Explicitly invoking a “Space Pearl Harbor” as a potential disaster the United
States must strive to avoid, the 2001 Report of the Commission to Assess United States
National Security Space Management and Organization urged action on “five matters of
key importance”. First among those recommendations is the “demand that U.S. national
security space interests be recognized as a top national security priority”. In making this
call, the Commission was speaking in terms increasingly familiar to the national security
community, including Congress. Indeed, the mandate of the Commission established in
the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 20003 was similarly framed:
The commission shall, concerning changes to be implemented over the
near-term, medium term and long-term that would strengthen United
States national security, assess the following: The manner in which
military space assets may be exploited to provide support for United States
military operations.
These statements are far from unusual. More than political rhetoric is involved, however,
as substantial resources are being invested in research and development, indicating
clearly that Earth’s orbital space is currently an object of military-security planning. The
United States’ strategic imaginary now includes securitization of, through, and from
orbital space under such rubrics as missile defense, space control, and force application
from space. Space weapons, then, are no longer just a fantasy, an unrealizable fiction.
They are rapidly becoming a very real possibility.
This geopolitical vision, unlike those of previous eras, regards control of Earth’s
orbital space as strategically crucial. While it is surely true that efforts to bring grand
strategic visions into being often fall short, or even founder, it is also the case that pursuit
of them has the potential to have very significant consequences for the structure and
stability of the international system. The question that arises is: What are likely effects
on the future international system of the active pursuit, and perhaps the actualization, of
this new geopolitical vision of control over orbital space by the United States?
We approach the policy as expressive of a geopolitical strategic vision, and, accordingly,
turn initially to the analytical tools of geopolitical theory. The now largely neglected
discourse of geopolitics – which had its heyday during the late 19th and early 20th century
– attempted to ask a similar question to ours about the impact that new technologies,
particularly steamships, railways, and airplanes, would have on the course of world
politics (see for example Mahan 1890; Mackinder 1912). Recently some International
Relations scholars have attempted to revive principles of geopolitical theory and apply
them to the terrain of space (both Earth’s orbital space and the area beyond Earth’s gravity
well). Out of these ‘astropolitical’ theories two distinct models of the future of the
international system have emerged, one realist and the other liberal. The first, developed
by Everett Dolman, sees astropolitik (a realpolitik version of astropolitics) as the ability
of great powers to dominate the Earth through the competitive mastery of space. The
second, developed by Daniel Deudney, argues that the expansion of global politics into
orbital space has the potential to create a republican federation of states on Earth. After
briefly reviewing those arguments, we turn to insights in critical theory and critical
geopolitics (especially Ó Tuathail 1996) to challenge some of the core assumptions of
these liberal and realist strands of astropolitics, especially assumptions that permit an
effective ignoring of the basic principles of power and control recognized in the epigraph
from Dolman with which this chapter began. With an eye toward possible implications
of contemporary U.S. astropolitical strategy, which we summarize briefly, for the
structure and functioning of international relations, we then take a short digression into a
review of contemporary critical theories of sovereignty to theorize how space
weaponization will re-constitute global political order. We conclude with our own
critical astropolitical argument that U.S. geopolitical strategy of attempting control with
respect to orbital space has the strong potential to transform the constitution of
sovereignty of modern territorial states. In place of an anarchic system of sovereign
territorial states—capable either of great power competition or federation through
collaboration—we see the likely development of a new form of empire, administratively
deterritorialized, but centralized in locus of authority.
Astropolitics: Realist and Liberal Strands
Realism and Astropolitics
Everett C. Dolman uses Mackinder and Mahan’s theories as inspiration for his
development of a theory, which he titles Astropolitik. By the term, astropolitik, Dolman
means “the application of the prominent and refined realist vision of state competition
into outer space policy, particularly the development and evolution of a legal and political
regime for humanity’s entry into the cosmos” (Dolman 2002: 1). While Mahan focused
on the structure of the ocean to develop his theories, and Mackinder focused on the
topography of land, Dolman turns his attention towards the cartography of outer space.
Whereas, at first glance, space may appear to be a “featureless void,” Dolman argues that
it “is in fact a rich vista of gravitational mountains and valleys, oceans and rivers of
resources and energy alternately dispersed and concentrated, broadly strewn danger zones
of deadly radiation, and precisely placed peculiarities of astrodynamics” (Dolman 2002:
61). In a manner similar to Mahan’s focus on natural sea lanes and “choke points” and
Mackinder’s emphasis of geographic regions, Dolman studies orbits, regions of space,
and launch points as geopolitically vital assets over which states can be expected
competitively and strategically to struggle for control.
Orbital paths are important because stable orbits require virtually no fuel expenditure for
satellites, whereas unstable orbits make it impossible for satellites to remain in space for
a long time. Furthermore, different types of orbits pass over different parts of the earth at
different frequencies. As such, the mission of a spacecraft determines in large part which
orbit is most useful for it. There are essentially four types of orbits: low-altitude
(between 150 km and 800km above the Earth’s surface); medium-altitude (ranging from
800km-35,000km); high-altitude (above 35 000km); and highly elliptical (with a perigee
of 250km and an apogee of 700,000km) (Dolman 2002: 65-7). In addition to pointing to
the division of space into orbital planes, Dolman also identifies four key regions of space:
1) Terra, which includes the Earth and its atmosphere up until “just below the lowest
altitude capable of supporting unpowered orbit” (Dolman 2002: 69); 2) Earth Space,
which covers the region from the lowest possible orbit through to geo-stationary orbit; 3)
Lunar Space, which extends from geo-stationary orbit to the Moon’s orbit; and 4) Solar
Space, which “consists of everything in the solar system . . . beyond the orbit of the
moon” (Dolman 2002: 70). For Dolman, Earth Space is the astropolitical equivalent of
Mackinder’s Outer Crescent, because controlling it will permit a state to limit strategic
opportunities of potential rivals and at the same time allow the projection of force for
indirect control (i.e. without occupation) of extensive territory of vital strategic
importance, in this case (unlike Mackinder’s) potentially the entire Earth. “Control of
Earth Space not only guarantees long-term control of the outer reaches of space, it
provides a near-term advantage on the terrestrial battlefield” (Dolman 1999: 93).
On the basis of these principles, Dolman develops an “Astropolitik policy for the United
States” (Dolman 1999: 156). This strategy calls on the U.S. government to control Earth
Space. In the current historical-political juncture, no state controls this region. However,
rather than leave it as a neutral zone or global commons, Dolman calls for the U.S. to
seize control of Earth Space. According to Dolman’s reasoning, the neutrality of Earth
Space is as much a threat to U.S. security as the neutrality of Melos was to Athenian
hegemony. To leave space a neutral sanctuary could be interpreted as a sign of weakness
that potential rivals might exploit. As such, it is better for the U.S. to occupy Earth Space
now.
Dolman’s astropolitik policy has three steps. The first involves the U.S. withdrawing
from the current space regime on the grounds that its prohibitions on commercial and
military exploitation of outer space prevent the full exploitation of space resources. In
place of the global commons approach that informs that regime, Dolman calls for the
establishment of “a principle of free-market sovereignty in space” (Dolman 2002: 157),
whereby states could establish territorial claims over areas they wish to exploit for
commercial purposes. This space rush should be coupled with “propaganda touting the
prospects of a new golden age of space exploration” (Dolman 2002: 157). Step two calls
for the U.S. to seize control of low-Earth orbit, where “space-based laser or kinetic
energy weapons could prevent any other state from deploying assets there, and could
most effectively engage and destroy terrestrial enemy ASAT facilities” (Dolman 2002:
157). Other states would be permitted “to enter space freely for the purpose of engaging
in commerce” (Dolman 2002: 157). The final step would be the establishment of “a
national space coordination agency . . . to define, separate and coordinate the efforts of
commercial, civilian and military space projects” (Dolman 2002: 157).
Within Dolman’s theory of astropolitik is a will-to-space-based hegemony fuelled by a
series of assumptions, of which we would point to three as especially important. First, it
rests on a strong preference for competition over collaboration in both the economic and
military spheres. Dolman, like a good realist, is suspicious of the possibilities for
sustained political and economic cooperation, and assumes instead that competition for
power is the law of international political-economic life. He believes, though, that
through a fully implemented astropolitical policy “states will employ competition
productively, harnessing natural incentives for self-interested gain to a mutually
beneficial future, a competition based on the fair and legal commercial exploitation of
space” (Dolman 2002: 4). Thus, underpinning his preference for competition is both a
liberal assumption that competitive markets are efficient at producing mutual gain
through innovative technologies, and the realist assumption that inter-state competition
for power is inescapable in world politics. As we will note more fully below, this
conjunction of liberal and realist assumptions is a hallmark of the logic of empire as
distinct from the logic of a system of sovereign states.
The second and most explicit of Dolman’s key assumptions is the belief that the U.S.
should pursue control of orbital space because its hegemony would be largely benign.
The presumed benevolence of the U.S. rests, for Dolman, on its responsiveness to its
people.
If any one state should dominate space it ought to be one with a
constitutive political principle that government should be responsible and
responsive to its people, tolerant and accepting of their views, and willing
to extend legal and political equality to all. In other words, the United
States should seize control of outer space and become the shepherd (or
perhaps watchdog) for all who would venture there, for if any one state
must do so, it is the most likely to establish a benign hegemony (Dolman
2002: 157).
However, even if the U.S. government is popularly responsive in its foreign policy—a
debatable proposition—the implication of Dolman’s astropolitik is that the U.S. would
exercise benign control over orbital space, and, from that position, potentially all territory
on Earth and hence all people, by being responsible only to the 300 million Americans.
As such, this benign hegemony would in effect be an apartheid regime where 95% of the
world would be excluded from participating in the decision-making of the hegemonic
power that controls conditions of their existence. This, too, is a hallmark of empire, not of
a competitive system of sovereign states.
Third, Dolman’s astropolitik treats space as a resource to be mastered and exploited by
humans, a Terra Nulius, or empty territory, to be colonized and reinterpreted for the
interests of the colonizer. This way of looking at space is similar to the totalizing gaze of
earlier geopolitical theorists who viewed the whole world as an object to be dominated
and controlled by European powers, who understood themselves to be beneficently, or, at
worst, benignly, civilizing in their control of territories and populations (Ó Tuathail 1996:
24-35). This assumption, like the first two, thus also implicates a hallmark of the logic of
empire, namely what Ó Tuathail (1996) calls the ‘geopolitical gaze’ (about which we
have more to say below), which works comfortably in tandem with a self-understanding
of benign hegemony.
When these three assumptions are examined in conjunction, Dolman’s astropolitik
reveals itself to be a blueprint for a U.S. empire that uses the capacities of space-based
weapons to exercise hegemony over the Earth and to grant access to the economic
resources of space only to U.S. (capitalist) interests and their allies. This version of
astropolitics, which is precisely the strategic vision underlying the policy
pronouncements of President Bush with which we began this chapter, is a kind of spatial,
or geopolitical, power within the context of U.S. imperial relations of planetary scope.
Its ostensive realist foundations are muted, except as a rather extreme form of offensive
realism, because the vision is not one of great power competition and strategic balancing,
but rather one of imperial control through hegemony. As such, it brings into question the
constitution of sovereignty, since empire and sovereignty are fundamentally opposed
constitutive principles of the structure of the international system—the subjects of empire
are not sovereign. Thus, if astropolitics is to be in the form of Dolman’s astropolitik (and
current U.S. policy aspirations), the future of sovereignty is in question, despite his
efforts to position the theory as an expression of the realist assumption of great power
competition. In later sections of this chapter, we attempt to show what this bringing
sovereignty into question is likely to mean, conceptually and in practice. Before turning
to that principal concern, however, we consider an alternative geopolitical theory of
astropolitics.
Liberal Astropolitics
Over the past twenty years, in a series of articles and recently a major book, Daniel
Deudney has attempted to rework the tenets of geopolitics and apply them to the
contemporary challenges raised by new weapons technologies – particularly nuclear and
space weapons (Deudney 1983, 1985, 1995, 2000, 2002, 2007). While Deudney finds
geopolitical theory of the late 19th century and early 20th century theoretically
unsophisticated and reductionist, he believes that geopolitical attention to material
conditions, spatiality, change and political processes could form the basis of a
theoretically sophisticated historical security materialist theory of world politics.
Deudney starts from a premise about space weaponization similar to the core of
Dolman’s astropolitik, namely that if any state were able to achieve military control of
space, it would hold potential mastery over the entire Earth.
One preliminary conclusion, however, seems sound: effective control of
space by one state would lead to planet-wide hegemony. Because space is
at once so proximate and the planet’s high ground, one country able to
control space and prevent the passage of other countries’ vehicles through
it could effectively rule the planet. Even more than a monopoly of air or
sea power, a monopoly of effective space power would be irresistible
(Deudney 1983: 17).
Rather than developing the implications of this as a strategic opportunity for any one state
(e.g. the U.S.), however, Deudney sees it as a collective problem to be kept in check
through collaboration; his project is to avoid space-based hegemony through cooperation
among states. In a series of articles on global security written in the 1980s – while Cold
War tensions between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. continued to frame much theoretical
discussion in International Relations – Deudney saw the space age as a double-edged
sword in superpower relations. On the one side, space weaponization posed a risk that
the superpowers would extend their conflict extra-terrestrially and devise new, deadlier
technologies that would enhance the risk of exterminating all of humanity; on the other,
according to Deudney, the space age had found productive opportunities for the
superpowers to deal with their rivalries in stabilizing collaboration. He notes that the
Sputnik mission, while in the popular understanding only an escalation of the Cold War,
initially was the result of an internationally organized research program – the
International Geophysical Year (Deudney 1985; though see Dolman 2002: 106-7 for an
alternate interpretation of these events as cold war competition). Another example was
President Eisenhower’s proposed “Atoms for Peace” project, which involved the great
powers sharing nuclear technology with developing nations for energy purposes. Most
famous was the collaboration between the Soviet Union and the U.S. during the 1970s on
the rendezvous between an Apollo capsule and the Soyuz space station. Similar
multinational collaborations continue to this day, with the most notable example being
the International Space Station. In addition to promoting collaboration, according to
Deudney, the space age has also enhanced the ability of space powers to monitor each
other – through spy satellites – thereby increasing the likelihood that they abide by arms
control treaties.
Deudney believes that these types of collaboration and increased surveillance could be
strengthened and deepened so that great powers could be persuaded over time to “forge
missiles into spaceships” (Deudney 1985: 271). In the 1980s this led Deudney to
develop a set of specific proposals for a peaceful space policy, including collaboration
between space powers on manned missions to the moon, asteroids and Mars. The
development of an International Satellite Monitoring Agency would make “space-based
surveillance technology accessible to an international community” for monitoring cease-
fires, crises, compliance with international arms control treaties and the Earth’s
environment (Deudney 1985: 291). These proposals are aimed at promoting
collaboration on projects of great scientific and military significance for the individual
states. Deudney’s hope is that such cooperation would mitigate security dilemmas and
promote greater ties between states that would co-bind their security without sacrificing
their sovereignty.
While Deudney has not been explicit about how his astropolitics of collaboration would
alter world order, in his more theoretical writings he has elaborated the logic of a liberal-
republican international system. In a 2002 article on geopolitics and international theory,
he developed a historical security materialist theory of geopolitics:
[I]n which changing forces of destruction (constituted by geography and
technology) condition the viability of different modes of protection
(understood as clusters of security practices) and their attendant
‘superstructures’ of political authority structures (anarchical, hierarchical,
and federal-republican) (Deudney 2002: 80).
Deudney identified four different eras in which distinct modes of destruction were
predominant: Pre-modern; Early Modern; Global Industrial; and Planetary-Nuclear. In
addition to these different historical stages, Deudney considered two modes of protection:
real-statism, which is based on an internal monopoly of violence and external anarchy;
and federal-republicanism, which is based on an internal division of powers and an
external symmetrical binding of actors through institutions that reduces their autonomy in
relation to one another. According to Deudney, in the Planetary-Nuclear age the federal-
republican mode of protection is more viable because states “are able to more fully and
systematically restrain violence” than under the power balancing practices of real-statist
modes of protection (Deudney 2002: 97).
Although Deudney did not extend his historical security materialist approach into
theorizing the space age, his proposals during the Cold War to foster institutional
collaboration between space powers as a way of promoting peace is a form of the co-
binding practices that he associates with the federal-republican mode of protection. In
addition, one of the general conclusions that Deudney reaches about historical security
materialism is that the more a security context is rich in the potential for violence, the
better suited a federal-republican mode of protection is to avoid systemic breakdown.
Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that within Deudney’s work is a nascent
theory of how a federal-republican international system could limit conflict between
space powers by binding them together in collaborative uses of space for exploratory and
security uses. In this sense, Deudney can be read as the liberal astropolitical counterpart
to Everett Dolman.
While Deudney’s astropolitical theorizations hold out the promise of a terrestrial
pacification through space exploration it is interesting to note a significant aporia in his
theory–empire as a possible mode of protection. While real-statist modes of protection
have an internal hierarchical authority structure, they are based on assumptions of
external-anarchy, which is to say a system of sovereign states. Conversely, the federal-
republican model is based on a symmetrical binding of units, in a way that no single unit
can come to dominate others and accordingly in which they preserve their sovereignty
(Deudney 2000, 2002, 2007). In a third mode, which Deudney does not explicitly
consider, the case of empire, the hegemony of a single unit is such that other units are
bound to it in an asymmetrical pattern that locates sovereignty only in the hegemon, or
imperial center. Successful empires, including the Roman, British and American, permit
local autonomy in areas that are not of the imperial power’s direct concern while
demanding absolute obedience in areas that are of vital concern to it, particularly when it
comes to issues of security. Deudney’s implicit astropolitical theory thus ignores
structurally asymmetric relations—in effect he ignores power. It is as if in wanting to
have the world avoid the possibility of a planetary hegemony at the heart of the premise
with which he and Dolman began their respective analyses, he simply wishes it away by
refusing to acknowledge the profound asymmetries of aspirations and technological-
financial-military capacities among states for control of orbital space.
In the next two sections we respond to Deudney’s call for historical security materialism
by focusing on the premise that he skirts but that Dolman emphasizes, that military
control of space means (at least the possibility of) mastery of the Earth. Specifically we
examine how a new mode of destruction – space weapons – is the ideal basis for the third
mode of protection – empire – through its potential for substantial asymmetry. We argue
that the power asymmetries of space weapons have very significant constitutive effects
on sovereignty and international systemic anarchy, and underlie the constitution of a new,
historically unprecedented, form of empire. Before turning to that central thesis,
however, we will first sketch the general contours of a critical astropolitics, which builds
on the foundational premise of Dolman and Deudney, but modifies their theories in light
of the significant insights of critical theory, particularly with respect to constitutive
power. We ask: What consequences of astropolitics can a critical approach illuminate
that may be concealed by an astropolitics informed by either liberal or realist
assumptions? How can insights offered by the revival of geopolitics in the writings of
Deudney and Dolman – particularly their call for a new historical security materialist
mode of analysis – be used to supplement and refine critical International Relations
theory?
Critical Astropolitics
In the broad intellectual tradition of geopolitics, three leading advocates of a critical
perspective – Ó Tuathail, John Agnew and Simon Dalby — have challenged mainstream
geopolitical theory for assuming and validating power relations implicit in the production
of geopolitical knowledge, and for a tendency to be a reifying and totalizing discourse
that erases difference and political contestation from processes of representing space
(Agnew 2003, 2005; Dalby 1991; Dalby and Ó Tuathail 1998; Ó Tuathail 1996; ). While
our approach to critical astropolitics shares the political commitments and many of the
theoretical foundations of their critique, our interest is more in the study of the
constitutive as opposed to the representational consequences of astropolitics.
Ó Tuathail has criticized earlier forms of geopolitics for their ocular-centrism and what
he terms the ‘geopolitical gaze’. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, he reads
geopolitical discourse as power/knowledge, such that knowledge of spaces produces
subjects empowered for expansive control. Geopolitical representations – what Ó
Tuathail terms geo-power – are in a mutually supportive relation with the imperial
institutions in which they are produced (Ó Tuathail 1996: 6-20). Empires cannot function
without clear representations that explore, chart, and bring under control cartographic
spaces. The spatial imaginary of the ‘geopolitical gaze’, then, is immanent to empire. In
a related vein, Simon Dalby, too, has studied the role that geographical representations
play. He has examined official policy documents and academic analyses of U.S. strategic
thinking in both Cold War strategies and in the Bush Doctrine to determine how
geographical representations of the earth shape U.S. imperial strategy (Dalby 2007).
Additionally, John Agnew’s work examines how a particular geopolitical imagining – a
global order constituted by sovereign states – “arose from European-American
experience but was then projected on to the rest of the world and in to the future in the
theory and practice of world politics” (Agnew 2003: 2).
The scholarly work of critical geopolitics makes two crucial contributions. First it draws
on the interpretive strategies of various theorists such as Foucault and Derrida to critique
the assumptions of mainstream geopolitical analysis. Second it moves toward a
reformulation of geopolitics in a form that is more conscious of how power operates in
the theory and practice of world politics. In the first two parts of this chapter we have
drawn on the first of those contributions for our critical reading of liberal and realist
astropolitics. Just as Mackinder’s geopolitics re-presented how the world operated in a
way that could be understood and controlled by British imperialists, it can be argued,
following Agnew’s, Ó Tuathail’s and Dalby’s lead, that the kinds of representations of
space proffered by Dolman (as orbits, regions, and launching points of strategic value)
make the exercise of control over space intelligible from an American imperialist
perspective. The ‘astropolitical gaze’ and its cartographic representations are mutually
productive with the current U.S. policy of attempting to secure control over orbital space.
As we saw, realist astropolitics celebrates the ways in which extending U.S. military
hegemony into space could amplify America’s imperial power. Yet, Dolman’s realist
astropolitik leaves under-theorized the normative implication of space-based imperialism.
Instead, Dolman merely asserts that America would be a benevolent Emperor without
explaining what checks on U.S. power might exist to prevent it from using the “ultimate
high ground” to dominate all the residents of the Earth. Conversely, Deudney focuses on
the potential for inter-state collaboration to produce a federal-republican global political
order. However, Deudney leaves under-theorized the very real possibility that a unilateral
entry into space by the U.S. could create an entirely new mode of protection and security.
In the remainder of this chapter we draw on the second contribution of critical geopolitics
– the reformulation of geopolitical theory through concepts of critical theoretical analysis
– to address the normative and theoretical aporias we have identified in the astropolitical
writings of Dolman and Deudney. First, we will draw on the critical theories of
sovereignty offered in writings of Foucault, Agamben, and Hardt and Negri to theorize
the form that the missing mode of protection/security from Deudney’s historical-
materialist analysis – empire – would take. Second, we conclude by arguing that such a
mode of protection/security would lack any effective counterbalances to its ability to
project force, and as such it is unlikely that it would be the benevolent imperial power
that Dolman claims it would be.
Critical Theories of Sovereignty
There has been a recent explosion of critical theoretic reflection on modern sovereignty.
Quite often, when there is a turn towards thinking about a concept it is because the
practices to which the concept is related are undergoing a dramatic shift, stimulating the
effort to comprehend that which is disappearing into the past. Hegel noted this most
famously in his statement that “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the
falling of the dusk” (Hegel 1967: 13). One does not have to be a philosopher of history,
however, to recognize that current global political realities, such as the coming out of the
closet of U.S. empire, the demonstration of the insecurity of all territorial spaces, the
triumph of a neo-liberal global economic order, and the creation of a “global village”
through information technology, have at the very least called into question the
sovereignty of the modern territorial state. There is no need to rehash well-worn
empirical and theoretical debates about such transformative processes here. What we are
interested in, instead, is using this renewed theoretical interest in the concept of
sovereignty to think through how the mode of destruction of space weapons constitutes a
new mode of protection/security – space-based empire.
Affecting much of the recent theorization of sovereignty is Michel Foucault’s argument
about the misplaced attention to it. Throughout his later work, from Discipline and
Punish (1977), through the first volume of History of Sexuality (1978), to his work on
governmentality (2000), Foucault argued that sovereignty—which he identifies with a
juridical conceptualization of power—was in a mutually constitutive relationship with the
forms of knowledge dominant in early modern European political thought. Foucault
argued that this juridical form of power was composed of three distinct features: “of
forming a unitary regime, of identifying its will with the law, and of acting through
mechanisms of interdiction and sanction” (Foucault 1978: 87). This juridical conception
of sovereignty has held captive the imagination of political theorists, thereby blinding
them to other aspects of power, such as the bio-political. As an alternative to the juridical
conception of sovereign power, Foucault introduced the term bio-power, which operates
at two poles. First, there is the disciplinary form of power, whereby micro-rituals within
social institutions constitute individual subjects. Second, at the macro-level, power is
exercised through the management of entire populations (Foucault 1978). Together,
these macro and micro practices of power constitute a regime of rule that Foucault
labeled “governmentality,” which refers to “the conduct of conduct” for “the right
disposition of things so as to lead to a convenient end” (Foucault, 2000: 208). The
implication of Foucault’s analysis is that understanding rule in modern political society is
best approached by not focusing on sovereign power, but instead through turning one’s
attention away from—theoretically “cutting off the head” of—the sovereign. This means
putting behind us the seventeenth century European, juridical conception (from Hobbes
and others) of the state as all-powerful unitary center, whose will is the law and who sits
as maker of final decisions about taking life or letting live—that is to say, as political
subject above (the chaos of) other subjectivities (Agnew 2005; Havercroft 2006).
This means that focusing on how new technologies will alter the balance of power
between sovereign states is precisely the wrong way to theorize the astropolitical impact
of space weapons. Instead we should focus on the bio-political aspects of space
weaponization along two axes: the management of populations and the
disciplining/subjection of individuals. On the population axis of bio-politics, the ability to
project force to any point on Earth constitutes all the Earth’s inhabitants as a single
population to be governed through surveillance and management. The possessor of space
weapons, through its ability to potentially project force at all of the Earth’s inhabitants, in
effect gains a monopoly on the means of violence over all of the earth. This leads to a
dramatic re-ordering of the mode of protection that governs the international system. As
opposed to the internal monopoly of violence and external anarchy of real-statism and
the internal division of powers and external symmetrical binding of federal-
republicanism, space-based empire has an external monopoly on violence that
asymmetrically binds all people and institutions, including states, together under the
hegemony of the imperial center. We, however, follow Foucault in arguing that the most
significant effect of this imperial center’s power is not its juridical capacity of
interdiction and sanction. Instead, we believe that the most pernicious effects of this
asymmetrical power relationship will be the ability of the imperial center to govern its
subaltern subjects by altering their interests and re-constituting their identities. The
imperial center will only need to use its space weapons as a last resort. Simply by
possessing this monopoly on violence, the imperial center will be able to conduct the
conduct of its subjects, including client states, in a manner that is amenable to the
interests of the empire.
On the individual axis, space weapons represent a powerful disciplinary capacity in the
ability to target individuals with great precision. Many of the proposed weapons systems
– most notably space-based lasers – are designed to project lethal force at very precise
targets, even individuals. Presumably then a primary use of such weapons would be to
destroy specific enemies of the imperial center. This ability to project force precisely to
any point on Earth would have two political effects. First, it will strip all states that do not
possess them of their ability to protect themselves from intervention by the space-based
empire, and thereby vitiate their claims to sovereignty. Second, the sole possessor of
space-based weapons will be able to govern the conduct of individuals. This bio-political
power over individual lives would be far more significant than the ability to merely
punish and kill dissidents to imperial power. The possession of the power to target any
individual, anywhere on Earth, on very short notice would give the possessor of these
weapons unprecedented power to discipline these individual’s interests and identities so
that their actions comply with the will of the imperial center.
These bio-political implications of astropolitics become clearer when we consider recent
reformulations of Foucault’s concept of bio-power in writings of Giorgio Agamben, and
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. They have taken it in distinctly different directions in
attempts to understand modern regimes of (sovereign) rule. In particular they have
reconnected the elements of the distinction between bio-power and sovereign power that
Foucault has emphasized, in order to recover the continued importance of the latter.
Today, most critical theorists seem to believe that sovereign power, as well as bio-power,
is central to modern rule and hence must be understood theoretically, but, following
Foucault, not as formal-legal, juridical, concept.
Agamben argues that there is a hidden point of intersection between the bio-political and
the sovereign regimes of power. He observes
that the two analyses cannot be separated and that the inclusion of bare life
in the political realm constitutes the original-if concealed-nucleus of
sovereign power. It can even be said that the production of a biopolitical
body is the original activity of sovereign power. In this sense, biopolitics
is at least as old as the sovereign exception (Agamben 1998: 6).
Agamben locates this intersection in the Ancient Roman figure of homo sacer, a person
with “a capacity to be killed and yet not sacrificed, outside both human and divine law”
(Agamben 1998: 73). The figure of homo sacer is a schism between one’s political and
biological lives. Homo sacer is “bare life,” the biological aspect of the individual that
exists outside the law and hence outside politics and the state. The paradox of homo
sacer is that the sovereign is the one who decides who homo sacer is, and as such the
sovereign power that excludes “bare life” from the realm of the political also constitutes
“bare life” as homo sacer. As such, the bio-political regime that Foucault distinguishes
from the sovereign regime of power is actually constituted by the sovereign’s capacity to
exclude “bare life” from the political. Agamben links the figure of homo sacer with the
production of social spaces in which individuals are stripped completely of their political
life. In this social space of “the camp,” “bare life” has no human rights at precisely the
moment that he or she needs them most. Through the weaponization of space a new
global regime of sovereignty emerges. One of the constitutive effects of space weapons
is their capacity to ban specific individuals from the global rule of law, thereby
constituting the targets of these weapons as fully “bare life.” So, one of the most
pernicious effects of space weaponization is the emergence of a global totalitarianism,
wherein the space-based empire has the capacity to kill, but not sacrifice, all who oppose
its objectives. While it does not necessarily follow that by possessing this capacity a
space-based empire would necessarily use it, the possibility that a space-based empire
would use such a power is significantly increased because of the lack of potential
counter-powers to protect the vulnerable human population and thereby to produce a
realm beyond “bare life”.
A final implication for state sovereignty of space weaponization can be found through an
engagement with the writings of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri on Empire. They
argue that the erosion of the sovereignty of the modern territorial state does not mean that
sovereignty as such has disappeared. Rather, they maintain that a new, globally diffuse
form of sovereignty has emerged that is “composed of a series of national and
supranational organisms united under a single logic of rule” (Hardt and Negri 2000: xii),
which they call Empire. There is no longer a single, centralized governing apparatus
located and bounded in the territorial state, or in a state’s (classical) imperial intervention
into and control over other political societies. Instead there are now a multitude of
governing apparatuses that rule over the different facets of political subjects’ existence.
As Hardt and Negri remind us “Modern sovereignty has generally been conceived in
terms of a (real or imagined) territory and the relation of that territory to its outside”
(2000: 187). Under Empire “this dialectic of sovereignty between the civil order and the
natural order has come to an end” (2000: 187). The sovereignty of Empire not only de-
territorializes power, it also eliminates the boundary-drawing aspect of modern
sovereignty that constitutes particular spaces politically as either inside or outside.
Simply put, according to Hardt and Negri, under conditions of Empire “There Is No More
Outside” (2000: 186).9 Space-weaponization is a material manifestation of Hardt and
Negri’s idea of imperial sovereignty as de-territorializing and boundary erasing. By
possessing the capacity to project force from orbital space to any point on Earth, this new
mode of destruction would make the two dominant modern modes of protection/security
– the sovereign real-state and the liberal-republican federation – irrelevant. Neither the
self-help of sovereign states nor the collective security of a pacific union could counteract
or even deter the ability to project force from outer space. Without the ability to protect
its territory and population from external threats, the sovereignty of the state would
effectively wither away. In its place would emerge a new mode of protection/security,
although calling it a mode of domination may be more appropriate (Agamben 1998).
This mode – space-based empire – would have a centralized authority constituted by
those who controlled the space-based military infrastructure. However, because its
capacity to govern would rest on its ability to project force to any point on Earth at a
moment’s notice, there would be no need for it to control territory. As such, this new
form of imperial sovereignty would have three features not encountered in previous
political forms. First, it would have a centralized locus of authority, while being de-
territorialized in terms of what it governed. Second, it would asymmetrically bind all
individuals and institutions, including nominal states, into a hierarchical relationship with
the imperial center at the top. Finally it would possess a monopoly on the external
violence between (then non-sovereign) states as well as the capacity to target any specific
individual within a state at any point in time. Effectively, this space-based empire would
possess sovereignty over the entire globe (Duvall and Havercroft 2008). i
Conclusion: Life Under the Empire of the Future
In his Astropolitik Dolman calls upon U.S. defence policy makers to weaponize orbital
space so as to enhance U.S. hegemony over the planet. He does not address the
astropolitical issues we have discussed here about what impact a space-based hegemony
would have on the structure of the international system. Dolman, however, is confident
that America would be responsible in using this awesome power to promote democracy
and global capitalism. Setting aside the very contentious issues of whether or not
9 As an aside, the Commissioners of the 9/11 Report came to a seemingly similar conclusion. They
criticized the U.S. for creating an artificial barrier within the government between domestic and foreign
affairs, and argued that the mantra for the U.S. government should now be that “the American Homeland is the planet” (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, 2004: 362). Implicit in this view, however, is the projection of U.S. state sovereignty globally, rather than the de-centered concept, which Hardt and Negri would have us see.
America should be involved in “promoting” democracy and capitalism and whether or
not current U.S. hegemony has been beneficial for the Earth’s population, the moral and
political implications of a space-based empire are not nearly as clear-cut as Dolman
makes them out to be.
One of the fundamental principles of classical geopolitics was that sea-based empires
(such as Athens, Britain, and America) tended to be more democratic than land-based
empires (such as Sparta, China, and Rome). The reason for this is that sea-based empires
needed to disperse their forces away from the imperial center to exert control, whereas
land-based empires exercised power through occupation. Military occupations made it
increasingly likely that the army would seize power whenever it came into conflict with
the government. Classical geopolitical theorist Otto Hintze argued that land powers
tended towards dictatorships (Hintze, 1975). Dolman builds upon these classical
geopolitical insights by arguing that because space-based empires would not be able to
occupy states, military coups would be less likely and democracy would be more likely
(Dolman, 2002: 29). There is, however, a significant difference between space power and
sea power. While neither is capable of occupying territory on its own, space power is
capable of controlling territory from above through surveillance and precise projection of
force – control without occupation. While space power may not result in the dictatorships
normally associated with land power, it would be a useful tool is establishing a
disciplinary society over all the Earth.
A second obstacle to the benevolent space-based empire that Dolman imagines is the lack
of counterbalancing powers. Under the two other modes of protection/security we have
considered here – the real-statist and the federal-republican – there are checks that
prevent even the most powerful states in the system from dominating all the other units.
In real-statism, the sovereignty of states means that any potential hegemon would have to
pay a significant cost in blood and treasure to conquer other states. While this cost may
not be enough to dissuade a superpower from conquering one or two states, the
cumulative cost of conquest and occupation makes total domination over the Earth
unlikely. In the federal-republican model, the collective security regime of the entire
system should act as a sufficient deterrent to prevent one state from dominating the
others. Conversely, in a space-based empire the entire world is placed under direct
surveillance from above. There is no point on Earth where the imperial center cannot
project force on very short notice. So long as the space-based empire can deny access to
space to rival powers through missile defence and anti-satellite technologies, there is no
possibility that other states can directly counteract this force. As such, the space-based
empire erases all boundaries and places the Earth under its control.
While the possibility to resist such an empire will exist, the dynamics of resistance will
be considerably altered. Traditional insurgencies rely on physical occupation of territory
by the conquering forces to provide targets of opportunity to the resistance. Because
space weapons would orbit several hundred to several thousands of miles above the
Earth, they would not be vulnerable to attack by anything except weapons systems
possessed by the most advanced space powers such as ballistic missiles and advanced
laser systems. Even such counter-measures, however, would only raise the financial cost
of space-based empire, not the cost in human lives that insurgencies rely upon to
diminish domestic support for imperial occupations. Consequently a space-based empire
would be freer to dominate the Earth from above than a traditional land-power
occupation would be. Without obvious counterpowers or effective means of resistance,
the space-based empire would be able to exercise complete bio-political control over the
entire planet, turning all of Earth’s inhabitants into bare life. Under such a political
arrangement the likelihood that the imperial center would be a benevolent one,
uncorrupted by its total domination of the Earth, would be very slim indeed.