The military space race: unrealized fantasies?

The escalation of the military and political struggle between Russia and the West, which has led to the near-total collapse of the arms control system, has now extended to outer space, the ‘sixth ocean'. In the current year 2024, American rhetoric has become especially active, accusing Russia of attempting to turn space into ‘a battlefield of the future'. Another surge in suspicion, amid a sharp escalation of tensions, has occurred due to the lack of effective legal mechanisms to reliably regulate the activities of states in space. In the past, the Soviet Union and the United States, after a series of costly projects aimed at attempts to use outer space for warfare, redirected their activities towards non-military, peaceful purposes. They created a solid legal framework and moved towards cooperative relations, including in the outer space. In light of the current, largest military and political crisis between Russia and the Western countries since the end of the Cold War, new cooperative efforts are needed to strengthen collective security in outer space.