Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

126 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe
favoring such large-scale federal expenditures. “Conservatives are not against a
strong Government,” he explained. “Conservatives are against big, bureaucratic
welfare states.” 16
the large, expensive, bureaucratic programs started by the reagan
administration were consistent with the conservative space agenda, the two main
pillars of which were the commercialization and the militarization of space. all
of the reagan administration’s major space initiatives—from SDI to the Space
Station Freedom and the NaSp, with the exception of the commercialization
of space per se—exemplifed the expensive, large-scale, long-term projects
that characterized the Cold War era. Furthermore, the commercialization and
militarization of space were intimately interrelated in conservative thinking,
creating a space-based mirror-image twin of the writings of alfred t. Mahan
(1840-1914)—a famous naval strategist and professor at the Naval War College.
Mahan stressed the interconnection between the commercial exploitation
of the oceans and the military advantages of dominating the seas. he based his
beliefs on studies of the role played by control of the sea, or the absence thereof,
in the course of history up to the Napoleonic wars. he concluded that control
of the seas was the chief basis of “the power and prosperity of nations.” as with
the New right and traditional republican thinking, encouraging commerce
was a fundamental priority. In addition, Mahan saw no diference between
“national interest” and “national commerce.” 17 the use of private security
forces in Iraq is yet another step in conservatives’ continuing linkage of military
and commercial interests.
Mahan’s ideas appeared in print as turner’s frontier was closing and as the
seas (and overseas interests) promised to serve the United States as a new imperial
frontier. Mahan sought to extend the commercial and military infuence of the
United States in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, especially at the
Isthmus of panama where a French company was planning to build a canal.
Mahan’s message that military dominance of the seas was essential to assuring
both the nation’s military and commercial strength became the foundational
philosophy on which the conservative space military agenda was built. Maxwell
W. hunter, II and Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham, two of the principal architects
and proponents of SDI, consciously followed in Mahan’s intellectual foot steps
by arguing for the construction of a space-based global defense system to bring
16. Gingrich, 53-54; Gingrich and Muncy, 62.
17. On Mahan and his theories, see robert Seager, Alfred Thayer Mahan: The Man and His Letters
(annapolis, MD: Naval Institute press, 1977); William edmund Livezey, Mahan on Sea Power,
rev. ed. (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma press, 1980); and Mahan, The Infuence of Sea
Power on History, 1660-1783 (Boston, Ma: Little, Brown, 1897), reprinted (New York, NY:
Dover publications, 1987).