ABSTRACT
During the Cold War détente phase, the United Nations (UN) was tasked with dealing with the space domain and a new UN body was created – UN Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UN COPUOS). In the next 20 years UN COPUOS was successful in negotiating, drafting and adopting the Outer Space Treaty and four more subsequent space treaties, containing the main space law principles and regulating all outer space activities. This demonstrated that the norm-creation in UN COPUOS did not follow the dynamics of Cold War, manifesting the cooperative and stabilizing potential of international law.
Thus, the history of international space law-creation begs the question: if, paradoxically, Cold War conflict was conducive to norm-creation and cooperation in space, why has not the end of Cold War ushered in a new chapter of space norm building? In this chapter it is argued that this is due to the fact that the political, security, and commercial stakes related to the space domain have significantly increased, eroding the cooperative will in spite of the growing risks.
