ABSTRACT
The militarisation of outer space is prohibited but that has not stopped speculation on the usefulness of outer space as strategic military outposts and dominion of influence. Drumming up the language of war for a region that from the very inception of its legal regulation has been declared the province of mankind is not an easy task. Yet there is a strong field of American writers particularly in the Air Force schools that aggressively pushes this agenda in its academic publications. The argumentation strategy of those in this group include scaremongering, inventive reading of current international law on the subject and outright preference for the argumentation of force rather than the force of argumentation. An account goes:
Until very recently, nations faced few constraints on uses of the space domain. Yet, despite the professed goal of cooperation in outer space and denouncement of aggressive use of force within that realm by many counties, “all space faring states today have military missions, goals, and contingency spaceoperations plans.” Thus space is already a contested environment. 794
