The final frontier

Writing in the Guardian, James Wilsdon revisits the infamous PNAC report, "Rebuilding America's Defenses." Critics have rightly pointed to that document as the blueprint for the Bush administration's 2002 National Security Strategy, as well as for clues as to why the United States was so hell-bent on going to war in Iraq last year.

Wilsdon, however, is interested in the report's implications for the further militarization of space. The Bush administration says it wants to reinvest in the heavens for exploratory purposes, but, Wilsdon contends, this newfound interest in the final frontier is driven by the military's perceived need to strategically dominate space.