A New Race in Space

President George W. Bush’s new National Space Policy, released unobtrusively late on a Friday afternoon before a long holiday weekend last October, took some time to percolate through the foreign-policy establishment. But its forceful assertion of U.S. rights in space has sparked a passionate argument that mirrors the ongoing debate over America’s international strategy: Bold or belligerent? Essential in a world of instability or dangerously unilateral?