Response to "Habitat Hermit's" Comment

I thank you for your comment.

I submitted my rebuttal to The Space Review three weeks ago, and so far it has failed to publish my rebuttal. One ought to question why The Space Review would publish a piece that monstrously misrepresents an author's work, while not allowing the author the equal opportunity to correct the record. What is this publication's agenda?

Both the Outer Space Treaty and the Moon Agreement are international law; they are both deposited with the United Nations, they are both open for signature, and they are both binding on the states that have ratified them. The distinction is that the Moon Agreement has few states parties.

While I take appreciative note of your apology for the third paragraph of your post in The Space Review as "scathing" and "entirely misdirected," let me nevertheless address some of the issues you raise.

When you state that my book "seems to base itself on an ultra-extreme statist interpretation of the OST that neither the former Soviet communists, nor the US, nor Russia, nor China, nor the EU, nor Japan would subscribe to," frankly, that doesn't even make any sense to me. And if any of that were true, is it credible that my work would have been approved by a committee that included a professor who teaches international law as well as a career US Foreign Service officer of ambassadorial rank who was on the negotiating team of strategic arms treaties, or that Aerospace Corporation analysts would have briefed my work to senior NASA managers?

Nor is my alleged "ultra-extreme statist interpretation" why "the author of the book thinks the Moon Treaty is a good idea." I think it is a good idea because I reach conclusions that are opposite to yours. You state that "in reality the OST and the Moon Treaty are in deep conflict because the Moon Treaty contradicts the OST on the issue of Earth-government authority over non-Earth assets; the OST argues against such authority while the Moon Treaty takes such authority for granted." Given your premise of "the inherent contradiction between the Outer Space Treaty on one side and the Moon Treaty/Moon Agreement on the other," how can you explain the fact that the same states that ratified the Outer Space Treaty between 1967 and 1979 apparently reversed themselves so completely in negotiating the Moon Agreement between 1972 and 1979? Nowhere in the scholarly literature have I seen anyone else make this assertion; rather, the weight of scholarly opinion is that the Moon Agreement adds specificity to the principles declared in the Outer Space Treaty. Cite chapter and verse if you think otherwise. Exactly where does the Outer Space Treaty argue against such authority? Meanwhile, the Moon Agreement does not take such authority for granted; it merely commits states parties to "undertake to establish an international regime, including appropriate procedures, to govern the exploitation of the natural resources of the moon as such exploitation is about to become feasible." Now, in international law, the word "regime" has special meaning. It does not mean "regime" in the sense of a sovereign government, complete with coercive mechanisms such as police and/or other armed forces. Rather, it means "a set of rules" established to govern specific activities. For instance, the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade was a regime (a set of rules) without an organization for four decades before the Uruguay Round of GATT established the World Trade Organization. It seems obvious that when the exploitation of the Moon and other celestial bodies is about to become feasible, there will need to be a set of rules to ensure that commercial operations do not interfere with each other, or are not interfered with by other entities. Indeed, a regime of legal certainty is conducive to a favorable investment environment. In my view, this provision of the Moon Agreement was meant to address this need.

Whether or not you agree with my positions on points of international law pertaining to outer space, I hope you will at least recognize that in the long run we want the same thing: the efflorescence of the human species into the cosmos. I believe in international law as a means to this end, and not a barrier to it.