political power capabilities of nation-states. The instantaneous communications capability provided by satellites is essentially a luxury, not essential to the national development of small nations (6). In fact, membership in a global “telecommunications village’’ through satellite technology is not desired by all nations: the minutes of the 1979 World Administrative Radio Conference reveal that it represents a threat to entrenched ideologies and to traditional patterns of political communication. This is not true for satellite power technology. As fossil fuels are depleted, the comparative economic advantage accruing to nations receiving energy from SPS will be greatly enhanced. Eventually, it may be impossible to sustain a large-scale industrial society without access to satellite power or other “exotic” energy sources. Consequently, control over satellite power in the 21st century has potential for the same type of economic and political influence currently wielded by OPEC. Monopoly control over SPS by any single entity—an international organization, a multinational consortium (like INTELSAT), a national government or a private monopoly — could eventually be perceived as a significant threat to national development and to the maintenance of effective state sovereignty. In general, the nations which will tend to risk the most through monopolistic development of SPS will be among those which are today most vulnerable to OPEC activities: industrialized and industrializing societies which, for reasons of geography and lack of access to “exotic” technology, cannot depend on domestic resources for their potential energy needs. On the issue of military applications of SPS, there is an analogy between SPS and the development of communications satellite technology. It is doubtful that most military applications of either technology represent a significant threat to the longterm national interests of most nations, in comparison to the threat posed the political-economic implications of satellite power in a world of depleted fossil fuels. Quite simply, if a nation has the resources and the will to use satellites for military purposes, it does not need to develop SPS or civilian communications satellites as an elaborate “cover” for its military operations; the same purpose could be accomplished by launching orbital military installations under the guise of, e.g., orbital scientific laboratories (7). THE FORMAT OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL REACTION TO SPS National governments are the actors that will aggregate policy positions regarding SPS, express them in international negotiations, and attempt to influence the outcome of the development and implementation of SPS. Figure 1 illustrates the process through which international political reactions to technological and resource issues are formulated. As indicated, this is not merely a question of governments rationally developing a single, coherent policy. Instead, whenever the national decisionmaking process for a specific issue area is decentralized to some degree, national positions on the issue tend to be achieved only after arduous intragovernmental conflict and negotiation among competing domestic interests (8). Figure 1 also illustrates that modification of national positions on technological and resource issues may occur after conclusion of domestic negotiations, through interaction with foreign and transnational actors. The most obvious example of this process is the coordination of East European policy positions through the Commission on Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA or COMECON) and other intrabloc institutions. Other examples of formal attempts at intrabloc coordination include the activities of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a
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