Astropolitik: Classical Geopolitics in the Space Age

Scholarly and sophisticated work has graced space power studies this past year,1 and Astropolitik: Classical Geopolitics in the Space Age, by Dr. Everett C. Dolman of the School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, brilliantly continues this trend. The realm of space power studies is small, a fact that is in inverse proportion to the enormity of the potential implications of the exploitation of the space environment. Yet despite the relatively few numbers of people engaged in the serious study of space power and astropolitics, it is a Ž eld that is rapidly maturing in terms of rigor and method, as well as in the attention it commands in wider academia, politics, military, and industry. Everett Dolman’s Astropolitik is representative of this maturity, is in itself groundbreaking , and will deŽ nitely command attention. Astropolitik is a daring and forward-looking book, and has little patience for some of the sacred cows that have dominated the space agenda for the past four decades. It is this willingness to challenge the orthodox thinking of the international space community that makes Astropolitik akin to a strong gust of wind blowing through a musty room. This is tempered by an engaging style that displays a deep theoretical understanding of geopolitics and international relations. The author begins by deŽ ning astropolitics as “the extension of primarily nineteenth– and twentieth–century theories of global geopolitics into the vast context of the human conquest of outer space,” (p. 1) and “as the study of the relationship between outer space terrain and technology and the development of political and military policy and strategy.” (p. 15) The term Astropolitik in the title, a derivative of Geopolitik promulgated by the likes of Karl Haushofer, is recognised by the author as being contentious. The author convincingly justiŽ es its use in this context when he writes: