Adriana Lenkavská, Nikola Schmidt
Key considerations
- Planetary defense (PD) is mentioned in national strategic documents of dozens of states. It may vary from being a dedicated strategy of planetary defense, direct mentionting of planetary defense or being approached as a part of SSA (Space Situational Awareness).
- Global security perspective prevails over the national one, respectively a low number of states understand planetary defense as a solely national security issue.
- Because of the policy dependency on excellent science and high-end industrial capacities, huge majority of states are approaching PD as an opportunity to excel in science and support emerging industries.
- Understanding PD as a national prestige is present, albeit in a very low number of states. However, we can still find 19th century kind of national exceptionalism language.
- Understanding PD as an opportunity to develop national welfare was found in a slight majority, however, PD as a way to global welfare is low. Welfare is not necessarily only a link of PD to future asteroid mining, but states visibly don’t see much broad basis for international cooperation in this regard.
- Finally, we can say that PD is understood as a global challenge that requires international collaboration but not necessarily see shared benefits from it.