By Robert Farley
China could affect the rules of the road for military activities in space.
Earlier this week, Zachary Keck indicated that the PLA intends to create an autonomous Aerospace Force in order to handle space operations. The earliest reports do not make clear whether the Aerospace Force would really represent a fourth service, or instead an autonomous branch (like the Second Artillery). Nevertheless, the idea of an independent military service dedicated to space affairs is worthy of interest.
On an international scale, how responsibility for space falls out in terms of military organizations has potentially large implications for the development of norms of appropriate behavior in space. Different services have different visions of the commons, and have powerful platforms for advocacy on what the “rules of the road” should look like. Services can also have strong attitudes about arms control. A service that owes its existence to a particular vision of freedom-of-action in space can provide powerful opposition to arms control agreements it finds threatening.
And so the configuration of services can have effects beyond the organization of military affairs in a particular country. But how does this configuration change, and how might a change in China affect how other countries design their defense bureaucracies? What we do know is that services and branches do not follow one single logic; the institutional framework of military organization depends on national interest, national resources, and the particular configuration of domestic politics existing at the point of decision.
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