The Outer Space Paradox: Reconciling the Global Commons with Geostrategic Competition

Outer space was originally imagined as a sanctuary, a realm beyond the rivalries and conflicts of Earth, open to exploration and dedicated to the advancement of humanity. That vision has given way to a very different reality. Today, outer space is an increasingly congested, contested, and militarized theater of geopolitical competition, where states and other actors compete for strategic advantage, technological leadership, commercial influence, and control over critical infrastructure.

This is the outer space paradox. The very interdependence that makes space indispensable to all actors also makes it uniquely vulnerable to conflict. Satellites underpin communications, navigation, finance, weather forecasting, agriculture, disaster response, and military operations. Disrupting one actor’s capabilities can therefore impose costs far beyond the intended target. No state can ultimately make itself secure by making the space environment insecure for everyone else. The sanctuary ideal, therefore, is not naive or obsolete. It remains both worth pursuing and possible, even amid intensifying geopolitical tensions. Competition need not disappear, but it must be channeled accordingly and prevented from destroying the shared environment on which all actors depend. Indeed, the history of the Space Age shows that even profound strategic rivalry can coexist with restraint when states recognize the costs of unconstrained escalation.

The question is not whether space will remain contested. It is rather whether rivals can compete for advantage without destroying the commons on which that advantage ultimately depends. Can humanity preserve the sanctuary ideal, not by escaping geopolitics but by recognizing that in space our security is inseparable from that of others?

Space as Sanctuary: Efforts to Preserve a Global Commons

The idea of outer space as a global commons dates back to the early days of the Space Age. In 1959, the UN General Assembly established the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) to ensure that exploration beyond Earth would serve the interests of humanity. The committee was charged with promoting international cooperation, encouraging scientific research, and addressing the legal questions raised by the rapidly expanding reach of space technology.

Over the following two decades, COPUOS helped construct the legal and normative architecture that continues to shape and govern activity in space. Its most important achievement was the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. On 27 January 1967, the Treaty was signed simultaneously in Washington, London, and Moscow, and entered into force on 10 October 1967. Yet even as the Soviet and American representatives were agreeing that outer space should not become an arena for certain forms of military competition, the wider Cold War continued unabated. After the signing ceremony in Moscow, Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin immediately confronted the American ambassador over the escalating war in Vietnam. The juxtaposition was striking: the two superpowers could agree to constrain competition beyond Earth even as they remained deeply divided over conflict on it.

The Treaty established several key principles, including that the exploration and use of outer space should benefit all countries; space cannot be appropriated through claims of national sovereignty; nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction may not be placed in orbit or stationed in space; and the Moon and other celestial bodies must be used exclusively for peaceful purposes.

COPUOS subsequently turned its attention to more specific topics. The 1968 Rescue Agreement established obligations concerning the rescue and return of astronauts. The 1972 Convention created a framework for claims arising from damage caused by space objects, while the 1975 Registration Convention required states to provide information about objects launched into orbit. The 1979 Moon Agreement sought to regulate activities on the Moon and other celestial bodies, including their peaceful use and environmental protection.

In addition, COPUOS developed a body of nonbinding principles intended to shape state behavior in outer space, addressing a variety of issues, from television broadcasting to space debris mitigation. The emergence of this framework also reflected a strategic reality. By the 1960s, the United States and Soviet Union possessed increasingly sophisticated capabilities in space, yet neither could assume uncontested dominance. Mutual vulnerability therefore created incentives to establish limits on the forms that strategic competition could take. The resulting agreements did not eliminate rivalry, but demonstrated that competition and cooperation could coexist when the costs of unconstrained escalation were sufficiently high.

The Struggle to Preserve the Commons

Efforts to preserve space as a commons have always involved two distinct challenges. The first is to make space activity lawful, secure, safe, and sustainable. The second is to prevent military competition from escalating into an arms race or armed conflict. The first agenda has been centered on COPUOS and the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs in Vienna. The second has largely been pursued through the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, including recent UN working groups on space security. In New York, the General Assembly connects the two agendas through its Fourth Committee, which addresses peaceful uses of outer space, and its First Committee responsible for disarmament and international security.

In reflecting on how the military dimension of space should be regulated, one approach has sought formal restrictions on weapons. China and Russia pursued this path through the proposed Treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space, the Threat or Use of Force Against Outer Space Objects, or PPWT. They submitted an initial draft to the Conference on Disarmament in 2008 and an updated version in 2014. The proposal sought to prohibit the placement of weapons in outer space and the threat or use of force against space objects. However, the United States rejected the 2014 version, arguing that its verification regime was insufficient, that states might retain the capacity to deploy space-based weapons rapidly, and that terrestrially based anti-satellite systems would remain unconstrained. The dispute illustrated a broader dilemma: in a domain dominated by dual-use technologies, defining a “space weapon” can be a challenging enterprise.

That problem encouraged a second approach, focused less on prohibiting particular technologies than on increasing transparency and predictability. The European Union draft Code of Conduct for outer space activities sought to strengthen the safety, security, and sustainability of space activities through voluntary commitments, information-sharing, and confidence-building measures rather than a legally binding weapons ban.

While space-faring states generally share the instrument’s underlying objectives, significant disagreement remains over several of its key provisions. The same logic resurfaced at the United Nations in 2021, when the General Assembly established an Open-Ended Working Group on “reducing space threats through norms, rules and principles of responsible behaviors.” Rather than beginning with the difficult question of which objects should qualify as weapons, the group examined conduct that could create threats to space systems regardless of the technology involved.

From Sanctuary to Battlespace: The Geopolitical Scramble for Outer Space

For all the efforts to preserve outer space for peaceful purposes, the ideal of space as a sanctuary has steadily eroded. By the 1980s, space technology moved from symbols of technological prestige to instruments of military power. By then, in the US the Ford Administration had concluded that a sanctuary doctrine was neither enforceable nor verifiable. The end of the Cold War did not reverse that trend. Instead, the 1991 Gulf War, often described as the first “space war,” demonstrated the military value of satellite communications, navigation, reconnaissance, and targeting.

Since then, the strategic landscape has become considerably more crowded. China has emerged as the United States’ principal competitor in space, while rising space powers like India and Japan have expanded their capabilities. Commercial companies have also surged in importance, transforming the cosmos into a diverse, multi-stakeholder arena.

In 2019, NATO designated space an operational domain. This declaration openly acknowledged how far the international community has moved away from the notion of space as a peaceful sanctuary. Reinforcing this shift from sanctuary to battleground, the US Space Force released its Space Warfighting framework in 2025, identifying space superiority as essential not only to operations in orbit but to military success across every other domain. Its conception of space control encompasses defensive and offensive counterspace operations across orbital, electromagnetic, and cyber environments.

But the US is not the only country with ambitions to space superiority. China’s leadership equally sees space capacities as critical to economic security and military superiority. In recent years, Beijing has paired high-profile scientific achievements (such as the Chang’e-4 landing on the far side of the Moon in 2019, the Tianwen-1 Mars mission, and the completion of the Tiangong space station in 2022) with a sustained expansion of military capabilities.

Russia, meanwhile, remains a consequential actor in the emerging space-security order. Unlike China or the United States, however, Moscow has not pursued the same breadth of commercial, scientific, and infrastructural leadership. Its strategy is more narrowly focused on preserving strategic deterrence and offsetting Western technological advantages. The result is a more asymmetric and disruptive posture, centered on capabilities designed to threaten, degrade, or deny an adversary’s access to space-based systems.

What is unfolding is not a single space race but a set of overlapping competitions for technological leadership, military advantage, commercial influence, strategic resilience, and control over the infrastructure on which modern states increasingly depend.

Those competitions are likely to intensify. Military planners increasingly assume that space will become more crowded, contested, and operationally consequential. Space Command paper Space Warfighting Environment 2040, for example, anticipates an environment shaped by proliferated dual-use constellations, highly maneuverable spacecraft, in-orbit servicing, artificial intelligence, and advances in optical, quantum, and materials technologies. As fixed command stations and communications facilities become more vulnerable, ground infrastructure will likewise need to become more mobile and resilient. The cumulative effect is to erode the already fragile distinction between using space to support warfare on Earth and conducting warfare in space itself.

This transformation is placing a growing strain on the legal order created at the dawn of the Space Age. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty remains the foundation of international space law, but it was negotiated for a world of two superpowers, few satellites, and almost no commercial activity beyond Earth. Since then, technological and geopolitical realities have changed significantly, leading to widening gaps in the governance of outer space. Admittedly, the sanctuary envisioned in the 1960s has not disappeared entirely. States still depend on shared rules, orbital stability, and continued access to space, but these common interests now coexist with an intensifying contest for strategic advantage. The result is a fundamental paradox: every space actor benefits from keeping space open, stable, and usable, even as many of them seek the ability to deny those same advantages to their rivals in a conflict.

Why the Sanctuary Ideal Is Still Worth Pursuing

Current geopolitical trends point toward greater competition, and potentially conflict, in space. However, any conflict in orbit would have effects cascading across all five interdependent dimensions of security: national, transnational, environmental, transcultural, and human security. This is because space-based assets underpin activities essential to everyday life on Earth, from communications, financial transactions, navigation and transportation, agricultural monitoring, and weather forecasting to disaster response. Consequently, actions that generate insecurity for one actor can rapidly impose costs on many others. Orbital debris, for example, does not distinguish between allies and adversaries, while disruptions to navigation, communications, financial networks, or climate monitoring readily cross borders. The case for preserving space as a sanctuary is therefore in the interest of every state and non-state actor as well as humanity as a whole.

Meta-Geopolitics as a Comprehensive Lens

Traditional geopolitics is poorly equipped to capture the complexity of the new space age, where power depends on far more than geography or military capability. A meta-geopolitical framework offers a broader lens by assessing national power across seven interconnected capacities: domestic politics, economic strength, environmental stewardship, scientific and human potential, societal health, military and security capabilities, and diplomacy.

Understanding how these capacities reinforce, or undermine, one another therefore provides a more realistic account of how states accumulate space power, pursue their interests, and respond to an increasingly contested domain. Space power rarely derives from any single source: scientific innovation in space technologies depends on economic resources, skilled human capital, and supportive research institutions, while its development and deployment are shaped by domestic regulation and political priorities. In a similar vein, a nation’s military and security capabilities increasingly rely on civilian and commercial space infrastructure, while diplomacy can facilitate access to foreign technologies, launch facilities, data-sharing arrangements, and international partnerships. Conversely, weaknesses in one capacity, such as economic constraints, domestic instability, or limited scientific expertise, can restrict the ability of a state to translate ambitions in space into sustained strategic influence. Examining these interactions therefore reveals not only the resources states possess, but also their capacity to combine and mobilize them effectively.

Why Peace in Outer Space Is So Difficult to Realize

From a purely rational perspective, the interdependence of space should encourage cooperation, or at least non-conflictual competition. However, geopolitical behavior is never governed by rationality alone. Research in neuroscience and neuropsychology suggests that emotions largely shape cognitive processes such as perception, memory, the construction of historical narratives, and decision-making, often contributing to skewed interpretations of the past, particularly under conditions of uncertainty and stress. Under conditions of fear, insecurity, or acute stress, individuals tend to place greater weight on immediate self-preservation, narrowing the space for empathy, restraint, fairness, and longer-term deliberation.

These dynamics also operate at the level of states. Historical grievances, national pride, insecurity, and perceived humiliation can distort cost-benefit calculations and weaken adherence to international norms. Space is especially susceptible to such pressures because many technologies are inherently dual-use. A satellite, maneuver, or capability presented by one state as defensive may be interpreted by another as threatening, encouraging worst-case assumptions and reinforcing mutual suspicion. States may consequently engage in conduct once regarded as dangerously escalatory, including destructive anti-satellite testing, not because such behavior is rational, but because fear and mistrust can easily overwhelm rational deliberations and distort moral judgments and policy decisions.

These dynamics become particularly acute during periods of power transition. Established powers may fear relative decline, while rising powers may seek greater influence and recognition. Even where capabilities are approaching parity, uncertainty about future balances can intensify mistrust and encourage worst-case assumptions. Near-parity can nevertheless serve as an important stabilizing condition: by limiting the ability of any one actor to dominate, it creates mutual constraints and incentives for restraint. It can also help mitigate the dynamics of Thucydides’s Trap, in which fear of a rising power and anxiety over relative decline can turn shifts in the balance of power into pre-emptive competition and conflict. The challenge is therefore not simply to prevent any one actor from becoming dominant, but to manage the insecurity generated by a changing distribution of power. That distribution is no longer shaped by states alone.

The growing influence of private companies is adding another layer of complexity to an already difficult security environment. Firms such as SpaceX, alongside Chinese, Indian, European, Japanese, and other international commercial space ventures, are no longer simply contractors operating at the margins of state power. They increasingly develop, own, and operate infrastructure with consequences for communications, connectivity, navigation, scientific research, and national security. This creates a new layer of complexity: commercial actors may pursue profit, innovation, and market advantage, while the capabilities they control can simultaneously acquire strategic and geopolitical significance. A company may therefore become an important instrument of national resilience or influence without being a state actor itself. The distinction between public and private power is consequently becoming harder to sustain in space, raising difficult questions about accountability, responsibility, and whose interests should govern infrastructure that is commercially owned but strategically consequential. If the global commons ideal is to remain viable, governance must account not only for relations among states, but also for the incentives and responsibilities of the private actors whose decisions increasingly shape the space environment.

Human and State Motivations: Neuro P5 and Symbiotic Realism

A separate source of instability lies in the rewards that competition in space can provide. Beyond material needs, human behavior is shaped by powerful immaterial evolutionary drivers. I have identified five particularly potent drivers, the “Neuro P5”: power, profit, pleasure, pride, and permanency. Outer space is unusually capable of appealing to all five: it offers strategic influence, commercial gain, scientific discovery, national prestige, and the prospect of enduring geopolitical relevance.

These motivations can spur innovation and exploration. But pursued without restraint, they can also have a drug-like effect. Power, in particular, can foster overconfidence, narrow perspective-taking, and diminished sensitivity to the interests of others. Unchecked, it may encourage hubris and greater suspicion of potential challengers. Space magnifies these dangers because legal and normative constraints remain incomplete. Strategic advantages can become perceived entitlements to be protected and expanded, while success can encourage leaders to discount risks and underestimate rivals. The ensuing behavior then heightens others’ insecurity, prompting countermoves that make the space domain only more unstable.

The deeper problem is that much strategic thinking still treats security as zero-sum: one state’s gain is assumed to be another’s loss. As I argue in my work on Symbiotic Realism, durable security requires state leaders to move beyond such zero-sum assumptions and pursue their interests without systematically undermining the security of other space-faring nations. Competition, in this view, need not be eliminated. It can remain a source of innovation, ambition, and progress, provided it is bound by rules and by recognition of what I have termed the “dignity needs” of other actors in the international system. When these needs (for security, inclusion, justice, etc.) are persistently denied, rivalry is more likely to harden into resentment, fear, and conflict. When they are taken seriously, peaceful coexistence becomes more achievable.

These dynamics become particularly consequential when applied to a domain whose physical characteristics leave little room for error or reversal. In outer space, a single act of disruption can have consequences far beyond its intended target. The Kessler syndrome illustrates the danger: destroying one object can generate debris that threatens other spacecraft, potentially setting off a cascade of collisions across the orbital environment. In a domain defined by such profound interdependence, the logic of zero-sum competition becomes particularly dangerous. However, competition is not driven by rational calculation alone. Fear, uncertainty, mistrust, national pride, and the pursuit of power can distort perceptions and encourage actors to prepare for the worst, even when doing so makes the entire environment more precarious.

This is the fundamental challenge of preserving space as a sanctuary: not preventing competition among states, but ensuring that such competition remains non-conflictual and does not turn the commons itself into a casualty. Where every actor depends on the continued accessibility, security, safety, stability, and sustainability of space, restraint is not an act of altruism. It is an expression of responsible and sustainable self-interest.

The sanctuary ideal, then, is less an aspiration to insulate space from geopolitics than a recognition of the limits within which geopolitics must operate. Space cannot be made immune to rivalry, but rivalry need not render it increasingly vulnerable or, ultimately, uninhabitable. The choice is not between competition and cooperation, but between forms of competition that preserve the commons and those that undermine the conditions on which all actors depend. Can space remain a sanctuary amid strategic rivalry, or will the conflicts of Earth be allowed to determine its future?