Outer Space Is Neither High Ground Nor Sanctuary

Historian Stephen Buono is right when he notes that “space is inherently neither a high ground nor a sanctuary” and is instead “what human beings will make of it,” and his point that “political imagination begets political innovation” is well founded too (264–265). His study of US foreign policy action shaping space policy works hard at “bucking a half-century of ‘space race’ scholarship,” as is noted on the back cover. This thesis is propelled as much as a foundation for policy advocacy, a passionate and laudable interest in resuscitating the sanctuary status of space, as from a comprehensive swell of evidence that it was idealism that drove Cold War era policy decisions against the weaponization of space. The result is a readable, interesting, and informative book about space history, but its closing call for action contradicts the logic underpinning the events which the book traces. The book is divided into three parts, framing “Dreams” of peaceful exploration of space in contrast with the “Nightmares” of weaponization and resulting in a process of “Waking Up.” Buono draws on a robust array of primary and secondary materials. The “Dreams” chapters are dominated by science fiction concepts about space. US Air Force concepts of weaponization gain the preponderance of attention in the “Nightmares” chapters (although US Army and Soviet projects are also mentioned as well). The “Waking Up” section starts with the crafting of the Outer Space Treaty (OST) in 1967, failed consideration of a follow-on lunar treaty, and uneven results of sanctuary politics in the wake of the first Apollo lunar landing.