The Past, Present, and Future of Space Security

SPACE IS A UNIQUELY HOSTILE environment for humans and man-made spacecraft.The physics of space makes orbital objects transparent and requires that they move in predictable trajectories, heightening their possible vulnerability to attack by potential adversaries.The history of human activity in space, therefore, has heen characterized hy dangers from a number of hoth natural and man-made threats.Nevertheless, the first 50 years of space activity have passed without direct conflict in space and without the deployment of space-based weapons.How has this heen possible, and what are the prospects for the future?This article surveys the reasons for this relative success in space to date hy examining two key factors: the recognition hy the main space actors of shared threats posed to their space security, and the political willingness of state leaders to cooperate in diffusing these threats.'Neither of these two factors has heen inevitable at any point since 1957, and yet states have often exercised cooperative restraint.This is a positive outcome and even a surprising one, given the hostility ofthe early cold war years and the period from the late 1970s to the late 1980s.The core space security agreements, reached in the 1960s and early 1970s, endured throughout the cold war, as even the most hawkish of U.S. presidents and Soviet general secretaries found collective approaches to space security to he in their best interests.The 2002 U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty marked the first significant defection from this regime.While this action has spurred debates over space weapons, the main reason behind it stemmed more from non-space