With our hardware and our brainpower, the United States has unchallenged mastery of air, sea, and land. Except for our government's failure to defend us from ballistic missiles -- a glaring, reprehensible exception -- no one can seriously threaten us with conventional forces. Experts on such things say that this is a period of "strategic pause," a rare opportunity to catch our breath and rethink our strategy and force structure. Although the cold war required us to follow a course of incremental advances in doctrine and procurement just to keep pace with the Kremlin, nothing of the scope and scale of that technological competition exists today. As they say at the war colleges, we have no "peer competitor." Although I vigorously oppose those people who use this fortunate circumstance to justify reckless cuts in defense spending or to ratio-nalize their refusal to support an effective ballistic missile defense, I do see an opportunity for us to exploit this period of unchallenged conventional superiority on Earth to shift substantial resources to space. I believe we can and must do this, and, if we do, we will buy generations of security that all the ships, tanks, and airplanes in the world will not provide. This would be a real "peace dividend" -- it would actually help keep the peace. None of us can truly imagine the opportunities that space may one day offer. But for now I think we can agree that space offers us the prospect of seeing and communicating throughout the world; of defending ourselves, our deployed forces, and our allies; and, if necessary, of inflicting violence?all with great precision and nearly instantaneously and often more cheaply. With credible offensive and defensive space control, we will deter and dissuade our adversaries, reassure our allies, and guard our nation's growing reliance on global commerce. Without it, we will become vulnerable beyond our worst fears.

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Smith, Bob. "The Challenge of Space Power." Air & Space Power Journal. (Spring 1999). [ 1 reference ]