“The biggest takeaway is to encourage the United States to continue to be a leader in space,” says Mai’a Cross, dean’s professor of political science, international affairs and diplomacy.
A new report on the Council on Foreign Relations begins in urgency: “It is impossible to overstate the importance of space to the United States.”
As states like Russia and China deploy new and potentially threatening assets into space, and as more countries launch their own space programs, cooperation between the world’s superpowers above the clouds is of critical importance to peaceful relations on Earth, the report finds.
Moreover, in a world where more than 90 countries have developed space programs, the role of the U.S. should be to continue to ensure peace and security through diplomacy and sustained investment in space projects, says Mai’a Cross, dean’s professor of political science, international affairs and diplomacy, who contributed to the report.
“The biggest takeaway is to encourage the United States to continue to be a leader in space,” Cross says, emphasizing that long-term investment in space programs has “waxed and waned” between administrations.
The report was presented to President Donald Trump’s transition team in the aftermath of the 2024 election, Cross says.
“The idea here is to encourage leadership, but in a way that leads to more cooperation — not less,” she says. “This is really important right now because China is potentially poised to surpass the United States as the leading space power.”
Indeed, China’s space program — while still not as developed as the U.S.’s — is formidable, and Chinese officials have voiced a desire to surpass the United States’ capabilities by 2045.
As of 2023, there were a total of 5,465 satellites in orbit around Earth, with the U.S. operating 3,433 (63%). China, by contrast, controls 541.
But the report notes that China is on track to have “thousands of its own satellites in orbit in the not-too-distant future.”
“Further complicating matters, the space assets that the United States already has — mostly satellites, but also ground stations and modes of communication — are increasingly vulnerable now that China and Russia have developed the means to divert, disable, or destroy them,” the report states.
Those methods include electronic warfare such as jamming, which uses radio waves to disrupt enemy receivers, as well as so-called direct-ascent anti-satellite missiles, which China and Russia have tested on their own satellites.
It is important to note: space has not yet been weaponized, Cross says. But many militaries are “very dependent” on satellites for surveillance, intelligence and targeting, she adds.
By definition, the weaponization of space entails the presence of a space weapon controlled by a state that can target other space assets or structures on the ground. Russia and China have each sought to deploy technologies that could pose a threat to satellites and other assets, from nuclear weapons that could target satellites, to a robotic space arm that could disable nearby satellites.
What does space diplomacy look like? For starters, communication between adversaries is critical. The space race between the U.S. and Russia in the 1960s, while deeply competitive and adversarial, nevertheless rested on some degree of cooperation between powers — a collaboration that grew over time. The two superpowers established a hotline between Washington, D.C., and Moscow in 1963 in the event of a crisis, which they then improved on in 1971.
Besides an unsecured email system, there is currently no direct line of communication between Washington and Beijing, Cross notes. “The idea would be that some kind of coordination in space could be achieved by actually having the ability to call up China to warn about problems, such as the possibility of a satellite collision,” she says.
The report urges that the Trump administration should work with Congress to help establish Washington-Beijing hotline communications, develop a space traffic management program and strengthen rescue efforts for spacefarers in distress. As part of that work, the report notes that it is important to develop and outline a set of mutually agreeable rules to “deconflict space activities, avoid collisions and other accidents, and mitigate risk from space debris.”
The report also calls for increased collaboration with the private sector and academia, noting that the U.S. alongside other spacefaring states “should create an international ‘companion’ group that connects private sector and nongovernmental organizations” to entities such as the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs and the International Telecommunication Union.
“Space should be treated as part of the global commons. It should be for all of humankind, and space diplomacy is crucially important in terms of keeping lines of communication open — particularly as space takes on a military dimension,” Cross says.