Strategic Real Estate: Space Infrastructure and U.S.-Australia Defense Coop

The United States leverages allies to secure access to vital real estate abroad that enables it to project power through space. In analyses of space security, scholars and policy experts have focused on activities in orbit and neglected the global terrestrial infrastructure necessary for space operations. Australia’s hosting of U.S. defense and civilian space facilities since the 1960s has heavily shaped relations between the two countries. But controversy surrounding this infrastructure also tested alliance cohesion in the Cold War. Since that time, space infrastructure has become woven into the very fabric of the alliance, shaping subsequent defense cooperation, AUKUS most recently. Today, U.S. space infrastructure hosted on Australia’s soil has important implications both for the alliance and competition with China.

Bio:

Aaron Bateman is an assistant professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University. He studies the impact of technology on international security. He is the author of Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative (MIT Press, 2024). His second book, Wiring an Empire: Information Networks and U.S. Global Power in the Cold War is under advance contract with MIT Press. His work has been published in International Security, the Journal of Strategic Studies, and the International History Review (among others). His policy commentary has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Lawfare, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University. Prior to academia, he served as a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer.

Sponsored by the Center for Australian, New Zealand and Pacific Studies and the Strategic Studies Program of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University

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