https://warontherocks.com/2025/07/the-f ... lar-world/
While the United States remains the global leader in space capabilities, its ecosystem shows fragility. Emerging space powers like Turkey, India, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates have adopted flexible, multi-vector space and defense strategies. These countries provide lessons in adaptability, resilience, and co-development in a multipolar world. They offer potential models that can enrich how Washington approaches capability development and alliance management. It is time for the United States to treat capable mid-tier partners not as challenges to American space primacy, but as co-creators of spacepower’s future.
Perhaps even more problematic is how Washington tends to engage its partners. For decades, American alliance management has often followed a model in which allies are treated more as end-users or purchasers of U.S.-made systems than as equal co-developers of strategic capabilities. This patron-client approach may generate short-term defense sales but discourages indigenous innovation, undermines technological sovereignty among partners, and limits Washington’s ability to foster real capability redundancy across alliances. While the the United States seeks to build coalitions to counter Chinese advances, it risks surrounding itself with technologically dependent allies instead of empowered contributors.
Establishing the Turkish Space Agency in 2018 reflected more than symbolic ambition. Within a few years, Turkey advanced national satellite programs such as Türksat 6A, the National Indigenous Earth Observation Satellite, and the Göktürk intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance series while developing early-stage human spaceflight capabilities in collaboration with Axiom Space. Turkey embedded technology transfer and training into its contracts through these arrangements, ensuring knowledge acquisition alongside operational milestones.
Even more significant is Ankara’s diplomatic strategy. Turkey works with American partners in its space endeavors while actively engaging in non-Western frameworks. It is a member of the China-influenced Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization, pursues regional leadership through the Islamic Space Cooperation Organization and Turkic state collaborations, and has avoided signing the U.S.-led Artemis Accords. This careful balance maximizes learning opportunities and diplomatic flexibility without complete dependence on any one bloc.
side bar from wiki:
apsco:
The Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization (APSCO) is an inter-governmental organization operated as a non-profit independent body with full international legal status.[1][2][3] It is headquartered in Beijing, People's Republic of China.[4][1] Members include agencies from:[5] Bangladesh, China, Iran, Mongolia, Pakistan, Peru, Thailand and Turkey.
Its stated objectives include:[9]
To promote and strengthen the development of collaborative space programs among its Member States by establishing the basis for cooperation in peaceful applications of space science and technology.
To take effective actions to assist the Member States in such areas as space technological research and development, applications and training by elaborating and implementing space development policies.
To promote cooperation, joint development, and to share achievements among the Member States in space technology and its applications as well as in space science research by tapping the cooperative potential of the region.
To enhance cooperation among relevant enterprises and institutions of the Member States and to promote the industrialization of space technology and its applications.
To contribute to the peaceful uses of outer space in the international cooperative activities in space technology and its applications.
As of 2010, the organization defined ten projects on designing, building and launching light satellites, middle class satellites weighing 500–600 kg, research satellites, remote-sensing and telecommunications satellites.
back to the article:
India has followed a different, equally instructive path. The Indian Space Research Organisation has delivered impressive capabilities on modest budgets, achieving lunar landings, conducting Mars missions, and advancing preparations for human spaceflight with remarkable efficiency. Its expanding private sector adds further energy, moving into launch services, satellite production, and small payload delivery. Although India’s strategic partnership with the United States has grown, reflected in expanded NASA collaboration and increasing Artemis dialogue, New Delhi maintains longstanding ties with Russia, France, and others, preserving the flexibility that major powers often require.
South Korea offers another version of this model. It has rapidly expanded space capabilities while remaining deeply integrated within the U.S. alliance system. Its KSLV-II launch vehicle, substantial defense conglomerates, and growing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance and missile defense projects demonstrate how industrialized allies can contribute meaningfully. While several middle powers have the potential to become co-producers of strategic capability, U.S. policy has not always supported this path. In some cases, such as South Korea’s space launch ambitions, citing security concerns, Washington actively slowed indigenous development — particularly regarding missile proliferation risks on the Korean Peninsula. As a result, South Korea relied on Russian technology for the KSLV-I space launcher’s main stages after U.S. restrictions on technology transfer. Long-standing missile range limitations under U.S.-South Korea bilateral missile guidelines and the Missile Technology Control Regime further constrained its program. Seoul’s participation in joint development and research partnerships with the United States shows how cooperation can evolve beyond the conventional buyer-seller relationship.
The United Arab Emirates demonstrates a different form of strategic agility. Using financial strength and diplomatic finesse, the Emiratis have built partnerships across the United States, Japan, Russia, and China. Its Hope Mars mission, the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre astronaut program, and involvement in the Artemis Accords illustrate how smaller states can become influential players in what was once a superpower domain.
What distinguishes these emerging actors is not the scale of their capabilities but the structure of their national ecosystems. Their approaches combine multi-vector diplomacy, agile partnerships across public and private sectors, and a strong emphasis on developing sovereign technological expertise and institutional know-how. They do not aim to replace the United States, but to ensure that no single dependency defines their space ambitions. While Washington continues to approach alliance management primarily through arms sales and access agreements, these smaller powers show a different, arguably more resilient, way to build capability.
Additionally, empowering regional actors through joint research and development initiatives, multi-party mission planning, and shared industrial frameworks can build long-term resilience. A useful example is the NASA–JAXA Lunar Gateway partnership, which combines co-development, equitable technology access, and joint mission planning. Treating capable allies as equals in design, not just deployment, is the next step in creating a truly multipolar spacepower architecture.