## 3 Geopolitical Conditions
### The New Race
Russia accounted for 9.75 billion in that pie, while China accounted for only 3.7 billion [48]. However, eleven years later, those numbers were 3.96 and 19.89 billion dollars, respectively [47], showing who took second in the New Space Race. While growing at a 9.4% CAGR, China's spending between 2013 and 2018 was already impressive; the 27.8% CAGR between 2018 and 2024 was just dramatic. As a result, even though China's spending is about four times less than the U.S., one could notice that the dynamics of China's spending hugely outperform that of the U.S.; the CAGR between 2021 and 2024 accounts for 24.6% and 13.4%, respectively (cf. Figure 3). In the early 2000s, the U.S. had a 75% share of global public space spending, dropping to 58% in 2018 [48]. However, since that time, the U.S. has stabilized this share. In 2024, it accounted for 59% [47]. Keeping pace with the global growth in recent years could be attributed to the huge budget of the relatively newly established (in 2019) United States Space Force [44]. The data shows that the New Space Race is rapidly unfolding and is being driven mainly by the pursuit of geopolitical dominance, with defense/military spending starting to outperform civil spending (while much of the civil spending could be attributed to the dual-use technologies). According to [48], in 2018, military spending accounted for 37% of total governmental spending on space. However, the ESA report [3] shows that the military spending share has been systematically growing since that time, and it slightly outperformed civil spending, reaching 50.2% of total global governmental spending in 2023. China's space ambitions could be seen both as a response to the U.S. and as a driver of the New Space Race. Consider the preamble to \"China's Space Program: A 2021 Perspective\" (2022), which cited in the first sentence President [PERSON], \"To explore the vast cosmos, develop the space industry, and build China into a space power is our eternal dream\" [49]. The discussion above aligns with the view of \"original sin\" of space politics, namely that military concerns have been fundamental to space exploration from the very beginning. National security interests and geopolitical rivalry have instead driven its exploration and utilization. For example, the development of launch capabilities was linked to ballistic missile programs, while satellites have played a crucial role in intelligence, surveillance, and communications for military operations [10]. Therefore, space cannot be separated from power concerns and geopolitical competition. The U.S. and China are both developing space-based surveillance, missile defense, and potential offensive capabilities. They both know that space dominance will determine strategic leverage, making space an extension of geopolitical rivalry. According to  
Figure 3: Government spending on space programs: (**a**) global view (2024) and (**b**) the two leading countries (2021–2024). * Budgets indicated for European countries include their contributions to ESA and Eumetsat. Source: own based on [47]. [PERSON] [20], four approaches to space politics could be differentiated: cooperation, passive weaponization, acknowledgment of the inevitability of weaponization, and active weaponization. For example, in the post-Cold War period, the geopolitical rivalry was temporarily supplanted by cooperation, with the International Space Station as an emblematic result. This approach did not sustain, however. What we witness now is passive weaponization with space capabilities oriented primarily on supporting on-Earth warfare. However, the rhetoric and narration seem to evolve into more aggressive approaches. One could remember warnings of \"space Pearl Harbor\" [50] or the seminal book \"Astropolitik\" by [PERSON] [37]. The last one argues that the control of space equates to control over Earth's strategic future.