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Author: John Hickman Author Qualifications: Associate Professor of Government and International Studies at Berry College Journal: Astropolitics Journal Volume: 8 Article Title: Viewpoint: Extraterrestrial National Territory and the International System Database: Ebsco (Academic Search Complete)
Page 65 REDUCED LIKELIHOOD OF WAR The claim that competition between spacefaring states for new sovereign national territories on celestial bodies would result in an increased chance of armed conflict is one of arguments deployed in defense of the Outer Space Treaty.15 This echoes the theory, articulated first by Hobson and then elaborated by Lenin, that competition for colonies would be a pretext for militarism or would lead to war between the powers.16 That it failed to adequately explain the causes, conduct, and postwar settlements of the two world wars does not mean that this idea enjoyed any less currency when the Outer Space Treaty was being drafted.17 The Marxist intellectual tradition of treating territorial sovereignty as atavistic continued into the latter half of the 20th century. Therborn, for example, described feudal states as waging war for Page 66 territory to extract agricultural surpluses from peasants, and capitalist states as waging war for territory to capture and monopolize raw materials and markets.18 Socialist states, on the other hand, might engage in conflict with one another only over differences of ideology and not the economic value of territory. Unfortunately, however, this fails to account for the unwillingness of socialist states to concede terrestrial territory in disputes with other states, socialist or otherwise, and the willingness of capitalist states to accede to the collective ownership of the extraterrestrial remainder of the cosmos with the Outer Space Treaty. Although the history of imperialism presents numerous wars, by the 19th century many of those wars involved the conquest of traditional states or non-state polities by one of the powers, rather than interstate wars between the powers. Scholars identifying an association between incidence of inter-state war and territorial aggrandizement in the 19th century must exclude colonial territory from their calculation.19 Diplomacy, rather than interstate war, decided territorial sovereignty over vast areas, including Australasia, the central Pacific, and most of sub-Saharan Africa. Diehl and Goertz found that violence was associated with only approximately one-fourth of the changes in territorial sovereignty occurring between 1816 and 1980, and those involving colonial territories were least likely to be violent.20 The sale of territory accounts for many transfers of sovereignty, including one-half of the continental territory of the United States: the Mississippi Valley from France in 1803; Florida from Spain in 1819; portions of southern Arizona and New Mexico from Mexico in 1848; Alaska from Russia in 1867; and the Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917. Some territory was sold more than once. Having sold St. Barthe lomey Island to Sweden in 1784, France bought it back in 1878. As with other types of items offered for sale, territory did not always find a buyer. Thus, Ecuador offered to sell the Galapagos Islands first to the United States and later to France and Chile, but without success.21 Surely, the most telling example of peaceful resolution of territorial interests is that Britain, the United States, and Russia divided northwestern North America without war. The closest the United States and Britain came to war over the northwest was the risible 1859 Pig War over the San Juan Islands in Puget Sound. So cordial were subsequent relations between the United States and Canada, that in 1879, Canada helped the United States maintain order in its recently acquired Alaskan territory with a timely show of force by the Canadian warship Osprey, which deterred a threatened uprising by the Tlingit. In 1903, the United States and Canada resolved their boundary dispute over the precise location of the international border that separated the Canadian Yukon and British Columbia from American Alaska through the eminently civilized mechanism of the Alaska Boundary Commission. Mandel found that international border disputes tended to involve states with low levels of technology and land important for its ethnic population, Page 67 rather than its resources.22 Neither condition would obtain in the case of rival claims for extraterrestrial territory by spacefaring states. Competition for sovereign extraterrestrial territory is thus unlikely to lead to war between spacefaring states because they can follow

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the example of the great powers in the 19th century and negotiate resolution of rival claims. Far from being a cause for war between spacefaring states, in the near-term, the possession of extraterrestrial territories might prevent war. The extreme environment of space and the necessity to maintain the atmospheric integrity of crewed spacecraft and human bases make them extraordinarily vulnerable to attack. While the immense distances between celestial bodies would offer protection because of increasing warning time, mutual vulnerability would mean that human spacecraft and human bases of space- faring states would be hostages guaranteeing peaceful conduct. In other words, every spacefaring state would have a keen interest in protecting its personnel or investments in space. As with nuclear deterrence between the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War, mutual vulnerability to attack would give the potential belligerents reasons to negotiate their differences, rather than resort to force. If technological advances reduce the physical vulnerability of human spacecraft and human bases, then over the long-term the increased strategic depth afforded by the possession of extraterrestrial territory would enhance the security of spacefaring states. Luttwak defined strategic depth as geo- graphic distance enhanced by terrain obstacles and a lack of usable resources, starting with water, or to the contrary, as alleviated by roads and bridges, as well as usable resources along the way...that protects the invaded.23 Political authorities in states with extensive territories may with- draw their armed forces and productive capacity, or even their capitals, before complete defeat in an invasion because they have somewhere to relocate. Thus, large continental hinterlands permitted both the Soviet Union and the Republic of China to survive as regimes despite disastrous battlefield defeats during the Second World War. For maritime empires, the advantages of distance would include the ability to draw on the resources of distant and less vulnerable colonies in the form of food, fuel, and soldiers for the defense of the metropolitan homeland. Thus, Britain remained a great power into the Second World War largely because it enjoyed access to the natural resources and military volunteers from the Empire and Commonwealth. Political autho- rities in states with colonial territories may draw on their resources to con- tinue waging war even after they have lost the metropolitan homeland. Hence, in 1940, the Free French were able to draw on the resources, especially military manpower, of the colonies of Cameroun and French West Africa, except Gabon. After fleeing the Napoleonic invasion of Portugal, the Braganzas dynasty continued to rule what it called the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves from its new temporary capital in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Page 68 That states with extensive territories had a strategic advantage over states with compact territories in the previous century is considered an archaic feature of the industrial age warfare by some international relations scholars. Aerial bombardment, guided missiles, nuclear weaponry, satellite surveillance, and information technologies have reduced the security derived from ocean barriers and the dispersal of targets across extensive territory. Note, however, that the powers with more extensive territories prevailed in the two world wars of the last century, and thus survived to develop further those advances in military technology: the United States, Soviet Union, China, Britain, France, and China. That territory mattered following the end of the Second World War is nicely illustrated by the Soviet annexations of territory in Eastern Europe, the unsatisfied Soviet demand for Libya, and the anti-colonial wars waged by Western European powers in Southeast Asia and Africa. The contemporary reluctance of states to withdraw from distant territories, such as French Guiana, or military bases in former colonial possessions, such as the British Naval Base at Akrotiri in Cyprus, is evidence of the value of territory for states even after the most recent revolution in military affairs. Over the long-term, extraterrestrial territories could enhance the security of spacefaring states by giving them additional material resources, international prestige, and possible lines of retreat in the event of catastrophic military defeat on terrestrial battlefields. These characteristics would make such a spacefaring state markedly less inviting as a target for attack by a state with entirely terrestrial power resources. FRONTIER ANXIETIES Some of the anxiety about sovereign national extraterrestrial territory may be attributable to the recognition that the danger of barbarism has been largely vanquished because the state is now ubiquitous on Earth. In his survey of explanations for the collapse of complex societies, Tainter marked the unique difference between the modern era and previous historical eras: the world today is full.24 He argued that contemporary complex societies are much less likely to collapse because the entire planet is governed by complex societies. Complex societies could collapse in the past, because beyond their frontiers actual barbarians were waiting to attack. Every con- temporary complex society is consequently propped up by all other complex societies. Writing immediately prior to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the widespread recognition of the failed state as a problem, Tainter explained, there are no power vacuums left today. Every nation is linked to, and influenced by, the major powers, and most are strongly linked with one power bloc or the other.25 Despite the unfortunate timing, the theory that a world filled by complex societies may be less likely to experience such collapse is reasonable. Page 69 The prospect of spacefaring states claiming sovereign national territory conjures the possibility of barbarism, for between the first and

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last territorial claims on any celestial body, the sovereign national territory of at least one state would have a frontier border, an international juridical wilderness. It has been a century since that condition obtained anywhere on Earth. That such wilderness would be as empty of human barbarians, as they are of resentful extraterrestrial natives, should be sufficient reason to overcome any resulting anxiety. A better prediction is that extreme isolation and physical vulnerability would cause human settlements on celestial objects to lend one another support. A different anxiety associated with the human occupation of celestial bodies is that it would diminish interest among elites in solving terrestrial problems. Might the terrestrial majority be abandoned to their fates by a spacefaring minority? The brutally honest answer is that living solely on the Earth has not made our species more responsible. Indeed, it might pro- duce more irresponsibility because problems of global governance become zero sum struggles. The more politically acceptable answer is that additional power resources available to spacefaring states, because of their annexations of extraterrestrial territories, would give them the means to better support global governance. That might be coupled with the promise that extraterrestrial occupations in the form of human-tended bases offer our species, and other dependent species, better odds of surviving an otherwise existential catastrophe on Earth. CONCLUSIONS The increased risk of war caused by international competition between spacefaring states, for sovereign national territory on celestial objects, is likely to be exposed as false sometime during the twenty-first century. Rather than increasing the likelihood of war between the spacefaring states, it should instead reduce it in the near-term, because of the mutual vulnerability of human spacecraft and humantended bases, and over the long-term, by making spacefaring states less vulnerable to terrestrial warfare. When that competition for extraterrestrial territory begins, the total national territories of a small number of spacefaring states will increase enormously in a succession of annexations that move from celestial body to celestial body. Since the dawn of the space age, the persistent temptation has been to conceive of space as a realm where the limitations of human nature might be transcended, where competition could be replaced by cooperation. Yet, such idealism obscures the appreciation of what is possible and probable. Included in the latter category, is the propensity of the modern state to occupy distant lands in return for territorial sovereignty.

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