The Nascent Lunar Economy and Premature Securitization
Introduction
A spacecraft is transporting a crew to a month-long rotation where they will service a fleet of lunar water-ice collectors returning from the Cabeus crater. Having just exited Earth’s atmosphere and entered into orbit, the onboard computer prepares for the trans-lunar injection burn that will send the crew to the Moon. Unbeknownst to the crew, three satellites trail the spacecraft and dazzle its star trackers from different positions, impacting the attitude data feed. Without precise information on the spacecraft’s orientation, the computer fails to engage the vital trans-lunar injection burn causing the spacecraft to stray from its planned course. Before the crew and mission control can fully grasp the situation, the attack ceases and the onboard systems return to nominal.
But the damage is done. The spacecraft would need to initiate unplanned fuel-consuming burns to course-correct, creating a need to refuel before its eventual return from the Moon. Since no on-orbit refueling satellites are in the spacecraft’s vicinity, and refueling on the Moon is reserved for higher-priority missions, the spacecraft returns to a spaceport on Earth. The failed lunar transport results in tens of millions of lost dollars from the launch, exacerbated by delays in returning the current lunar crew and lunar goods to Earth.
This scenario may be an outcome incited by unbounded lunar competition. The lunar surface and cislunar space (the area where the Moon’s gravity has significant influence) are increasingly viewed by states as extensions of low-Earth and geostationary orbits in terms of economic viability and as a warfighting domain. Arguments to securitize the Moon, however, are premature, since lunar capabilities do not yet pose a prominent threat to assets on Earth or in space. Furthermore, humanity has yet to achieve a sustainable human or autonomous lunar presence that creates value for the terrestrial economy or future space endeavors.
Defense organizations’ premature securitization not only invites added risk but requires immense political and financial capital. Instead, shared stakes amongst actors, a lunar demilitarized zone (DMZ), and a resilient space ecosystem can serve as building blocks for the lunar economy. This piece does not deny actors’ realist tendencies or assume that cooperation will override competition. Rather, it seeks to frame restraint as more attractive while preserving the ability to prepare for potential lunar conflict.
This essay first highlights relevant concepts. It then argues that civil and commercial efforts, paired with scaled securitization, are effective pathways to develop the Moon. Finally, the essay draws on legal and institutional precedents which provide a basis for the lunar DMZ.
Framing the Lunar Economy’s Military Problem
Space is shared by civilians and the military who both play a role in shaping national power. Space’s ‘dual-use’ infrastructure is dependent on several segments where disruption at one point of the ecosystem is potentially damaging to all stakeholders. Twentieth-century American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan’s “Lines of Communication,” offers a way to understand the ecosystem’s relevance and structure in a maritime context. Mahan argued that freedom of action across ports and trade routes are essential to commerce, and thus to securing national interests and sea power. The same logic applies to the Moon with what contemporary American space strategist John Klein calls “Celestial Lines of Communication” (CLOCs): an architecture of spaceports, ground stations, and satellites which move data, products, and personnel. At present, some CLOC nodes are dual-use, have limited redundancy, and remain dependent on terrestrial infrastructure.
Embedding national security capabilities in lunar technologies would make already fragile CLOC nodes more justifiable military targets. An adversary could also more easily exploit vulnerable shared supply chains or CLOC nodes on Earth rather than develop capabilities to disrupt operations on the Moon or in cislunar space. This expands defensive responsibilities and requires greater spending, diverting capital from the commercial infrastructure needed to develop the Moon. A cautionary precedent is the early British aircraft industry from 1913 to 1924, where military demand, even after World War I, kept firms dependent on government orders. This limited Britain’s commitment to civil aviation, curtailed commercial competition, and weakened incentives to adopt newer production methods. Transposed to the Moon, consequences would extend beyond market distortion and into adversaries’ threats and actions.
Lunar War, Power, and Economic Theory
Together, British military theorist B.H. Liddell Hart (1895-1970), American political scientist A.F.K. Organski (1923-1998), and British international political economy scholar Susan Strange (1923-1998), inform how capabilities shape conflict and changes in power. Their conclusions can be applied to lunar dynamics.
Hart, in Aggression and the Problem of Weapons (1932), warned that the weapons a state permits or restricts shapes how war is fought (the character of war). In space, where offensive, defensive, and dual-use technologies resemble each other, one state’s deployed capability can make another state’s response appear justified. Applied to the Moon, Hart’s argument to mitigate war’s destructiveness suggests that diplomacy can shed light on capability deployment and reduce escalation risk through negotiation and hard power concessions.
Organski’s power transition theory, which considers economic development a primary determinant of power, adds that conflict risk increases when a dissatisfied rising power approaches parity with the dominant state. Under Organski’s framework, a state’s perceived lunar inferiority, whether militaristic or economic, can fuel tensions both on Earth and in space. Hart and Organski’s concepts are necessary context but do not offer insight into how the Moon’s commercial segment can replace military securitization.
Resilient lunar CLOCs and economic inclusion can reduce risk. Strange presented production, financial, knowledge, and military structures as coequal in shaping power. Most relevant are production structures where dominance is achieved by understanding demand and managing market access. Therefore, achieving durable scale and positive cash flow generation will hinge on sustaining multiple providers who, in turn, facilitate the lunar economy’s terrestrial diffusion and adoption to create shared stakes. Cementing global lunar economy demand will make CLOCs less attractive military targets and motivate actors to maintain ideal conditions since they too have a stake. Though adversary behavior and irrational actors can compress security timelines, military structures should protect a maturing lunar economy rather than define it in its infancy.
Outer Space Frameworks of Past and Present
Three frameworks guide state approaches to militarization and sovereignty in space: the Outer Space Treaty, the Moon Agreement, and the Artemis Accords.
The United Nations’s 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits military bases on celestial bodies and bars weapons of mass destruction from orbit. However, there is no outright ban on military operations or dual-use systems. It has been ratified by all major spacefaring states.
Another United Nations document, the 1979 Moon Agreement, prohibits threats, uses of force, and other hostilities on the Moon. It also commits to establishing a body to govern lunar resource exploitation once it becomes within reach to ensure equitable benefit-sharing. The United States, Russia, and China, all states with leading lunar programs, have not ratified this agreement.
Finally, the United States’ 2020 Artemis Accords build on United Nations principles for collaboration, resource use, and avoiding harmful interference. The non-binding agreement has over 70 signatories, yet China and Russia have not signed it. They have their own bloc centered around the International Lunar Research Station which plans to leverage lunar resources. Though the Outer Space Treaty, Moon Agreement, and Artemis Accords prohibit national appropriation, the latter claims that resource extraction does not constitute appropriation. Nonetheless, a gap remains: there is no universally accepted process for resolving competing claims to lunar sites. Without agreed procedures, states may resort to exclusion, which increases escalation risk. This is why a tangible lunar strategy is strengthened by a DMZ.
Paving the Road for Lunar Territorial Management
Before arguing for a DMZ, three case studies serve as a reference for lunar territorial management: the International Space Station (ISS), the 1920 Svalbard Treaty, and the 1885 Berlin Conference’s General Act. They show how diplomacy, as Hart urges, and effective occupation can accommodate resource extraction, scientific activity, and strategic competition.
The ISS demonstrates how collaborative efforts can align interests without ending rivalry. In 1984, President Reagan directed NASA to build an orbiting space station. Facing rising costs and seeking to translate post-Cold War goodwill into practical cooperation, the Clinton administration invited Russia to join the program. The partnership led to shared engineering capabilities, improved affordability, and diplomatic wins while allowing participants to pursue their own objectives. Although the ISS did not end contention between the United States and Russia, coordination persists. That is diplomacy by design.
Replicating this model with a group including the United States and China is unlikely due to distrust and the 2011 Wolf Amendment which, in effect, bars NASA funds from being used for any project including China. Regardless, the ISS demonstrates that compartmentalization and insulation from terrestrial rivalry is possible. However, how to manage shared access to resources remains unanswered.
The Svalbard Treaty is a precedent for international coexistence and begins to address Strange’s production structures’ market access. Though Norway retains sovereignty over the Svalbard archipelago, military structures are forbidden and states have equal access for commerce like mining and fishing. The treaty also imposes limits on monopolies and national privilege which prevents a single actor from controlling access. Applied to the Moon, it can encourage better services at lower costs, thus facilitating adoption. Nevertheless, dispute management relies on Norwegian courts so the treaty cannot be directly transposed to the Moon. That limitation leads to the Berlin Conference’s relevance.
Germany, Britain, and Belgium led the Berlin Conference’s attempt to secure African commerce, and simultaneously defang France to maintain a balance of power in Europe. The conference’s success remains debated given outcomes amongst its signatories as well as the widespread oppression, dispossession of communities, and cultural erosion it caused. However, the written legislation is pertinent to lunar territorial management as it prioritized communication and ‘effective occupation.’
The Berlin Conference aimed to avoid armed conflict amongst its signatories over African territories. It created diplomatic off-ramps which mandated that states acquiring new territory notify the other signatories to allow an opportunity to rebut the claim and, should there be any disputes, seek resolution through mediation or arbitration. Crucially, to ‘own’ a territory, a state was required to have a sufficient presence to protect existing holdings as well as facilitate freedom of trade and transit—also known as ‘effective occupation.’ Though military assets were occasionally used as leverage, the lesson for the Moon is that procedural restraint can keep lunar rivalries from becoming kindling for terrestrial or in-space conflict.
These findings converge on a functional lunar DMZ: an agreement combining ISS-style compartmentalization, the Svalbard Treaty’s access protections, and the General Act’s procedures for managing competing presence.
The Lunar Demilitarized Zone
A functional lunar DMZ shifts incentives away from exclusionary conduct and instead toward commerce and diplomacy. Since space technologies are dual-use by nature and their providers serve civilian and military customers, an agreement should address behavior in addition to effective occupation and economic integration.
The United Nation’s space governance committee notes that lunar infrastructure may constrain access as activities concentrate in areas of high scientific, operational, or resource value—a similar set of circumstances to the ‘Scramble for Africa.’ Drawing from the case studies, priority should attach to specific missions and have a set duration to prevent heightened tensions from de facto sovereignty claims. Public notice and multilateral review, as seen with the General Act, could deter filler infrastructure and safety zones exceeding operational need.
Organski’s framework underscores the agreement’s limits: a dissatisfied state may still value exclusion or military operations over commercial gains. But, a lunar DMZ could alter that calculus. Reciprocal and nonexclusive dependence on shared CLOCs would make antagonistic conduct less attractive. Broader participation raises the political cost of disruption and promotes ideal conditions for civil government and commercial-led lunar development.
Consequently, the DMZ makes the lunar environment more predictable for investors. In tandem with a favorable macroeconomic environment, a lunar DMZ can materially contribute to de-risking space assets and attract the private investment needed to develop and scale CLOCs as well as lunar capabilities.
Mitigating premature lunar securitization requires workable rules so that production structures have a similar net effect as military structures. The lunar DMZ offers an initial framework for a maturing lunar economy. But, as terrestrial history suggests, it will unlikely constitute a final settlement.
Conclusion
Security should increase appropriately as the lunar economy grows, not precede it. Space systems in low-Earth and geostationary orbits already underpin terrestrial security—and military capabilities have yet to be placed at Lagrange points as lunar “high ground” alternatives, though in progress. As the Moon accumulates economic and strategic value, CLOC dependence deepens, and credible threats emerge, greater protection will be warranted. Until then, attaching military value to CLOC infrastructure expands the target set and raises the costs to develop the Moon. Resilience, diplomacy, and a functional DMZ offer a foundation for civil and commercial lunar ambitions as well as compartmentalize competition before it falls down to Earth.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are solely those of the authors and do necessarily represent the views of their current employers, past employers, or the United States Government.
