The important factor here is that once a state has established weapons in space capable of shooting down rockets and launch vehicles in boost, no other state can put weapons there. Total domination of space is effected. Fears of an arms race in space are eliminated. Only in the situation where more than one side can place weapons into space is an arms race possible (e.g. the Cold War). This is because both sides will be attempting to fill and dominate the position before the other, taking advantage of orbital placement to acquire tactical superiority over the process. ( More ... )

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Dolman, Everett C. Space Power and US Hegemony: Maintaining a Liberal World Order in the 21st Century. : , 2003. [ 3 quotes ] [ page 7 ]

 

Observers have not yet fully understood or analyzed another possible reality. The current striking disparity between the United States and all other countries in economic, technological, and military endeavors places extreme limits on most countries’ abilities to respond meaningfully. Old concerns that U.S. advances in missile defense or space would spawn undesirable arms races may no longer be valid. For example, the United States is the only nation capable of implementing and sustaining decisive military force on a global basis. The war in Afghanistan provided a snapshot of this ability. ( More ... )

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McLaughlin, Kevin. "Would Space-Based Defenses Improve Security?." Washington Quarterly. Vol. 25 (Summer 2002): 177-191. [ 3 quotes ] [ page 184 ]

 

And America would respond -- finally. But would another state? If America were to weaponize space today, it is unlikely that any other state or group of states would find it rational to counter in kind. The entry cost to provide the infrastructure necessary is too high; hundreds of billions of dollars, at minimum. The years of investment it would take to achieve a minimal counter-force capability -- essentially from scratch -- would provide more than ample time for the US to entrench itself in space, and readily counter preliminary efforts to displace it. The tremendous effort in time and resources would be worse than wasted. Most states, if not all, would opt not to counter US deployments in kind. They might oppose US interests with asymmetric balancing, depending on how aggressively America uses its new power, but the likelihood of a hemorrhaging arms race in space should the US deploy weapons there -- at least for the next few years -- is extremely remote.

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Dolman, Everett C. "US Military Transformation and Weapons in Space." E-Parliament Conference on Space Security. Washington, D.C.: , September 14, 2005. [ 4 quotes ]

 

[Samuel] Huntington implies that other nations would only enter an arms race to preserve the balance of power. But what if that balance of power was already overwhelming in favor of one side to begin with? Currently the United States has no peer in the world either economically or militarily. The United States has become the world's sole remaining superpower. If the United States added space weapons to its already massive arsenal of weapons, would this change the balance of power sufficiently to require other nations to respond? This is doubtful. Any other nation - China, Russia, France, and others - would have to simultaneously develop a robust terrestrial military capability while at the same time engaging in an arms race in space. ( More ... )

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Hyten, John E. A Sea of Peace or a Theater of War: Dealing with the Inevitable Conflict in Space. Urbana-Champaign, IL: Program in Arms Control, Disarmament and International Security, April 2000. [ 8 quotes ]

 

In such circumstances, America certainly would respond eventually. Conversely, if America were to weaponize space today, it is unlikely that any other state or group of states would find it rational to counter in kind. The entry cost to provide the necessary infrastructure is too high—hundreds of billions of dollars, at minimum. The years of investment needed to achieve a minimal counter-force capability—essentially from scratch—would provide more than ample time for the United States to entrench itself in space and readily counter preliminary efforts to displace it. ( More ... )

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Dolman, Everett C. "U.S. Military Transformation and Weapons in Space." SAIS Review. XXVI, No. 1 (Winter-Spring 2006): 163-174. [ 10 quotes ] [ page 169 ]

 

A look at competitors in any upcoming space race produces a field that consists of Russia, Europe, Japan, China, India, and potentially South Korea. Russia’s program is cash starved to the point that President Putin declared his country "had nothing to be proud of in space." According to the Chairman of Europe’s National Space Research Centre, Russia’s investment in space has bottomed out at only 2% of worldwide expenditure, with the United States and Europe making up 90% of the world’s space spending. According to data gathered by World Prospects for Government Space Markets, U.S. space spending dwarfs that of the next two closest competitors, Europe and Japan who spend on the order of $1 billion and $2 billion on military space respectively. ( More ... )

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Henderson, Scott A. The Third Battle: Is the U.S. Ready to Wage the Next Conflict in Space?. Maxwell AFB, AL: USAF Air University, March 2004. [ 7 quotes ] [ page 25 ]

 

The fallacy of the inevitability argument is that, in the short run at least, the United States is the only country that possesses the resources and capabilities necessary to deploy space weapons. This has never been the case in American history. As one historian notes, from the "development of ironclad warships in the 1860s, Dreadnought battleships after 1900, or atomic weapons in the 1940s," different nations were simultaneously developing the same technology. This left a choice to the different governments to either take the lead in the arms race or get passed by. In the space weapons debate, in contrast, "the United States can unilaterally [for the time being] choose whether space will be weaponized." Consequently, the United States controls the inevitability of space weaponization. This conviction is dangerously close to evolving into a self-fulfilling prophecy that simply cannot be refuted.

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Park, Andrew T. "Incremental Steps for Achieving Space Security: The Need for a New Way of Thinking to Enhance the Legal Regime for Space." Houston Journal of International Law. Vol. 28, No. 3 (2006): 871-911. [ 11 quotes ] [ page 888-889 ]

 

DOLMAN: Nonetheless, we have a different system today and, as Karl has pointed out, it may be that if the United States were to unilaterally militarize space – and I am not advocating that necessarily, but it is an option – that it could in fact prevent an arms race. The trillions of dollars that would have to be spent to dislodge the United States from space, if it were to quickly seize control of the low-earth orbit, might be seen as not worthwhile to another state. However, if we wait fifteen or twenty years until a state is able to challenge the United States in space, then we will have a space race. By putting weapons in space to enhance its military capabilities the United States today is saying to the world that in this period of American hegemony, it is not going to wait for problems to develop overseas until they bubble over into its area of interest, and then massively and forcefully fix that problem. No. The American way of war today, based on precision and on space capabilities, is to engage early using less force, using more precise force and more deadly force in a specific area, but with far less collateral damage. That is the new American way of war and we really cannot get out of it.

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Dolman, Everett C., Karl P. Mueller et al. "Toward a U.S. Grand Strategy in Space." Washington Roundtable on Science & Public Policy. Washington, D.C.: George C. Marshall Institute, March 10, 2006. [ 10 quotes ] [ page 24 ]

 

Operating from space does have drawbacks, starting with the high cost of getting there. But precisely because orbital operations are so expensive and technically challenging, the United States has been able to establish a lead in exploiting space that no other country can pretend to match. When a presidential commission stated in 2001 that the U.S. should aim to field commercial spacecraft a generation more advanced than those of overseas competitors, and national-security spacecraft two generations more advanced, it wasn't merely expressing an aspiration -- it was describing the competitive standing of the U.S. space sector as it then existed.

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Thompson, Loren B. Can the Space Sector Meet Military Goals for Space?. Washington, D.C.: Lexington Institute, October 2005. [ 5 quotes ] [ page 8 ]

 

However, whether directed energy weapons are offensive or defensive, like surface ships and submarines, depends on how they are used. Space-based directed energy missile defense systems, deployed to destroy ballistic missiles launched against the United States, cannot be deemed offensive systems. To argue otherwise is to equate those who would launch such an attack using missiles armed with WMD warheads with those who seek to defend themselves from such an attack. Equally absurd is the notion that the United States can, and should, take the lead in banning space-based systems and thus provide an example to the international community. Here the assumption is that the United States can establish global regimes that will strengthen or create international norms against the weaponization of space. The burden of proof that such an American approach would achieve its objectives is not supported by the history of conflict. The ability of states and other actors to utilize new geographical arenas, whether at sea, on land, or in the air, has led to conflict and competi­tion based on available technologies in these diverse settings. At the same time, it is suggested that a decision by the United States to forego the deployment of space-based assets will lead to comparable restraint on the part of others. It may be equally plausible to suggest that such self abnegation by the United States will only encourage others to fill the resulting political vacuum.

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Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis. Independent Working Group on Missile Defense, the Space Relationship, and the Twenty-First Century, 2007 Report. Washington, D.C.: Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, August 28, 2006. [ 13 quotes ] [ page 31 ]