more effective U.S. space strategy for the future?

Notably, in the United States’ policy community, one hears the lament: “if only we had a strategy” for space. There is too often, however, a facile assumption that having any U.S. strategy for space is better than having none. This chapter argues that such “conventional wisdom” is misleading. While current U.S. disorder and a lack of space priorities are both serious problems, choosing a national strategy for space that is too costly relative to other national goals, causes harmful reactions by others, or that relies on premature concepts or technologies could be equally, if not more, damaging to U.S. national interests in space. This chapter suggests instead that the United States must first develop a more thorough understanding of the real requirements for an effective space strategy. Only then can it move forward with confidence toward crafting one. Fortunately, in the process of doing so, it is likely to “think smarter” about space, even in the absence of a fully elaborated strategy.

A key point that this chapter develops is the notion that, given emerging international trends in space, adopting a purely national strategy will become increasingly difficult and counterproductive. Specifically, with the growing importance of international cooperation in space for reducing costs and dealing with shared problems in this highly interdependent environment, alliances, networks, and transnational ties may become the true test of a state’s “power” in space, rather than, as in the past, only its own national assets. In this sense, effective leadership in space coalition-building and compatibility with other countries’ goals may become critical to the success of any future national strategy.

Finally, serious thinking about cause-and-effect relationships and action–reaction dynamics cannot be ignored. Too often, purported strategists make the mistake of adopting simplistic assumptions of “decisive” U.S. moves and static foreign reactions. Such thinking is unrealistic and will cause the United States to fail in anticipating the actual future of space activity. Indeed, given the global spread of space technology, the complex dynamics of international interactions are likely to become even more important as space moves further from the bipolar U.S.–Russian context into a new multipolar space structure, influenced by additional actors, such as China, Europe, India, and Japan.

With these caveats in mind, this chapter first briefly reviews what the concept of strategy means. Next, this chapter undertakes a comparative review of some of the “lessons” that might be drawn from nuclear strategy during the Cold War from 1945 to 1991, where there is a relatively longer track record and the benefit of declassified information about the thinking of both sides. The third section of the chapter reviews the practice of space policy and attempts at strategy since 1958 to the present, as well as more recent suggestions regarding space strategy from the academic literature. As will be shown, the period of the Moon race from 1961 to 1969 is arguably as close as the United States has ever come to a space strategy; however, the eventual U.S. success revealed this strategy’s ultimate limitations. Finally, the chapter considers how the United States might formulate a space strategy in the future, and what pitfalls it should seek to avoid in doing so. The main point is that forward-leaning approaches that recognize the unique characteristics of space dynamics and the increasing influence of economic globalization are likely to be more successful than backward-looking strategies attempting to mimic or adapt military principles that worked in other environments in other times. Also, contrary to much current thinking, a successful strategy in space may have more to do with mustering the funding and organizational skills that it took to build the inter-state highway system than in organizing the military forces needed to storm the beaches of Normandy during World War II.

Space and the Concept of Strategy

What “strategy” means depends on the field of study and, in some respects, on the analyst. People speak of the concept of strategy in such varied fields as public health, anti-terrorism, business, trade, personal relationships, foreign policy, and national security affairs. Space is complex, in this regard, because any discussion of strategy must either develop itself as a subset of some other existing strategy, such as nuclear deterrence or the national security strategy, or make the case that space should be independent. To date, space has largely been treated as a subset of other strategies, but it is beginning to outgrow these limitations. At the same time, despite the desire for a separate space strategy, analysts have had trouble defining the concept of “space power,” with a major 2007 study by the National Defense University concluding that it is probably premature to come up with a theory of space power due to the limits of experience in this realm to date and an unclear understanding of the nature of power in space and whether it is independent from other forms of military power.⁷

Still, it is important to start with a definition of strategy. According to Peter Paret, “Strategy is the use of armed force to achieve the military objectives and, by extension, the political purpose of the war.”⁸ Obviously, such a definition is too narrow to be of use to space, unless one is seeking only a military space strategy. This chapter argues, given the major civil and commercial elements of space activity that matter to space power, that any true strategy for space needs to be broader. Edward Luttwak defines strategy as “the application of method and ingenuity in the use of both persuasion and force.”⁹ This definition is better for space, but it seems to lack a focus, that is, “method and ingenuity” for what purpose and toward what goal?

This chapter proposes a more focused definition of strategy as: a calculated plan for organizing and deploying resources in pursuit of an over-arching goal in consideration of known and expected cause-and-effect relationships. This definition makes several assumptions. First, that the field in question has recognized parameters and is independent enough from other fields of activity to have its own plan. Second, it assumes that careful study of the implications of a series of actions has been undertaken and that the plan is going to be played out over time. In space, this will involve decades and generations, not simply months or years, because of the need to organize resources often a decade in advance of any large-scale effort, such as would be required to settle the Moon, or plan a manned flight to Mars. Third, it assumes that a comprehensive strategy is not limited to military affairs, which fits for space given its significant civil and commercial aspects. Finally, this definition does not exclude drawing on the resources of international partners. In space, individual countries are unlikely to be able to afford the kind of major construction and maintenance costs needed to develop a working lunar, Martian, or orbital infrastructure, thus forcing some form of cost sharing and the political planning and ongoing consultations that would have to accompany such activities. To date, this has occurred among the members of the International Space Station (ISS), which, despite its problems, may become at least an initial model for future large-scale activities in space. On the other hand, extending such cooperation into military space has not occurred, due to enduring mistrust among some major spacefaring countries.

What can we Learn from Nuclear Strategy?

While these two fields do not offer a perfect match, this section seeks to determine what the United States might learn of relevance to future space strategy from the experience of nuclear strategy from 1945 to 1991. The two fields are comparable in a number of ways: they involve the development and application of high-cost, advanced technology; they attempt to deal with hypothetical events, such as nuclear war and space war, as well as the settling of other planets¹⁰; they involve high-prestige national programs; they call upon countries to rally major intellectual and even spiritual resources for what is perceived as an important national struggle; and they involve the participation of allies with whom the United States must cooperate and, in some cases, defend. While there are also major differences, such as space’s status as a new “medium” of human activity,¹¹ a brief review of U.S. nuclear strategy during the Cold War highlights a number of potentially useful points for consideration in developing space strategy.

In its early years, during the late 1940s, nuclear strategy was a subset of an enhanced conventional strategy, as the weapons had to be delivered by potentially vulnerable aircraft, the United States possessed a nuclear monopoly, and the number of nuclear weapons remained small.¹² These forces were seen under President Truman as weapons of last resort. U.S. policy did not threaten pre-emptive nuclear use against adversaries, and the United States lacked even a clear deterrent policy linked to its nuclear arsenal. But, after the first Soviet nuclear test in 1949, and the worsening of Cold War divisions following the victory of communist forces in China, nuclear strategy began to emerge into its own field.

With President Eisenhower’s New Look policy, a strategy of massive retaliation was adopted, implying both a deterrent role for nuclear weapons and a major retaliatory function upon warning of an impending conflict. The New Look added tactical weapons to the mix in the belief that being able to respond at all levels of defense would boost deterrence. But Soviet leaders saw the growing asymmetry in nuclear numbers as offensively oriented, and, therefore, a security threat, leading them, after Premier Khrushchev’s ouster in 1964, to engage in a major and sustained nuclear build-up. In response, President Kennedy and Secretary of Defense McNamara sought to stabilize the arms race by experimenting with doctrines of “city avoidance” and “counterforce.” They also emphasized a strategy of Flexible Response, aimed at ratcheting down the certainty of full-scale nuclear war although the systems deployed to make limited war possible seemed threatening as well. The Soviet Union, however, did not seem to be responding, and, indeed, had accelerated its nuclear build-up. Eventually, these sophisticated approaches were abandoned in favor of the perceived stabilizing effects of a strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).

Interestingly, as the United States moved toward MAD and the beginnings of a policy aimed at limiting ballistic missile defenses, due to their feared destabilizing effects, talks with the Soviet Union revealed very significant differences in thinking about nuclear war. Where McNamara had believed that U.S. signaling was clear and that limits could relatively easily be established to create rules for nuclear war to reduce lethality, the Soviet side saw no such picture. Indeed, the Soviet Union had failed to internalize any clear limits on nuclear war, although its leaders believed that defenses were “more moral” than offensive systems. This experience highlighted the subjectivity of nuclear strategy and its abstraction from reality, despite the major national expenditures involved and the extremely high consequences of the outcomes. Nevertheless, in 1968, the two sides did agree that proliferation of nuclear weapons represented a shared risk that they needed to cooperate in opposing. This collaboration took the form of joint support for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and pressure on allies and friends not to develop their own nuclear arsenals. These bilateral contacts and negotiations helped facilitate a process that would eventually lead to the first nuclear arms control agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union.

After the signing of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) I agreement, limiting strategic launch vehicles, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, limiting nationwide ballistic missile defenses, the two sides seemed to have reached an expanded consensus on nuclear causes and effects, including the sagacity of an offensive-dominated nuclear environment ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: towards space strategy
• 1. Space and strategy: from theory to policy
• 2. Political challenges of space strategy
• 3. International cooperation and space governance strategy
• 4. Strategy for space assurance
• 5. Strategy and the security space enterprise
• 6. Space strategy and strategic management
• 7. Space economics and commerce in a strategic context
• 8. Space launch capabilities and strategic considerations
• 9. Earth observations and space strategy
• 10. Policy and strategic considerations of the Russian space program
• 11. China’s space strategy and policy evolution
• 12. European experiences with space policies and strategies
• 13. Japan’s space strategy: diplomatic and security challenges
• 14. Space policy and strategy of India
• 15. Israel’s space strategy
• 16. Planning and strategic orientations of the Brazilian space program
• Index