Waging Peace in Orbit: National Security in the Third Space Age

This offer of leading-edge thinking reframes the debate on national security at the dawn of the Third Space Age

During the First Space Age, President Eisenhower rallied democracies to defend freedom while preserving peace at a time when the hydrogen bomb and intercontinental ballistic missiles threatened humanity. Nearly seventy-five years later, the world stands on the cusp of a third era of space exploration, where space is simultaneously a domain for warfighting, diplomacy, science, and commerce.

Waging Peace in Orbit pays tribute to Eisenhower's multidimensional political-economic approach to national security while offering leading-edge thinking about the dawn of today's Third Space Age. While other volumes critique individual space strategies, this book uses a wider lens, adapting the Pathways to Peace framework laid out in Hans Morgenthau's classic Politics among Nations. By enlisting leading experts, this comprehensive volume examines defense strategy, space commercialization, scientific exploration, legal norms, and war planning, providing a holistic understanding of modern issues in space.

Waging Peace in Orbit enlarges the debate on space security in increasingly crowded orbits for policymakers, members of the military, national security professionals, scholars, and students interested in security studies and space policy.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1647127696
• ISBN13: 9781647127695
• Release Date: November 2026
• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Length: 360 Pages
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher