Surviving the Crises: The Changing Patterns of Space Cooperation among the United States, Russia, Europe, and China

How can we better explain the pattern variation of international space cooperation under economic stress? International cooperation in large-scale space application programs has become a cost-effective instrument to achieve foreign policy goals and to balance colossal expenditure deriving from natural and technological constraints, particularly under budgetary stringency. However, cooperation patterns vary between different participants. For instance, US-Russian cooperation and Sino-European cooperation involve substantial transfer of technologies or funds, while US-European cooperation does not. This paper seeks to construct the causal mechanism of variant space cooperation patterns among the United States, Russia, Europe, and China. This paper argues that the pattern variation is caused by their cost-effective calculation of individual interests according to different international and domestic structural situations, in which new strategic partnership can be built between rivals, and latent conflicts between allies may be reinvigorated. * Address Correspondence to Sheng-Chih Wang, Ostpreussendamm 27, 12207 Berlin, Germany. E-mail: [email protected]