Diva`s Diplomatic Pouch

Think of "science fiction" without "fiction." That’s your glimpse of future war and peace. Far-fetched? Only partly, experts say.
What was once mystical is now an invisible battleground. Space is "war-fighting domain."
In today’s space era, the heavens are physically reachable. And angels of all sides fall. They do in wars.
Still, some space pundits argue we can aim for more "peaceful use of outer space" to tackle global ills like climate change, disaster response, food insecurity and others.
But as geopolitics shifts by minutes, humankind’s "pursuit of common good" is in doubt.
For more than 3,000 years, humans’ fascination with the sky has inspired thinkers, military engineers, investors and scientists across civilizations, from Persia and the Mediterranean to the Ganges and Yellow River.
“The great bird will take its first flight... filling the universe with stupor… and bringing eternal glory to the nest where it was born," noted Renaissance artist-scientist Leonardo Davinci.
Leonardo’s “Codex on the Flight of Birds” engineering drawing laid a foundation for our journey to the stars in today’s “great bird” spacecraft.
As a military engineer serving the Milanese court in his earlier years, Leonardo produced war machine drawings, from armored vehicles to first aerial map. He advanced Renaissance warfare technology.
Yet, some 2,700 years before Leonardo, celebrated female Indian philosopher Gargi Vachaknavi, according to the Vedic oral record, asked: On what, then, is space woven?
Gargi’s question on “the nature of space and its ultimate foundation” continues to intrigue physicists, philosophers, military entrepreneurs and space investors of our time.
Today, two existential questions stand: whether we will see more militarized and commercialized space with sharp rise in orbital “dog fights” and no-win space warfare; or the cosmos will present the infinite opportunities for space collaboration and diplomacy to advance human progress.
The answers are as vast and mysterious as space itself. Experts, however, point to these clues.
First, the line between fiction and reality is thinning at unprecedented pace in space warfare.
Fiction-inspired weapons are now 21st-century reality: autonomous AI systems from 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Terminator; orbital surveillance from Starship Troopers; networked battle coordination from Star Wars; and commercial satellites controlling AI drones from Venus Equilateral.
Space moguls and military engineers are mostly science fiction fans.
The dual military-civilian use of space—at commercially available rates and lower costs—for communication, intelligence, data collection, navigation, missile warning, target identification and precision strikes has skyrocketed in conflicts from Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan to Venezuela and Iran.
The fictional HAL 9000 inspired autonomous spacecraft and AI-driven mission control systems being developed by NASA and the U.S. Space Force, established in 2019 as the newest addition to the Pentagon, which operates Pituffik Space Base in Greenland.
Space moguls and military engineers are mostly science fictions’ fans.
Space technologies, namely satellites, missile systems, spacecrafts or any human-made objects put in space and space infrastructure like ground-based command centers, are strategic military assets. And artificial Intelligence (AI) has taken them to the next level.
"In this century, hardware fights battles. Networks decide wars. Weapons win engagements. Systems win wars," said Shubhi Mishra, CEO of RAFT, awarded $928 million by the U.S. Air Force in 2025 to work on the use of space-based assets with AI to transform "strategic intelligence into actionable capabilities."
But winning space, others argue, does not guarantee victory in asymmetrical warfare. In protracted wars, space superiority may deliver a Pyrrhic victory in the short run but strategic defeat in the long run.
Meanwhile, there is no consensus even on what a space weapon is, according to Aaron Bateman, author of Weapons in Space.
Second, the past few years have seen the height of the "space revolution," experts say.
"There were more satellites launched last year than in the entire history of humanity," said Dylan Taylor, CEO of Voyager Technologies, at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos. His company is an “aerospace national security and traditional space company listed on the New York Stock Exchange.”
For decades, space has enabled satellite navigation, communications, weather forecasting and Earth observation. Now space is cheaper. Rockets are reusable.
The space industry, converged with AI, telecommunications, robotics, quantum computing and biotechnology, is growing at breakneck speed.
Meanwhile, the line between public and private space investment is thinning.
A major shift in the entire space technology ecosystem is the transition of the funding, use and control of space from state actors to non-state actors, such as venture capitalists, defense entrepreneurs and global business elites.
This shift, analysts say, points to a geopolitical future of space with an “alliance-based commercial order.” Defense, space innovations, and commercialization are intertwined.
Global defense spending reached $2.63 trillion in 2025, the highest in human history, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Defense space spending rose to $73.5 billion, surpassing civil space budgets for the first time, Novaspace reported.
Space is one of the key domains, like the deep sea, the poles, cyberspace and global finance, whose control determines access to resources, the “future of the Internet” and the ability to defend against security threats, according to Elizabeth Economy, Stanford University scholar.
Militarized and commercialized space has driven national security policies and postures, from Greenland to the Indo Pacific.
Space, which begins some 100 kilometers above Earth surface, has been a core discourse of military planners, policymakers and world affairs students.
As in geopolitics, space race has become multipolar.
Besides the great powers, middle powers and more than 40 countries of the “global south” now have dual military-civilian space architecture with satellites and space launch capabilities.
More than 90 countries launch satellites. In all regions, countries are investing more in dual-use space technologies.
A chilling reality: space technologies are now mass produced with AI capacity to decide on human death or target killing at industrial scale – with limited or no human input.
Bigger fear: Weaponized autonomous AI could go rogue. We do not clearly understand how AI can override human operators, experts say.
The 2023 reported — and later denied — military simulation in which AI disobeyed and killed its human operator is no science fiction.
Third, beyond the space-for-war realm, a parallel universe exists: space diplomacy and the peaceful uses of outer space. And you are part of it, United Nations (UN) diplomats argue.
Billions, the UN says, are using space daily — peacefully and personally.
Science fiction-inspired inventions are now part of your life. The Star Trek "communicator" is today’s mobile phone.
“Every phone call you made, every global positioning system route that guided your journey, every weather forecast that helped you pack – all of it depended on space, " UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed said last June in the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) in Vienna.
This year, 110 COPUOS member states continue to meet alongside UN entities, corporations and civil society to engage in space dialogue and cooperation.
Since 1958, the UN has had COPUOS as a forum for multilateral space negotiations and the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and subsequent treaties in the 1970s as international space law.
Mirroring geopolitics, a current shift in UN space diplomacy has been the rising role of the middle powers — the current and aspiring ones.
Italy, Mexico, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates, this year, lead discussions in COPUOS and its subsidiary bodies on peaceful space uses, space law, governance, safety and sustainability.
Today, the UN, through COPUOS supported by UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), is reframing peaceful space uses, linking them with sustainable development, disaster response, agriculture, education, health and humanitarian operations.
“Space is not a distant dream. It’s already a shared reality. And if we work together, it can help us solve Earth’s most pressing challenges,” said UNOOSA head Aarti Holla-Maini.
Vienna-based UNOOSA helps countries, especially developing countries, “to have access and leverage” space benefits for sustainable development. It focuses on preserving space for scientific discovery, engaging the private sector and strengthening international law and policies for space use.
The UN is broadening space dialogue to engage corporations, academia, NGOs, youth and women.

But what happens at the UN often stays at the UN. Not all COPUOS members welcome private sector engagement, and vice versa.
Yet, possibilities for global space collaboration are endless.
Space is a key growth area for future global economy. The space economy is about US$ 600-700 billion and expected to grow to $2 trillion by 2035, according to UN space champion Brian Cox, British physicist and former rock banner.
Beyond the UN, multinational space cooperation continues.
At the International Space Station (ISS), for example, the US, Russia, Canada, Japan, and European countries are working together on scientific research.
In Geneva, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), funded by countries and corporate donors, has global networks of experts from more than 110 countries to uncover, “what the universe is made of and how it works.”
Some corporate space actors show commitment to space cooperation.
“The future we want to build in space is a future which is collaborative,” said Hélène Huby, space scientist and The Exploration Company’s CEO.
There is no border line in space. But the geopolitical line remains clear.
Washington leads the Artemis Accords with more than 60 signatory nations. Beijing and Moscow lead the International Lunar Research Station with some 15 countries. Senegal and Thailand belong to both groupings.
Still, space is a kind of "Wild West" frontier, critics say. Different countries and commercial interests struggle to agree on global policy and legal frameworks and implement them nationally to manage space.
For space collaboration – in and out of the UN universe — to work better, there is a need to cut across organizational, bureaucratic and disciplinary silos.
What could future space look like?
"We are now on the verge of becoming a spacefaring civilization," Cox said. We will see more space stations, commercial research and competing satellite constellations in Earth orbit.
Either for war or peace, space is now congested, contested and geopolitically strained by forces operating with growing opaqueness. Peacekeeping Jedi Knights can turn warmongers.
In all, these three clues do not lead to all answers on future space uses. But they reaffirm space as an ethically charged question.
The biggest question in the cosmos, Cox said, is “What does it mean to be human?”
Space scientists and political theorists now ask more philosophical questions about space, especially when enhanced with AI.
Even some space moguls, military engineers and space “warfighters” call for more interdisciplinary dialogue not on logic and science but on “the moral truths” and human conscience in space uses for war and peace.
As Spock, Science Officer of starship Enterprise in Star Trek, said, “Logic is the beginning of wisdom… not the end.”
In wisdom may lie the peace equation in the war calculus.
When empires unravel, the enduring statecraft is the balance of might with justice and virtue—a guardrail of wisdom for interval peace in humankind’s long history of perpetual wars.

Suchada Kulawat is an analyst who served with Thailand’s Foreign Ministry, the UNDP’s Bangkok regional office, Permanent Mission of Thailand to the UN, and with the UN at New York Headquarters and in UN peace missions in Africa, Asia-Pacific and Europe.