We Americans love our Statue of Liberty, our Washington and Lincoln memorials, our Grand Canyon and our Golden Gate, our Constitution, our rule of law, our democratic ways. We never tire of telling the world about these marvels and many more. But for good or ill, how we Americans actually employee our high-tech, space-based military power is the thing by which the United States increasingly will be judged by the rest of the world. In a world of sovereign nations, a unilateral U.S. space-control capability would raise profoundly troubling questions about the meaning of sovereignty in the 21st century. An attempt to deploy a space-control capability and insert weapons into orbit surely would be regarded by many states as an intolerable violation of global norms and of their sovereignty. Today's threats do not require the United States to pursue high-tech, space-based weaponization. To do so would threaten relations with the rest of the world and possibly set off a damaging arms race in space.

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Moore, Mike. "A New Cold War?." SAIS Review. XXVI, No. 1 (Winter-Spring 2006): 175-188. [ 7 quotes ] [ page 186 ]