Competitive observance by the Russian Federation and the USA of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty

Abstract

Introduction. Thе Russian Federation and the USA, being parties to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, in their national legal acts refer to this source. Each of these states recognizes that the 1967 Outer Space regime is to be perfected, while having different legal outer space policy. The USA is a leader of the military outer space infrastructure and of creation national outer space legislation and separate international agreements (“The Artemis Accords”), thus imposing its own track to develop the 1967 Treaty. Materials and methods. This research addresses relevant international documents on international space law as well as acts of national legislation pertaining to the topic. Research results. In modern political conditions the quality of a state defense and its economic development is linked to the efficiency of the outer space infrastructure, including communication and reconnaissance satellites. While the U.S. intends to achieve military supremacy in the outer space, the 1967 Treaty seems to be a barrier to such intention although the U.S. provides its own interpretation of the Treaty. Another significant area of competition between Russia and USA in the outer space legal policy is the observance of the natural resources treaty provisions. According to the USA, a state is entitled unilaterally exploit the space resources, and its persons are entitled to commercial use of such resources based on national law. This position of the United States resulted in creation of its national legislation opportunities for natural resources activities in outer space. The Russian Federation continues to defend multilateral approach to the exploitation of space resources and to call upon strictly observance of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. There are also competitive legal positions of the USA and Russia relating to the notion of “common province of mankind” provided by the 1967 Treaty. The main results. In this context, the paper after providing prolegomena to the competitive principle in international law, suggests some theoretical ideas for perfecting of the legal position of the Russian Federation as a response to the modern outer space legal policy of the USA. Discussion and conclusions. In the legal literature on this issue different views are assessed – from a radical rejection of the US model of behavior and continuation of efforts to strengthen the 1967 Treaty regime, to proposals to adopt a new national Russian legislation providing rights of persons to exploit the natural resources of celestial bodies, thus provid-ing incentives for private investors. This track leads to more competition with the USA, observing at the same time the 1967 Treaty as the “corpus juris specialis”.