International cooperation - how to proceed

As part of a project exploring ways that international cooperation can maximize the benefits of space activities in the new political climate of the 1990s, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) has been organizing expert workshops on the subject. The latest of these, held in December 1994, focused on five areas: global space systems services; human and robotic exploration; space transportation; solar power to Earth; and international peacekeeping. It is only in the last few years that recommendations on the latter topic could realistically have been put forward and, as a prelude to our presentation of the Executive Summary of the report produced by AIAA, two of the 60-plus participants drawn from 15 countries, Robert Fuhrmann and Jürgen Wild, discuss the implications of this new found openness over international security and analyse the background to its genesis.