The new US National Space Policy

Abstract

On 6 October 2006, the White House quietly released an unclassified version of the first new statement of US National Space Policy (NSP) in a decade. There is little substantive difference between the Bush administration’s NSP and that produced under the Clinton administration in 1996. Both acknowledge the need for the robust defence of American space-based assets. And yet there is a distinct contrast in tone between the two: whereas the Clinton administration emphasised space as an arena of multilateral cooperation, the Bush administration appears to anticipate a legal and material assault on US freedom to conduct operations in space.