Why Militarising and Politicising the Moon Undermines Economic Efficiency and Collaboration
Credit: maxpolyakov.com
Carving the Moon into “economic zones” undermines efficiency, investment, and collaboration
Space exploration is one of humanity’s most ambitious undertakings. Reaching the Moon requires enormous coordination: technology development, regulatory approval, financing, public support, and cross-disciplinary expertise. To introduce territorial disputes and “economic zones” into this fragile mix would be to compound risk and waste finite resources. From an economics and efficiency standpoint, militarising or politicising lunar development is a losing strategy.
The economic drawback of conflict in space includes prohibitive opportunity costs. The infrastructure needed to support sustainable lunar activity—power grids, mining operations, habitats—demands trillions in investment over decades. Diverting funds into military competition or territorial disputes drains capital away from these core objectives. As experience with terrestrial infrastructure shows, duplication caused by political rivalry inflates costs and erodes efficiency.
The Legal Baseline: The Moon as a Commons
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty—ratified by over 110 countries—establishes that no state may claim sovereignty over celestial bodies. It frames space as “the province of all mankind.” While the treaty does not resolve all questions of commercial exploitation, it is clear on one point: dividing the Moon into national economic zones violates its spirit and risks destabilising a fragile order.
Not all players agree. In 2019, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) outlined plans for an “Earth–Moon Special Economic Zone” by 2050. While pitched as a way to coordinate investment, such a proposal creates asymmetry by pre-defining access to lunar resources under a national banner. The effect is exclusionary: others would be forced to negotiate access on terms they did not help design.
The Case for Collaboration and Commercial Perspectives
Collaborative frameworks are already functioning. The International Lunar Exploration Working Group (ILEWG) brings together global space agencies to coordinate missions and share data. Similarly, NASA’s Artemis Accords seek to define norms of cooperation for lunar exploration, emphasising transparency and interoperability. These initiatives demonstrate that cooperation reduces duplication, speeds up deployment, and expands participation.
A grounded vignette is the International Space Station (ISS)—arguably the most complex collaborative infrastructure ever built. Costing over $100 billion, it has operated for decades precisely because multiple nations share responsibilities. Replicating this cooperative model on the Moon is economically rational; fragmenting into rival “zones” is not.
For businesses, conflict increases risk and depresses valuations. Venture capital, already wary of long development timelines in space, requires confidence in predictable governance frameworks. Investors back companies that can access open markets, not firms subject to the whims of shifting national “zones.” Similarly, insurers are unlikely to underwrite lunar operations if geopolitical disputes loom over property rights.
Conclusion
The Moon represents an unprecedented chance to pioneer shared infrastructure for science, energy, and commerce. But if national actors replicate terrestrial rivalries there, the economic model collapses under inefficiency. The rational path is collaborative: pooling expertise, sharing infrastructure, and framing the Moon as an open commons. In economics as in physics, friction is the enemy of progress.
