Live Encounters Magazine Volume One November-December 2024.
The Structure of the Global Space Race by Dr. Namrata Goswami.
A global space race is underway, focused on instituting a permanent human presence on the Moon, establishing mega-constellations in Low Earth Orbit (LEO),[1] and sending humans to Mars. While the normative and philosophical conversation around space is about common heritage,[2] common values, and common destiny,[3] the reality is much more complex and reflective of human nature: a focus on developing the means to build space for economic benefits, nationalism, and national interest, ensuring that space weaponization and militarization do not devastate our planet while at the same time recognizing the national security contribution of space assets, ensuring that humanity has the space enabled tools to guide itself in terms of weather forecasting, predicting crop yield patterns, understanding climate change, asteroid detection, and deflection, and accessing solar energy from space.
In this world, it’s just not the United States’s NASA or the erstwhile Soviet Union Space Program that dominates the discussions around space, as it was during the Cold War. Today, we have several new Major Powers like China, India,[4] and Russia; Middle Powers like Japan, South Korea, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Brazil, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Emerging Powers,[5] like Indonesia, Ghana, Argentina, Ethiopia, Pakistan, that one day will elevate themselves to Middle and Major Powers if they continue to sustain their interest and funding for their space programs. The status of a nation as a Major, Middle, or Emerging Power is not fixed. It depends on what their policymakers prioritize, their political ideology, financial commitments, the environment for commercial space innovation, space education, and technology development.
An example of change in status is the United Kingdom of England, Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, once a Major colonial Power, now relegated to the status of a Middle Power. Nations like India, devastated by nearly 200 years of colonial exploitation by the United Kingdom,[6] are now on their path to re-emergence and national renewal. China and India are the Major Powers of today but such statuses are not fixed. Change in human history is continuous and inevitable, as is the story of our planet Earth when we examine and understand the arc of its evolution.[7]
Major Powers
What makes a country a Major Power in space? First of all, its overall influence affects the invisible structure of how international relations are conducted. Second, its ability to develop its education (in this case, space education), which requires technical and non-technical skills [scientists, artists, policymakers, strategists, military space specialists, engineers, historians, and lawyers], towards crafting that nation’s future. Developing specialized institutions, civilian, military, and commercial, is a core part of that status. To be called a Major Power in space requires the recognition of other Major Powers.[8] You simply cannot declare yourself to be a Major Power.
Major Powers act at all levels, international, institutional, regional, and national, to ensure they have the status to make their own choices and preferences and influence those of others. To achieve this, they may build coalitions, develop offensive, defensive, and deterrence capabilities, enhance their civilian and military space capacities, and invest in their commercial space capacities. Major Powers take concerted actions to build their space launch capacities, fund their educational structures, invest in long-term space technologies, integrate space into their economic development, and assume leadership towards building legal frameworks, nationally and globally. Today’s Major Powers include the United States (U.S.), China, India, and Russia. More importantly, they recognize each other as key players in the Space Race. This is evident, for instance, regarding the Moon and coalition building.
The U.S. initiated the Artemis Accords and Program;[9] China initiated the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS),[10] and the membership that mattered the most to their Lunar initiatives was India (a Major Power) joining the Artemis Accords,[11] while Russia joining the ILRS.[12] Major Powers, however, behave differently in their foreign policy behavior from Middle and Emerging Powers. They treasure independence and autonomy. You can witness this in China, Russia, and India’s decisions to be part of BRICS and in their discussions around developing a BRICS Space Consortium.[13]
Middle Powers
Middle Powers are those countries that are below the Major Powers but are influential in informing how the space race emerges.[14] They may take sides and influence how the Major Powers play their game, joining one Major Power initiative over another after determining which side offers them the best advantages.
Middle Powers push for their agendas in space, with a focus on equitable sharing, supporting responsible behavior in space, taking part in discussions around space resource utilization, space traffic management, and space debris removal at United Nations bodies like the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPOUS),[15] and the United Nations Office on Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) who conducts an annual conference on space security.[16] However, UN membership by Middle Powers does not mean they have equal power to determine the paths Major Powers take in space. They may act as constraining or enabling entities.
Sometimes, former Major Powers, that are now Middle Powers, like the UK, may take initiatives like introducing a UN Resolution on Responsible Behavior in Space (75/36),[17] but that may get pushback from Major Powers like China, and India.[18] Submitting a resolution may not be as consultative as it appears to be, and there could be major differences in words used to define an activity.[19] Major Powers are sensitive to moves by other Major Powers and Middle Powers to constrain their space development, specifically national security, and are highly resistant to pre-determined frameworks. We can witness this in the U.S.’s negative response to China and Russia’s move to develop a treaty framework for the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space. The U.S. position is that this move by China and Russia does not mitigate the gravest threats to satellites, which are ground-based anti-satellite weapons, that China and Russia are developing and testing.[20]
Emerging Powers
Emerging Powers are nations starting to recognize the importance of space but have not made the policy decisions, space education investments, and financial commitments toward building their space infrastructure. These nations, through their membership in the UN and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU),[21] aspire to secure their access to orbital slots and radio frequency spectrum allocations.[22] They take their membership in regional bodies like the Association of Southeast Asian (ASEAN) and the African Union (AU), seriously.
Emerging nations could become the Middle and Major Powers of tomorrow, depending on the kind of space policy vision, financial investments, space missions, and space education they commit to, today. An interesting example of a Middle Power that could be downgraded to an Emerging Power in Space is Australia, which has made decisions in recent years to scale back its investments in space.[23] Whereas, Emerging Space Powers like Indonesia, Mexico, Mongolia, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Kenya, Philippines, and Pakistan will play a major role and could become Middle Powers, in the future. The economic development of nations by 2050 will determine how they invest in space education and technologies that will have a deep impact on their lives.[24]
The Space Race today will determine the kind of future we live in. Space is a new activity in the six-million-year arc of human existence,[25] with our ability to access it starting in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik. The rules of the road, the UN treaties,[26] and the Guiding Principles for space will evolve as human activity has evolved and changed, including the role of state-based and registered private space sectors. Major, Middle, and Emerging Powers all have a role to play.
Nations will negotiate and bargain on how they determine, constrain, or enable the space activities of themselves and others. This will occur at three levels: domestic, regional, and international. There will be moments of competition and collaboration based on the values, preferences, and choices of individual nations and their societies. Space is not just about astronauts and Earth science. In the 2050 future, the utilization of space for societal advantage and the economy will inform space policy-making. The development of institutional mechanisms to promote civil, commercial, and military space will accelerate. In this, space education will play a vital role, in developing specialists and generalists.
The study of space power and its activities will be informed by the contending schools of international relations like Realism, Liberalism, Constructivism, and Critical Theory, but also Physics, Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry, and the Arts. There will also be growing challenges to West-originated International Relations Theorizing by the Major Powers of today, regarding their assumed universal explanatory value. Major Powers like China and India would develop their non-Western analytical frameworks, specifically,[27] involving their policymakers making day-to-day real hard decisions for the societies they represent and live within. While issues like a clear night sky, Space Traffic Management, Space Debris mitigation, Rules of behavior, Space Resource Utilization, the regulation of private actors, Multi-Domain Operations, and Military Doctrinal shifts will form a powerful force, societies will also look back to their histories, cultures, religion, and the lure of the unknown to develop and fund their space programs.
More awareness of the devastating asteroid hit 65 million years ago,[28] which resulted in the extinction of several species, would galvanize societies to invest seriously in planetary defense. Space is a global game for influence, workforce development, technology, and strategic impacts. That nation, and/or a combination of nations, with the best integration of strategy, tactic, vision, and a space-educated workforce will have an advantage.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views or opinions of any affiliated organizations.
[1] “China in Perspective: China’s New Mega-Constellation Marks Milestone in Satellite Internet”, Xinhua, August 08, 2024, https://english.news.cn/20240808/ef7d1b62fbfb4ea192f7433447a26499/c.html
[2] Naman Khatwani, “Common Heritage of Mankind in Outer Space”, Astropolitics, 17/2, 2019, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14777622.2019.1638679
[3] Zeeya Merali, “Our Manifest Destiny-In Space”, John Templeton Foundation, January 09, 2024, https://www.templeton.org/news/our-manifest-destiny-in-space
[4] Namrata Goswami, “Assessing Great Power Competition and the Role of Middle Powers in Outer Space through the Lens of Geoeconomics”, in Vinod K. Aggarwal and Tai Ming, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Geoeconomics and Economic Statecraft, 2024, https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/56064/chapter-abstract/467421027?redirectedFrom=fulltext
[5] Pablo Villar Bolanos, “Beyond the Final Frontier: Emerging Powers and Private Influence in Outer Space”, Security Distillery, April 26, 2024, https://thesecuritydistillery.org/all-articles/beyond-the-final-frontier-emerging-powers-and-private-influence-in-outer-space
[6] “Viewpoint: Britain Must Pay Reparations to India”, BBC, July 22, 2015, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-33618621
[7] Claude J. Allegre & Stephen H. Schneider, “Evolutions of Earth,” Scientific American, July 1, 2005, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evolution-of-earth/
[8] “China is Now a Major Space Power”, Wired, November 4, 2022, https://www.wired.com/story/china-is-now-a-major-space-power-tiangong-space-station/
[9] “The Artemis Accords Principles for a Safe, Peaceful, and Prosperous Future in Space”, NASA, https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-accords/
[10] “International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) Guide for Partnership, China National Space Administration, June 16, 2021, https://www.cnsa.gov.cn/english/n6465652/n6465653/c6812150/content.html
[11] U.S. Department of State, “The Republic of India Signs the Artemis Accords”, June 24, 2023, https://www.state.gov/the-republic-of-india-signs-the-artemis-accords/#:~:text=In%20a%20ceremony%20held%20at,sustainable%20and%20transparent%20space%20activity.
[12] Fan Anqi, “Putin Signs into Law Joint Building of Lunar Base with China as Beijing Expands Circle of Friends in Moon Exploration”, Global Times, June 13, 2024, https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202406/1314079.shtml#:~:text=Russian%20President%20Vladimir%20Putin%20on,with%20the%20latest%20effort%20being
[13] Sudhi Ranjan Sen, “PM Narendra Modi Suggests BRICS Space Group as Chnadrayaan-3 Heads to Moon”, The Economic Times, August 24, 2023, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/pm-narendra-modi-suggests-brics-space-group-as-chandrayaan-3-heads-to-moon/articleshow/102991720.cms?from=mdr
[14] David Elliot, “Middle Powers: What are they and Why do They Matter”, World Economic Forum, January 26, 2024, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/01/middle-powers-multilateralism-international-relations/
[15] United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, “Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space”, https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/copuos/index.html
[16] “Outer Space Security Conference 2023”, UNIDIR, September 13-14, 2023, https://unidir.org/event/outer-space-security-conference-2023-2/
[17] “Report of the Secretary-General on Reducing Space Threats Through Norms, Rules and Principles of Responsible Behavior (2021)”, United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, https://disarmament.unoda.org/topics/outerspace-sg-report-outer-space-2021/#:~:text=By%20resolution%2075%2F36%2C%20the,could%20be%20considered%20responsible%2C%20irresponsible
[18] 76th Session of the UNGA First Committee, New York Explanation of Vote of India on Draft Resolutions under “Outer Space” Cluster-Delivered by Ms. Subhashini Narayanan, Counsellor (Disarmament), https://pmindiaun.gov.in/public_files/assets/pdf/India_Explanation_NL3.pdf
[19] Resolution 75/36: Reducing Space Threats through Space Norms, Rules and Principles of Responsible Behavior, https://front.un-arm.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/India-Submission-on-Resolution-75-36-.pdf; Also see Permanent Mission of India to the UN, “75th Session of UNGA First Committee Explanation of Vote of India on Draft Resolution under “Outer Space” Cluster”, November 6, 2020, https://pminewyork.gov.in/IndiaatUNGA?id=NDA5NQ
[20] U.S. Mission to International Organization in Geneva, Statement by Ambassador Wood: The Threat Posed by Russia and China to Security of the Outer Space Environment, August 14, 2019, https://geneva.usmission.gov/2019/08/14/statement-by-ambassador-wood-the-threats-posed-by-russia-and-china-to-security-of-the-outer-space-environment/
[21] International Telecommunications Union, https://www.itu.int/en/Pages/default.aspx
[22] ITU-R: Managing the Radio Frequency Spectrum for the World”, ITU, https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/backgrounders/Pages/itu-r-managing-the-radio-frequency-spectrum-for-the-world.aspx;
[23] Colin Clark, “Critics Slam Aussie ‘Brutal Blow’ to Whack $1.2B on Space Spending”, Breaking Defense, July 10, 2023, https://breakingdefense.com/2023/07/critics-slam-aussie-brutal-blow-to-whack-1-2b-on-space-spending/
[24] PWC, “The World in 2050”, https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/research-insights/economy/the-world-in-2050.html
[25] Brian Handwerk, “An Evolutionary Timeline of Homo Sapiens’, Smithsonian Magazine, February 02, 2021, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/essential-timeline-understanding-evolution-homo-sapiens-180976807/
[26] United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, “Space Law Treaties and Principles”, https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties.html#:~:text=The%20%22Outer%20Space%20Treaty%22,force%20on%2010%20October%201967
[27] Ren Xiao, “Why there is Non-Western International Relations Theory”, The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 17/3, 2024, https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article-abstract/17/3/262/7689578?redirectedFrom=fulltext
[28] NASA, “Deep Impact and the Mass Extinction of Species 65 Million Years Ago”, https://science.nasa.gov/earth/deep-impact-and-the-mass-extinction-of-species-65-million-years-ago/
© Dr. Namrata Goswami
Dr. Namrata Goswami is an author and educator specializing in space policy, international relations, and ethnic identity. Currently, Dr. Goswami teaches at the Schriever and West Space Scholar Programs, the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University, and at the Joint Special Forces University. She is a guest lecturer at Emory University for seminars on Technology, Society & Governance, and India today. She worked as a Research Fellow at MP-Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi; a Visiting Fellow at Peace Research Institute, Oslo, Norway; La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia; University of Heidelberg, Germany; Jennings-Randolph Senior Fellow, United States Institute of Peace; and was a Fulbright Senior Fellowship Awardee.
She was awarded the Minerva grant by the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense to study great power competition in outer space. In April 2019, Dr. Goswami testified before the U.S-China Economic and Security Review Commission on China’s space program. Her co-authored book, Scramble for the Skies: The Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Outer Space was published in 2020 by Lexington Press; Rowman, and Littlefield.
Her book on The Naga Ethnic Movement for a Separate Homeland was published in 2020 by Oxford University Press. She has published widely including in The Diplomat, the Economic Times, The Washington Post, Ad Astra, Asia Policy, Live Encounters Magazine, Cairo Review. She was invited in November 2019 to share about her life and her work at a Tedx event held at the Rosa Parks Museum, in Montgomery, Alabama. https://thunderbird.asu.edu/about/people/staff-faculty/namrata-goswami