On Astropolitics

There’s much we don’t know about outer space, but a theoretical approach should begin with what we know about air and naval power.

By
Ridvan Bari Urcosta
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1576
The first time space power was used for terrestrial warfare was the Gulf War, during which satellites contributed significantly to military operations in the Middle East. Since then, there has been increasing demand for technology and war modeling for operations in space. Space, it seems, is slowly but surely becoming an essential component of warfare. It is therefore time and prudent to start giving thought to and building a framework for understanding the parameters of space operations and conflicts. If geopolitics concerns all things earthly, then we can refer to how nations interact among the stars — relations among colonies on planets, satellites and space stations, as well as economic cooperation, resource competition and the order around which this is built — as “astropolitics.” There’s still a lot we don’t know about the physics of outer space, of course. We don’t even know what kinds of technologies we will need to develop to operate there. Even so, a theoretical approach to thinking about space power should start with things we do know: naval operations and air operations. Like the oceans, the expanse of outer space can be thought of as a global commons. This means the two share some inherent […]

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Ridvan Bari Urcosta
Ridvan Bari Urcosta
Mr. Urcosta joins Geopolitical Futures as an analyst with wide experience in the Black Sea region, Russia and the Middle East, Ukraine and Crimea as a geopolitical region and Eastern Europe. He is a PhD Candidate at the Centre for Strategic Studies, University of Warsaw and he also teaches an independent ERASMUS course: “Russia and the Middle East: Geopolitics and Diplomacy.” He was born in Abkhazia, Georgia where he lived until the onset of the Civil War. In the early 1990’s he moved to Crimea where he lived until its annexation by Russia. At the moment of annexation he worked in the Sevastopol State Administration. Right after annexation he worked as a Human Rights Officer in Odessa, Ukraine in the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission. Mr. Urcosta graduated from the Estonian Diplomatic Academy in 2015 and completed The Indigenous Fellowship Programme (IFP) in 2017, a comprehensive human rights training program, that was established by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva. In 2018 he gave a speech at the UN Human Rights Council about the human rights situation in annexed by Russian Federation Crimea. Previously Mr. Urcosta has provided insights to different analytical centers including the European Council on Foreign Relations, Jamestown Foundation, War Room (U.S. War College) The Proceedings (U.S. Naval Institute), Jerusalem Post and others. He previously worked as an assistant to the Head of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, a single supreme plenipotentiary representative and executive body of the Crimean Tatar people. He speaks Polish, Russian, English, Ukrainian, Crimean Tatar and Turkish. Moreover, Ridvan works as Senior analyst at the Polish think tank "Strategy&Future" with Jacek Bartosiak (Warsaw, Poland).

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