GEORGETOWN UNIVERISTY | The Center for Security Studies (CSS) hosted a book talk with John Klein on October 8th to discuss space power, security and strategy, topics which appear in his recent book “Space Warfare: Strategy, Principles, and Policy.”
John Klein, Senior Fellow and Strategist at Falcon Research, Inc. and retired Commander and Naval Flight Officer in the U.S. Navy, spoke with Georgetown students about the growing importance of space power, security and strategy, the topics of his newly released book “Space Warfare: Strategy, Principles, and Policy,” on Oct. 8.
The event was hosted by Georgetown’s Center for Security Studies (CSS), a program that offers curriculum, research and dialogue on national and international security issues, where Klein is an adjunct professor.
According to Klein, space strategy is an interdisciplinary field that governs the use of space by civilians and militaries.
“The purpose of space strategy is to ensure access to and use of space,” Klein said at the event.
Victoria Samson, Chief Director of Space Security and Stability at the Secure World Foundation, said that commercial space technology and strategy already has important implications, and a current key example is the use of space technology in the war in Ukraine.
“As we see in Ukraine, commercial actors are becoming more preeminent, whether it’s in terms of getting images from space and using those images for targeting or for information about troop movements or things like Starlink being used for things like military communications,” Samson told The Hoya.
Klein also linked military strategy on Earth to that in space through cyberspace security.
“Space domain and cyberspace domain are so linked that space warfare and cyberspace warfare can be the same,” Klein said.
Although space policy is a relatively new concern, Klein said that past strategic and military thinkers are integral to how he approaches shaping the future of space military strategy.
“I just have old ideas we’ve forgotten about and apply them in novel ways,” Klein said at the event.
To grapple with space security questions, like the pressing concerns surrounding space technology in Ukraine, Klein relies on strategic theories applied in past situations
“A lot of the questions being posed aren’t new questions in a strategic sense, we’ve been asking them for centuries if not millennia, so I try to go back before we think all of our questions and problems are new.” Klein told The Hoya.
For example, one current issue in space policy concerns space debris, the materials and waste left in space by humans. Though the issue may seem futuristic to some, the question of how nations ought to make use of shared resources and respond to shared threats is well established in the field of security strategy.
Klein explained that because many nations rely on space as a shared resource, it is necessary to examine space debris through the lens of national security.
“Everybody’s causing it. It’s a global problem. It’s affecting certain areas. Because space is shared with everybody, every issue has national security implications” Klein said.
Klein emphasized that space debris is a multidisciplinary issue with political implications, not just environmental ones.
“I think debris is one of those environmental issues that has implications on the national security front, on the climate front,,” Klein said. “It’s one of those international issues that’s not going to go away. It’s been bad, and it’s getting worse. It’s time to try to figure out a long-term solution.”
Another scholar paying attention to evolving policies on space debris at Georgetown is Professor Teasel Muir-Harmony, a historian and curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Muesem’s Apollo Collection who researches lunar governance and space flight.
“The issue of orbital debris and who’s responsible for that is a question in space law that’s getting more attention, and then also engineers are working on how to deal with it and how to clean up space,” Muir-Harmony told The Hoya. “So this is going to be an interesting topic moving forward that intersects both with policy, and also with engineering, and perhaps other fields as well.”
Klein describes that while this issue is inherently interdisciplinary, the essence of tackling any issue in space has an important impact on his work in space security.
“It’s a global problem. It’s affecting certain areas. Because space is shared with everybody, every issue has national security implications,” Klein told The Hoya.
As Klien approaches these complex questions, from cyberwarfare to the environment and the impact of space warfare, he hopes to contribute to academic thought and guide the concrete next steps in the policy space.
“Trying to make sense of what we are seeing today, I try to write about things that are scholarly, but if you don’t have a practical solution it’s kind of meaningless,” Klein said. “Can the enduring work on strategy provide solutions to what we see today?”