On balance, the prospects for ASAT arms control are distinctly dim, even in these post-cold-war years. Great powers do not bar themselves from being able to do something that could be very important militarily. Space is a geographically distinctive environment but is dominated militarily by the same policy impulses that produce conflict on earth. The incentive to cheat on agreements would likely be matched by the ease with which cheating could be effected. The more critical space becomes as a field of competitive military endeavor, the greater the incentives to avoid legal constraints on (peacetime) behavior. The massive overlap between civilian and military space technologies (e.g., common transportation systems) and space activities would complicate any endeavor to write arms control treaties. Also, opinions vary as to the quality of space surveillance that will be available at different times in the future. Suffice it to say that there would be a problem in verifying space activity/capability exceeded in severity only by the traditional difficulty of a democracy in designing and executing a sanctions policy for noncompliance with treaties. Notwithstanding the politically permissive international climate of the 1990s, space arms control is unlikely to succeed for many of the same reasons that foredoom naval arms control. In the geographical realms of both sea and space, the United States is not seriously threatened at present but recognizes a prospectively permanent need for military superiority.

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Gray, Colin S. "Space Power Survivability." Air & Space Power Journal. (Winter 1993). [ 1 reference ]