Abstract
This introductory chapter aims to attune the reader to the topic of planetary defense through the lens of political science. The entire volume proposes an ambitious approach, a multipurpose lunar base, but the key condition for humankind’s peaceful expansion into space is based on cosmopolitan global governance, which we argue will not emerge easily. This chapter considers several political science problems in relation to cosmopolitan thinking, from development aid criticism to perceptions of influence by individuals in global politics and the claim that the anarchy we allegedly live in is caused by states themselves. As the authors progress through discussions of political science and theoretical concepts, several questions arise as to how we can discern moral from immoral behavior in political science theory. Finally, as our requirements are constantly changing, cosmopolitan thinking shows that humanity faces three sets of problems: sharing the planet, sustaining life and developing a rulebook. This chapter lays the foundation for further theoretical argumentation throughout the whole volume, which considers these three sets of problems using a multidisciplinary lens.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Carl Sagan requested to turn around the Voyager 1 probe in 1990 to take one last photo of Earth and the result is called Pale Blue Dot. Further info here: http://fettss.arc.nasa.gov/collection/details/the-pale-blue-dot/.
- 2.
I would like to thank here Kristýna Andrlová from the Czech UNHCR office, who gave me this insight when we were talking about the relation between the planetary defense endeavor and the growing nationalist mood in Europe due to the refugee crisis in 2015.
- 3.
For a principal criticism on liberal peace read for example (Chandler 2004). For a more structural argument you can check for example (Goodhand and Sedra 2010). For an argument that peace is not universal, you can read (Paris 2004). Paris later wrote an inspiring discussion on liberal peace (Paris 2010).
- 4.
The term is used in (Johnson-Freese 2013, p. 5), but was previously mentioned by president Ronald Reagan, who drew it from John Winthrop, 1630. The original comes from Mathew 5:14.
- 5.
Check the footnote no. 37 in (Granoff 2000).
- 6.
An interesting reading in globalization studies is summarized in (Held and McGrew 2003).
References
Axelrod, R., & Keohane, R. O. (1985). Achieving cooperation under anarchy: Strategies and institutions. World Politics, 38(1), 226–254. http://journals.cambridge.org/production/action/cjoGetFulltext?fulltextid=7631716. Accessed 5 March 2014.
Axworthy, L. (2001). Human security and global governance: Putting people first. Global Governance, 7(1), 19–23.
Barber, W. F., & Bartlett, R. V. (2009). Global Democracy and Sustainable Jurisprudence: Deliberative Environmental Law. Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling (Vol. 53). Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The MIT Press.
Bonnete, D. (1972). Aquinas’ proofs of God’s Existence. Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.
Burgess, M. (2000). Federalism and European Union: The Building of Europe, 1950-2000. Taylor & Francis. https://books.google.com/books?id=Ha99UY2cBtUC&pgis=1. Accessed 18 February 2016.
Burke, A. (2013). Security cosmopolitanism. Critical Studies on Security, 1(1), 13–28. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/21624887.2013.790194.
Byman, D., & Pollack, K. (2001). Let Us Now Praise Great Men: Bringing the Statesman Back In. International Security, 25(4), 107–146.
Caldwell, L. K. (1999). Is Humanity Destined to Self-Destruct? Politics and the Life Sciences, 18(1), 3–14.
Chandler, D. (2002). Rethinking human rights: critical approaches to international politics. Palgrave Macmillan.
Chandler, D. (2004). Constructing Global Civil Society. doi:https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230005846.
Coates, T. (2000). Neither cosmopolitanism nor realism: a response to Danilo Zolo. In Global Democracy, Key Debates (pp. 87–102). London and New York: Routledge.
Dalby, S. (2007). Regions, Strategies and Empire in the Global War on Terror. Geopolitics, 12(4), 586–606. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/14650040701546079.
Ditrych, O. (2014). Tracing the Discourses of Terrorism : Identity, Genealogy and State. Palgrave Macmillan.
Easterly, W. (2006). The white man’s burden: why the West’s efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good. Penguin Press. http://books.google.cz/books?id=5Iw5IZCTh-kC.
Edwards, M. (2009). “God has chosen Us”: Re-Membering Christian Realism, rescuing christendom, and the contest of responsibilities during the cold war. Diplomatic History, 33(1), 67–94. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7709.2008.00747.x.
Evans, G., & Sahnoun, M. (2001). The Responsibility to Protect. Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. Ottawa, Kanada: International Development Research Centre.
Fearon, J. (1998). Domestic politics, foreign policy, and theories of international relations. Annual Review of Political Science, 289–313. http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.polisci.1.1.289. Accessed 5 March 2014.
Friedman, T. L. (2007). The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. Picador.
Garan, A. R., & Yunus, M. (2015). The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Ghemawat, P. (2009). Why the World Isn’t Flat. Foreign Policy. http://foreignpolicy.com/2009/10/14/why-the-world-isnt-flat/.
Goodhand, J., & Sedra, M. (2010). Who owns the peace? Aid, reconstruction, and peacebuilding in Afghanistan. Disasters, 34, S78–S102. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7717.2009.01100.x.
Gourevitch, P. (1978). The second image reversed: the international sources of domestic politics. International Organization, 32(4), 881–912. http://journals.cambridge.org/production/action/cjoGetFulltext?fulltextid=4305592. Accessed 5 March 2014.
Granoff, J. (2000). Nuclear Weapons, Ethics, Morals, and Law. BYU Law Review, 2000(4), 1413–1442.
Habermas, J. (2006). The Divided West (Vol. 1). Polity Press.
Hale, T., Held, D., & Young, K. (2013). GRIDLOCK: Why Global Cooperation is Failing when we Need it Most. Cambridge: Polity.
Held, D. (2006). Models of Democracy. Polity.
Held, D. (2010). Cosmopolitanism: Ideals and Realities. Polity.
Held, D., & McGrew, A. (Eds.). (2003). The Global Transformations Reader: An Introduction to the Globalization Debate. Polity.
Jackson, R. (2006). Genealogy, Ideology, and Counter-Terrorism : Writing wars on terrorism from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush Jr 1. Studies in Language and Capitalism, 1(1), 163–193. doi:ideologie; terrorismus; reagan; bush; krieg.
Jervis, R. (1997). Complexity and the analysis of political and social life. Political Science Quarterly, 112(4), 569–593.
Johnson-Freese, J. (2013). Space as a Strategic Asset. New York: Columbia University Press.
Keohane, R. O., & Martin, L. L. (1995). The promise of institutional theory. International Security, 20(1), 39.
Lea, H. C. (2015). A History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 1. BiblioLife.
Listner, M. (2015). The International Code of Conduct: Comments on changes in the latest draft and post-mortem thoughts. The Space Review. http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2851/1. Accessed 10 January 2016.
Manzione, L. L. (2002). Multinational Investment in the Space Station : An Outer Space Model for International Cooperation ? American University International Law Review, 18(2), 507–535.
Mearsheimer, J. J. (1994). The False Promise of International Institutions. International Security. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/2539078.
Merton, R. K. (1968). Social Theory and Social Structure. Simon & Schuster.
Paris, R. (2004). At war’s end: building peace after civil conflict. Cambridge University Press.
Paris, R. (2010). Saving liberal peacebuilding. Review of International Studies, 36(02), 337–365. doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210510000057.
Pollack, M. A. (2008). The New Institutionalism and European Integration. Webpapers on Constitutionalism and Governance beyond the State, 1.
Putnam, R. (1988). Diplomacy and domestic politics: the logic of two-level games. International organization, 42(03), 427. doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818300027697.
Rawls, J. (2000). Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, 416. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/3655762.
Richmond, O. P. (2009). A post-liberal peace: Eirenism and the everyday. Review of International Studies, 35(3), 557–580.
Rischard, J. F. (2002). High Noon. New York: Basic Books.
Thangavelu, M., Wilson, T., Hussein, A., Aliaj, B., Entrena, C., Lee, C., et al. (2015). READI - Roadmap of Earth Defense Initiatives. Athens (OH). https://isulibrary.isunet.edu/opac/doc_num.php?explnum_id=722.
Thomas, N., & Tow, W. T. (2002). The Utility of Human Security: Sovereignty and Humanitarian Intervention. Security Dialogue, 33(2), 177–192. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010602033002006.
UN. (1945). Charter of the United Nations. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=21212379&lang=cs&site=ehost-live.
UN. (2015). Adoption of the Paris agreement (Vol. FCCC/CP/20). Paris. http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09.pdf.
Waltz, K. (1996). International politics is not foreign policy. Security Studies, 6(1), 54–57. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/09636419608429298.
Wendt, A. (1987). The agent-structure problem in international relations theory. International organization, 41(3), 335–370. http://journals.cambridge.org/production/action/cjoGetFulltext?fulltextid=4309572. Accessed 5 March 2014.
Wendt, A. (1992). Anarchy is what states make of it: the social construction of power politics. International Organization, 46(02), 391. doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818300027764.
Wendt, A. (2003). Why a World State is Inevitable. European Journal of International Relations, 9(4), 491–542. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/135406610394001.
Zolo, D. (2000). The lords of peace: from the Holy Alliance to the new international criminal tribunals. In B. Holden (Ed.), Global Democracy, Key Debate (pp. 73–86). London and New York: Routledge.
Acknowledgement
This study was supported by the grant awarded by the Technological Agency of the Czech Republic, project TL01000181: “A multidisciplinary analysis of planetary defense from asteroids as the key national policy ensuring further flourishing and prosperity of humankind both on Earth and in Space,” and co-funded by the Institute of Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Schmidt, N. (2019). Introduction: Planetary Defense as the Unique Historical Opportunity to Shape Our Shared Destiny. In: Schmidt, N. (eds) Planetary Defense. Space and Society. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01000-3_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01000-3_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-00999-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-01000-3
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)