Introduction: Space Power and Security Trilemma in South Asia

Abstract

Space is a congested, crowded, and contested domain. This is creating multidimensional strategic competition between the United States and China at the global level, and between China, India, and Pakistan at the regional level in South Asia. In this scenario, understanding space security is instrumental to managing and preventinf potential conflicts in space. Currently, the United States is a global space power with the most advanced space capabilities employed in the pursuit of national security, and civil and economic interests. Recently, China has emerged as a rival global space power. Both states understand the importance of space for achieving their national security goals and objectives. U.S. national space security strategy considers new actors in space as a threat to its space supremacy, leading to U.S. vulnerability in maintaining the present status quo in space. Chinese space ambitions are largely focused on achieving socioeconomic and political objectives, but there is a growing sense of space power projection as a core element of national power. Space relations between China and the United States are characterized by a misperception-misunderstanding dynamic, in addition to space competition that posits implications for international and regional security. At the global level, space is amedium of political, economic, strategic, andmilitary competition. This has impacts on establishing an international code of conduct for peaceful uses of space. Likewise, competition dynamics constrainmultilateral efforts to establish a universally accepted treaty to prohibit the weaponization of space. At the regional level of South Asia, China and India have gained political, economic, and military influence in terms of changing the polarity of the region. This makes South Asia a complex security region where relations between China, India, and Pakistan, as the nuclear powers of South Asia, frame a security trilemma. The security trilemma profoundly impinges upon the space programs of these three states. India has undeniably emerged as a regional space superpower with global ambitions. Likewise, Pakistan is an aspiring space power and, with the help of China, can become a regional space power in the coming years. The changing dynamics of the power structure in South Asia