4 Nov 2024, 17:00 – 19:00 CET

The Prague Security Studies Institute (PSSI) hosted a public guest lecture entitled “Great Power Competition in Space during the Cold War and Today”.

The lecture featured Dr. Aaron Bateman, an Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs at the George Washington University, who studies the relationship between technology and international security. Prior to academia, he served as a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer. Dr. Bateman recently published a book, entitled, Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative. The book details the political and technological drivers of intensifying superpower military competition in space during the late Cold War.

The lecture was guided by Dr. Roman Joch, Executive Director and Chairman of the Civic Institute, a long-time Prague-based think tank. He specializes in political philosophy and public policy issues and is a scholar of the Reagan Presidency.

The lecture provided an overview of SDI within the context of rapidly changing political conditions in the 1970s and 1980s and details SDI’s legacy for arms control and military space competition in the post-Cold War era. Dr. Bateman also provided commentary on contemporary U.S., European, Russian, and Chinese military space strategies as well as some of the space lessons from the war in Ukraine.