Deployment of space weapons is also likely to generate the sort of situation that fosters tension and risks poor decisionmaking. First deployment may face other states with unacceptable new vulnerabilities, resulting in unpredictable reactions. The Cuban Missile Crisis, it may be remembered, was itself the result of weapons deployment creating new and unexpected vulnerabilities. If, as suggested above, first deployment in fact spurs these other states to follow suit, this will in turn pose the first deployer with the need to decide how to respond: should the secondary deployments simply be allowed to take place, degrading the first deployer's strategic advantage, or should the first deployer threaten and if necessary take active steps to prevent or reverse such deployments? If the latter, what are likely to be the consequences in terms of conflict escalation, especially given the advanced military-technological levels of the states likely to be involved? Or, given the need in some scenarios for an extensive constellation of space-based weapons to deny other states access, will a nation challenged by a partial deployment be moved to take action to prevent the constellation becoming fully populated?

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Baines, Phillip and Robert McDougall. "Military Approaches To Space Vulnerability: Seven Questions." Future Security in Space: Commercial, Military, and Arms Control Trade-Offs. Ed. James Clay Moltz. Monterey, CA: Center for Nonproliferation Studies, 2002. [ 4 quotes ] [ page 15 ]