International Collaboration in the 1958 Space Act

The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 was signed into law by President Eisenhower on July 29, 1958. 14 It distinguished between the civilian and defense – oriented aspects of aeronautical and space activities, and called for the establishment of a new agency to provide for the former in parallel to the Department of Defense (and—although this was not specified in the Act—to the Central Intelligence Agency and later to a highly secret covert agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, established in September 196115). The primary mission of the resulting National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which formally came into being on October 1, 1958, reflected the dynamics of superpower rivalry with the Soviet Union in the wake of the Sputnik shocks the year before. The Space Act called on the new agency to ensure “the role of the United States as a leader in aeronautical and space science and technology and in the application thereof to the conduct of peaceful activities within and outside the atmosphere (Sec. 2 (c) 5).”

Other countries, above all from the free world, were to be enrolled in this endeavor. To this end the Space Act also included among NASA’s missions “Cooperation by the United States with other nations and groups of nations [. . .] (Sec. 2 (c) 7).” This objective was developed in a short, separate section headed “International Cooperation.” Here it was specified that “[t]he Administration, under the foreign policy guidance of the President, may engage in a program of international cooperation in work done pursuant to the Act, and in the peaceful application of the results thereof, pursuant to agreements made by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate (Sec. 205).” International collabora­tion thus went hand in hand with foreign policy: NASA was to be an arm of American diplomacy.

Eisenhower stressed from the outset that this clause was not intended to engage presidential authority for all bilateral or multilateral programs undertaken by NASA. Its aim, rather, was to allow for the rare occasions when cooperation engaged such important questions of foreign policy that it had to be underpinned by interna­tional treaties. The Final Report of the Senate Special Committee on Space and Aeronautics, dated March 11, 1959, confirmed this interpretation.16 As a result, as Arnold Frutkin has put it, the pace of the cooperative program “was to be faster and its procedures far simpler than would have otherwise been the case.” In par­ticular, “NASA’s international program was thus immediately distinguished from that of the Atomic Energy Commission which, under its legislation, was required to obtain approval of its international efforts from the Congress.”17 The Space Act thus gave NASA considerable latitude to engage in international collaboration as its officers saw fit, and to handle the diplomatic dimensions of its policies and practices through interagency consultation, above all with the State Department.

A commitment to the “peaceful use” of outer space was essential to the suc­cessful exploitation of space for civilian scientific and applications programs on both a national and international collaborative level. As Eilene Galloway, who was involved in drafting the Space Act, has put it, the emphasis on peaceful use was intended to preserve space “as a dependable orderly place for beneficial pursuits.”18 To that end the United States moved rapidly to set up an interna­tional regime forbidding the militarization of space. In the face of considerable Soviet hostility and suspicion the United States took the lead in establishing an ad hoc Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), which became a regular committee of the UN General Assembly in December 1959.19

No clear definition of “peaceful use” was laid down by COPUOS, nor has one been established since. This is because of the immense importance of military space programs, and above all of the role that intelligence and reconnaissance satellites have played since the dawn of the space age. As one scholar puts it, from the get go “[t]he term ‘peaceful’ in relation to outer space activities was interpreted by the United States to mean ‘non-aggressive’ rather than ‘non-military.’” In international law this entails that all military uses are permitted and lawful as long as they do not engage the threat or the use of force. This interpretation has been essential to the preservation of both international stability and the national security of the space powers.20 It is now a central plank of the military’s expanding reliance on space.