I’m not sure where this falls exactly between importance and tractability, but I think one concern is that any work we do on space governance now is likely to be washed out by later, near-term, and more powerful forces in the future.
My thinking on this is by analogy to previous developments in frontier governance. For example, in the history of the United States, it was common to form treaties with native peoples and exist with them relatively peacefully right up until the native people had resources the colonists/settlers/government wanted badly enough that they found expedience excuses to ignore the treaties, such as by fabricating treaty violations to allow ignoring them or just outright using force against a weaker entity.
And that’s just to consider how governance becomes fluid when one entity far out powers another. Equally powered entities have their own methods of renegotiating for what is presently desirable, past agreement be damned.
On the other hand some things have stuck well. For example, even if actors sometimes violate them, international rules of war are often at least nominally respected and effort is put into punishing (some of) those who violate those rules. As ever, exceptions are made for those powerful enough to be beyond the reach of other actors to impose their will by force.
All of this makes me somewhat pessimistic that we can expect to do much to have a strong, positive influence on space governance.
One example might be that early on, colonies are extremely reliant on the home world (as the ISS is today) so a lot of central control is exerted by earth. Later on the large distances involve make both aid and (many forms of) coercion much more difficult, so much more decentralisation and independence seem likely. From our vantage point it seems unlikely if we can do much to influence the latter given we first have to go through the radically different former.
I’m not sure where this falls exactly between importance and tractability, but I think one concern is that any work we do on space governance now is likely to be washed out by later, near-term, and more powerful forces in the future.
My thinking on this is by analogy to previous developments in frontier governance. For example, in the history of the United States, it was common to form treaties with native peoples and exist with them relatively peacefully right up until the native people had resources the colonists/settlers/government wanted badly enough that they found expedience excuses to ignore the treaties, such as by fabricating treaty violations to allow ignoring them or just outright using force against a weaker entity.
And that’s just to consider how governance becomes fluid when one entity far out powers another. Equally powered entities have their own methods of renegotiating for what is presently desirable, past agreement be damned.
On the other hand some things have stuck well. For example, even if actors sometimes violate them, international rules of war are often at least nominally respected and effort is put into punishing (some of) those who violate those rules. As ever, exceptions are made for those powerful enough to be beyond the reach of other actors to impose their will by force.
All of this makes me somewhat pessimistic that we can expect to do much to have a strong, positive influence on space governance.
I wrote a little bit about space governance, but was demotivated exactly because of these kind of concerns.
One example might be that early on, colonies are extremely reliant on the home world (as the ISS is today) so a lot of central control is exerted by earth. Later on the large distances involve make both aid and (many forms of) coercion much more difficult, so much more decentralisation and independence seem likely. From our vantage point it seems unlikely if we can do much to influence the latter given we first have to go through the radically different former.