Space Strategy in the 21st Century: Theory and Policy

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 great value, but remain removed from the overall strategic picture of the United States and other spacefaring states, and it becomes increasingly difficult to identify and execute long-term programs, projects, and goals and objectives. Optimizing the use of space for security, economic, civil, and environmental ends is essential, as dependence on, and use of, space is accelerating in the United States and worldwide, and space is increasingly integrated in the fabric of activities across all sectors and uses. This volume identifies a number of areas of concern critical to the development of space strategy: intellectual foundations; political challenges; international cooperation and space governance; space assurance and political, organizational, and management aspects specific to security space strategy; strategic management; strategic context of space economics and commerce; strategic considerations regarding space launch capabilities; Earth observations in space strategy development; and international developments and implications of national space strategies and policies among spacefaring states other than the United States, including Russia, Europe, Israel, India, and Japan. The book addresses the breadth of the intellectual foundations spacefaring states need to account for in the development of space strategy based on the assumption that the development of space strategy will provide for better optimization of the outcomes that spacefaring states seek to realize in the space domain. A number of working assumptions are put forward and assessed in the book, such that each chapter is structured logically and integrated around a set of coherent central themes. This book will be of much interest to students of space power and politics, strategic studies, foreign policy and International Relations in general.