China’s Bid for Space Supremacy in the Middle East

LINCOLN HINES: It's not clear that China has a kind of long-term, coherent political vision for what it wants. But these technologies do give it a source of influence, and this is especially as the United States has been cutting a lot of its developmental assistance and aid across the world. ​

SHEENA CHESTNUT GREITENS: Welcome to "Horns of a Dilemma," the podcast of the Texas National Security Review. I'm Sheena Chestnut Greitens, editor-in-chief, and I'm here today with our executive editor, Dr. Ryan Vest.

We're pleased to have joining us today the authors of the article "Choosing Orbits: China's Space Diplomacy in the Middle East." Lawrence Rubin is associate professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology, co-director of the GTDC Pathways to Policy program, and associate fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Lincoln Hines is assistant professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a Wilson China Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Dayana Alagirova is a PhD student at the Sam Nunn School at the Georgia Institute of Technology, a Fulbright Scholar, and a graduate of the Moscow State Institute for International Affairs with a focus on space policy and security. Everybody, welcome to the podcast.

DAYANA ALAGIROVA: Thank you.

LARRY RUBIN: Thanks for having us.

LINCOLN HINES: Hello.

RYAN VEST: It's great to see everybody here today. 

I just kind of want to start off by recognizing this is a pretty eclectic group of an ensemble cast that's come together. I was wondering if you could talk to us about what brought you all together on this particular topic.

LARRY RUBIN: That's a great question. And again, thanks for having us on here, we're really excited. This was actually a primary motivation of writing the article, was to get on your podcast. 

But besides that, we all come from different areas, but in particular—I'll speak for myself, and I'll speak very briefly about the others, and we'll kind of get into some of the questions in a bit.

I came from a Middle East politics/international relations/comparative politics type of background and approached space in that direction. And Lincoln, for example, for China and space, and Diana from space diplomacy and also putting together a lot of the data aspects. 

And so we thought this would really be a nice way to blend a lot of questions that we had been having, and it was something that we had worked on from various perspectives, discussing some of these ideas and kind of brought us together to do this.

SHEENA CHESTNUT GREITENS: So in the article, you know, you talk about how Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Iran all cooperate with China on space issues. So let me start with a really broad question just to level set us a bit for the audience. What is space diplomacy?

DAYANA ALAGIROVA: So to put a sharper point on it, space diplomacy is the intentional use of space cooperation. These are agreements, joint missions, technology sharing as an instrument of statecraft. So, a foreign policy tool like arms sales or development aid. And these two things that make it powerful is the prestige and the dual use, the duality of using space diplomacy.

Because prestige is imagining a satellite with your flag on it, signaling modernity and leadership across the region that you are in, as in the Middle East and North Africa. So, the MENA region. And the duality of this usage of space diplomacy is basically, a remote sensing satellite can monitor crops and track troops, and navigation signal guides tractors or missiles. So it could be used for both.

And that ambiguity, it lets states acquire sensitive capabilities through civilian channels without practically appearing to challenge anyone. And China, the world's second most advanced spacefaring power, uses it deliberately. We have the BRI initiative, we have space station, we have International Lunar Research Station, and the whole answer to the US-led Artemis Accords.

RYAN VEST: This article digs kind of deep into three particular case studies. It talks about Egypt, the UAE, and Iran, which all cooperate with China in space, but they all cooperate for very different reasons. What do these cases reveal about the different domestic motivations, whether it's prestige, development, regime security, diversification, sanction survival—all of these things that drive MENA states, or the Middle East and North Africa states, towards space partnerships?

LARRY RUBIN: Yeah, I think the question and partly the argument of the paper really gets at a lot of different dynamics that people don't quite understand. And this could go for any region—but about the Middle East in particular—that different states, you can't really see it as a bloc. People have recently discovered, for instance, in all the discussions about the GCC, that many of the Gulf Cooperation Council for example, have different motivations for participating in some of the coalition activities against Iran or, kind of, diverging.

So, kind of, to get to that point, the same thing goes for some of the countries that we looked at when it comes to motivations for space programs. And in this case, sometimes it's about security that drives these, sometimes about economic development, and sometimes prestige or some combination. 

The cases that we looked at in particular—and in no particular order in kind of briefly discussing them—since I mentioned it, since it's on the news all the time: Iran. Very security-driven, has a long history of this—being that way. And for example, the UAE, much more about economic development and having to do with the declining resources—energy resources—and a recognition of such. But of course, there are also security elements that are coming much more into play today. And then a country like Egypt, economic development. 

And each of them may have their individual motivations, and then it's a question of an opportunity in certain cases of when and how and to what extent they cooperate with or kind of take the opportunity with China and where it stands on these.

And they have different—we included these cases to kind of show the diversity. The UAE is much more aligned with the United States, for example, and has to be very careful about its cooperation. And other countries in that way get much more support, such as Egypt.

SHEENA CHESTNUT GREITENS: So one of the things that I found striking in reading through these three different case studies and looking at how this plays out across the region is that, you know, the article really emphasizes that these Middle Eastern/North African states are not passive recipients of Chinese outreach and as a result, right, because they're not just sort of takers of whatever China's offering, that China then doesn't approach the region with one single uniform model of space cooperation or space diplomacy.

And I found that really striking. So I wondered if you could talk to us—I know you collectively have expertise on both the China side of this and the Middle East/North Africa side of this set of partnerships. So I wondered if you could tell us a little bit about how, you know, our listeners should think about the agency of the Middle Eastern states in shaping the terms of their cooperation with Beijing. And then kind of on the flip side of that, what does that variation also tell us about China's broader strategy toward the region?

LINCOLN HINES: Excellent question, and I think what the article really gets at is that this is a dynamic relationship. And when we think about great power competition, it's often easy to think of this as something where it's just the game of the great powers, where the smaller states are simply these pawns that are passively reacting to the actions of the larger states.

But we actually show that China's diplomacy is quite sensitive to the needs and demands of these different local and regional actors. And so it's, you know, pretty sophisticated in the way that China has tailored its diplomacy to each of these different countries. It's not this sort of monolithic approach.

Now it's important to say whenever we're simplifying China, of course, we're talking about—China's comprised of a lot of different actors. It has different, you know, state-owned enterprises that are—they're haggling some of these deals. 

But yet it's still important that despite this really decentralized nature of Chinese governance, China has been very targeted and selective by focusing on regional actors that have a lot of cultural or political influence in the region. And also, looking at these countries and finding these areas of opportunity where perhaps their interests are not being met by the United States. 

Maybe I can turn over to Larry now to talk a little bit about some of the agency of local actors.

LARRY RUBIN: Sure. And I'll just give a couple of examples. 

This kind of goes back to the first question of their motivations for these programs and the—where partnership in this way with China kind of overlaps and maybe helps them achieve some of their goals. None of them are forced to cooperate in any way with China to develop their program, and some of them just see it as advantageous.

And they kind of, in the case, say, of the Egyptians, they get a tremendous amount. It's heavily supported by China. They don't have to do any of it. This is their choice. And kind of getting back to a little bit more from the previous question is, one of the other things that they benefit from in this way is also an element of prestige, of a certain type of leadership that have the presidency of the African Space Agency, which is their headquarters right down the street practically from the Egyptian Space Agency. This kind of—this gives them an element of leadership that they wanted to long capture.

And so some of these types of things are decisions or choices they may make. They could go to other actors in that case. The Emiratis, for example, in a different case, they're, as I mentioned, very sensitive about disturbing their relationship with the United States and the sensitive technologies that it can acquire from the United States. And to this extent, they seek cooperation where they can and then will, when pressured, often push back, or kind of retreat slightly from those areas.

And this, kind of, is one of the reasons why we wanted to include this case of sometimes the limits of how far a state may be willing to go, and I can speak about the Iran example in a different setting.

RYAN VEST: I'd like to dig into that just a little bit deeper. In the article, you use the idea of hybrid alignment to describe how small and medium powers balance their ties against established rising powers like China. How does space cooperation fit into the broader alignment strategy, and how does China's space diplomacy in North Africa and the Middle East connect to the Belt and Road Initiative, the Space Silk Road, and the Space Information Corridor?

LINCOLN HINES: So first of all, I'll note this concept of hybrid alignment. 

We draw on this concept from these two scholars, Sheena Greitens and Isaac Kardon, who—maybe you're familiar with some of their work. But it really talks about how these states, and these, kind of, regional players, they pursue different types of alignment based off of their different needs, whether that's regional security needs or whether that's more about domestic regime surveillance and kind of regime governance.

And a lot of Chinese technologies that it exports are—especially when we think of the broader kind of surveillance state that China has constructed—have been very important to regimes in the country, in these regions that want to perhaps consolidate their autocratic control on power.

So, bringing this to the concept of space diplomacy: space diplomacy—it's a piece of a state's broader diplomatic toolset. And so when we think of this, it's—in ways it's both important because it's a very specific type of diplomacy, but it's also a microcosm, too, that helps maybe hint at some of the broader dynamics in the relationship, kind of, more broadly the way China approaches these countries. 

So looking at space in particular, it's an interesting area because a lot of these technologies are inherently dual-use. And this is really challenging. I mean, most technologies to some sense are dual-use, but when we talk about space technologies, we're talking about things that can be very useful for, you know, monitoring agriculture, weather patterns, or also monitoring the military capabilities of your adversaries.

And so there's this kind of dilemma for these, you know, a power like the United States about what types of technologies does it want to share with countries in the region? Is there a concern about technologies falling into the wrong hands? And then it also provides China a useful means—and I'm not saying that it's strictly for security purposes—but China can provide these tools that are really multifunctional. They can do a lot of different things.

And so China views this as one piece of its broader Belt and Road Initiative. And it, you know—a lot of these projects are focused on, you know, ostensibly on development. But they also do all these other things. Perhaps they help countries in the region meet their prestige demands, or perhaps it has these dual-use functions that help them in the military realm.

And so it provides, like, a really useful way that China can gain influence in an area, and it's not this kind of simple zero-one competition that we often like to think of when we characterize great power competition.

SHEENA CHESTNUT GREITENS: Yeah, one of the things that really jumps out here is the ability in this geopolitical environment with multiple great powers of the three countries that you go in depth on to set the terms of their space cooperation. Doesn't mean China doesn't have its own constraints or things it's willing to do or not do, but the agency of the three countries in the case studies that you look at's really interesting.

I wanted to ask about this idea of these dual-use or potentially developmentally oriented technologies in terms of their ability to accrue long-term influence for China. That comes up in the article and in particular, BeiDou appears as a particularly important instrument of, kind of, potential long-term influence.

So I wanted to ask you a little bit about, first, can you just tell our listeners what that system is for anybody who's not yet familiar with it? And once countries adopt those systems, or BeiDou-compatible systems, what kind of dependency or, kind of, lock-in effect might that create over time, especially if that also means that China—either a Chinese company or Chinese government entities—are then simultaneously gaining access to things like satellite imagery data/a long-term presence in multiple local space sectors?

And how should we think about the long-term impact of a particular, you know, GPS-like platform? Diana, maybe I could ask you to speak to that.

DAYANA ALAGIROVA: Sure. I think, as a person who compiled the database, I was honestly personally surprised to see that many BeiDou cases.

So for people who are not really accustomed to BeiDou, it's basically the Chinese global GPS alternative. So these are navigation satellite systems that China uses, and they practically adopted pretty much everywhere now.

The bottom line is that navigation is—it's the single largest category in our data, and it's the stickiest one. Because when a country adopts BeiDou, the receivers—they build ground augmentation stations or wires BeiDou into ports, agriculture, security systems. It's basically buying into this ecosystem—so Chinese signal access, updates, standards, trained personnel. And we see it pretty much everywhere in the database: beirut port survey, self-driving tractor trial in Tunisia, full military and civil access for Iran under the 2021—the 25-year agreement. 

And it is quite mundane, but cumulatively it's quite a technical and maybe institutional lock-in. Every year, switching costs rise, and pretty much the next contract is more likely to be Chinese to continue this dependency.

And then we add data on some Chinese-built satellites. The state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation monitors the imagery collected. And so you pretty much get the dependency plus potential intelligence access, plus a permanent presence in the local space sector.

This architecture of influence builds on one memorandum of understanding at a time. So it's a very coherent action, step-by-step intrusion and influence in the region, but also promoting development and aid and help—like, pretty much everything that these countries wish for.

And it's only pretty much visible in aggregate, which is the whole point of the database. So when you see a particular news headline saying, "oh, this country adopted BeiDou," and it happens like every year, once a month, once a certain period of time, you don't think that this system is that widespread.

Actually, when you see that compiled in a database, and pretty much I think a quarter of the 50 episodes that we have from 2010 to 2025 are all BeiDou.

RYAN VEST: That's quite a bit. That's a lot of integration. And it kind of brings back something that Lincoln was just talking about when he was talking about a lot of the dual-use technologies. 

In your article, you talk about these different technologies and how they intersect with global governance, economics, military power, political influence.

I'm just curious, which of these dimensions do you think is most important in China's Middle Eastern and North Africa strategy? And how does space diplomacy suggest a more strategic and politically consequential Chinese presence in the region, maybe, than the older idea of China as mostly economic and non-interventionist?

LINCOLN HINES: So, first of all, the question of what does China want, you know, it's the, kind of, million-dollar question. Maybe million isn't so much when we're talking about the funding that we're talking about with BeiDou. But it's really difficult when we talk about who is China, where do Chinese interests come from, and what does this mean for China's approach to the Middle East?

Space, you know, as I noted earlier, it's a window into China's growing influence in the region. I would say I am favorable to the view that is held by some scholars that China has, at least, a more narrow conception of international order if that even is—truly, there's a coherent vision of that. And that is one where it is a government that, in the words of scholars such as Jessica Weiss, is a—trying to promote a world safe for autocracy. And that's not necessarily wanting to have this kind of messianic approach to international order or an interventionist approach in a, like, a significant way to, you know, engage in regime change or something like that. But a world where countries like itself are seen as equally valid members of the international community, where there's—we simply do not comment on other countries' internal affairs.

Now, that said, China also is running against the problem of, you know, wanting to have its cake and eat it too. China wants to have influence without necessarily having to get too involved in these politically dicey issues. And we see that China keeps getting pulled in more and more into the region. And it's not clear that China has a kind of long-term, coherent political vision for what it wants. But these technologies do give it a source of influence, and this is especially as the United States has been cutting a lot of its developmental assistance and aid across the world. It provides China a very important tool.

Now, does this mean that China has radically departed from its, kind of, traditionally long-held non-interventionist approach? I wouldn't go that far. But I would say that it gives China just one more tool in its pocket for winning friends and influence in the international stage. And I would say that space technologies are especially important for that because they do so many important things for a country economically and militarily.

SHEENA CHESTNUT GREITENS: Yeah, it's really interesting. It also seems, like, very compatible with China's focus under Xi Jinping on various aspects of high-tech development and the emphasis on really gaining an edge and competitive position in all sorts of emerging technologies of the future. Super interesting.

Okay, so one of the case studies that you talk about, that you go in-depth on is Iran, and there's been a lot in the news on Iran recently, so I imagine we have a lot of folks who are pretty interested in understanding this aspect of the China-Iran relationship. And in your description, China appears fairly careful in its relationship with Iran, partly because it's also got these ties to the Gulf nations, right?

And there's been a lot going on with respect to Iran's geopolitical position and politics within the region, and in terms of how all of these countries relate to the United States. I think while we were editing, if I'm remembering right, we had to make a few adjustments to the text because some of Iran's space facilities were actually destroyed in the military action that's been unfolding in the region for the last year or so.

So I wanted to ask you a little bit about that, and given the current context of military operations related to Iran, Iran's changing regional position, the sort of diplomatic efforts that seem to oscillate around US-Iran de-escalation, military operations—how does China's space cooperation sort of play in the region?

Maybe Larry, if I could ask you to tell us, you know, I've heard this described as a—you know, Iran's strategic lifeline. I've heard this described as a liability for Beijing in terms of regional politics and regional reactions. Is it all of those? Is it something in-between? How should we think about China's relationship and its space partnership with Iran in the context of what's been going on with Iran over the course of the time since you wrote this article?

LARRY RUBIN: Yeah, very timely question and one that I will not try to make any predictions because something could change. And I never do that because if I do that, it's usually—I bet on the opposite one.

SHEENA CHESTNUT GREITENS: Let me just note that we're recording this at the end of July 2026 for anybody listening. So that'll put a timestamp there. So that's the timeframe in which we're asking you to answer this question and, you know, something could happen next week. But given even taking what could happen into account, let us know how should we think about this question?

LARRY RUBIN: Right. I think a couple of broader things. 

One is, where does space fit into this relationship? Maybe three questions. Is space something that Iran might invest in in the future afterwards, if we talk about the future, if it continues as a war campaign and so forth? And then another one that people often have and also, potentially turn to Lincoln on this one is, to what extent does China have leverage over Iran? And then, does the space program play a role there? 'Cause this is one of the big questions.

Is this, kind of, leverage that people assume that China has over Iran overblown or not, and does it? And I think it, it may be for all the reasons that—you know, that we've outlined in the paper and Lincoln had mentioned, is that it seems to be China's not 100% sure it wants to do in the Middle East. We know it's not a high priority, and that if you wanted to see the history of what the United States has been involved in the Middle East, there's a lot of liability there.

And this goes to this, kind of, the question, where does the space program fit into all of this, too? Because it's one element. It may be connected to what's even more important, which might be getting help on its ballistic program or any types of munitions that would be valuable for any conflict in the region, drones, any types of arms and supporting things, fuel, propulsion—which is something they're very involved in, and also something—allegedly very involved in—and also something the Israelis and the Americans are very concerned about and targeted in that way.

And this does connect to the space program, but what was targeted primarily in that way were some of the offices and some also—building and infrastructure areas too that wouldn't destroy a space program entirely unless everything was wiped out. But it certainly would set it back and cause significant damage there.

What I would say is, is that after—if there is some type of calm, it's a question of then thinking about will this be a priority area for—on the military side, we'll say—priority area for the Iranians to invest in and to get investment from other countries. It may be that maybe the country—another country like China would want to only invest in, you know, a space program that way. I can't imagine that being the case, but the question would be where would it want to, kind of, direct its investments? I would be surprised if it went in this direction.

I would imagine cooperation taking place in other areas between China and Iran. But—and much more so on the ballistic missile capability front, which of course could assist more in terms of making launches more efficient. And we should remind everybody that there are two countries in the Middle East that do have indigenous launch capabilities, and one is Israel and one is Iran.

Kind of, going back to this whole question of what motivates various countries in the Middle East—security, primary motivation for developing this program in Iran having to do with intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance, one of the big issues there. And also now we're looking at—and I think although a long way off into the future—any type of kinetic warfare, either on the ground or there. And we haven't talked about those cyber elements either in this current war.

RYAN VEST: You know, listening to you talk about Iran, there's a lot going on there and, you know, coming back to the article a little bit, methodologically, you categorize China's space engagements by functional domains to, kind of, keep them separate throughout the article.

I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about what these domains are and how this classification helped you detect patterns that might otherwise have been missed, especially across the different case variations.

DAYANA ALAGIROVA: Sure. I would be gladly to talk about that since the problem is that space cooperation is quite a terrible unit of analysis, to be honest. And, you know, a $92 million assembly center and a two-page memo would each count as one.

So we pretty much coded all these 50 episodes, 12 countries, these 15 years of cooperation by these functional domains. So there are 8 domains: satellite systems and hardware, launch and mission support, navigation and GNSS—so in practice, basically, they do space infrastructure—ground segment, data, sensing information, governance policy, financial technical support. Plus these dimensions go into subtypes, which also creates a little bit of, let's say, complexity in analysis, but it helps us to categorize it correctly.

So the three patterns that came out of this categorization is that the portfolio is hardware-heavy. We have mostly navigation, satellites, launches, and these are over three-fifths of activities. So this is basically capability transfer kind of cooperation, not just symbolic, shaking hands and saying, "we're gonna help you," and then ditching the cooperation entirely.

The second pattern was tiering Egypt and the UAE. Egypt and the UAE get assembly centers and lunar programs. Lebanon, Morocco, and Oman gets narrow BeiDeou data-sharing deals. So we pretty much have same labels but different substances for different countries. And we see where alliances lie and how China creates these dependency over different countries, because you can see Egypt and UAE are very much leveraging from both the United States and China. So how would China come back? What exactly would they offer to UAE? It is a little bit different than they would offer to Morocco or Oman.

And the third pattern is basically, outcome coding lets failures speak. We have this outcome column. We kept canceled cases like the UAE's Rashid 2 rover pulled off China's Chang'e-7 under the US export control pressure, which is also reveals where these red lines—Chinese red lines actually sit.

So these are the patterns that this quite not-really-easy methodology reveals in the dataset and helps us understand better the China politics.

SHEENA CHESTNUT GREITENS: This is actually one of my favorite parts of the article because it does a really nice job, I think, of taking a really varied landscape that wasn't altogether empirically familiar to me and creating this classification framework where you keep a lot of the nuance and the accuracy and the precision of understanding what's going on on a case-by-case basis, but also give us kind of a framework for understanding what looks different in one country versus another. And so, just, you know, that was one of my, sort of, favorite parts of the article, and I think one of the most useful things about the framework that you all have put forward here.

So as we're looking ahead at China's engagement in this region—and I realize we're asking you to make predictions, which Larry just said he doesn't do, for good reason, but I'm gonna follow up and and of course ask you to do it anyway. Or at least maybe not quite a prediction, but just, more a set of, like, what are the indicators that you all are watching? 

And in particular, what would be the indicators that China's space diplomacy is really beginning to reshape patterns of international alignment in a significant way in the Middle East, whether that's, you know, sort of, challenging the US role or intensifying this more hybridized geopolitical alignment that you describe. What are the indicators that would tell us that this is aggregating into a bigger geopolitical shift? What would you be looking for?

LARRY RUBIN: So obviously, in thinking about the region, you know, we think about what may come after. And I think it will be a question of opportunities and also taking what we know.

And also, I don't want to speak for what would go on with China so much, but I imagine it would be assessing who comes out ahead in that way and what are they willing to risk. And I would imagine at this stage, if things kind of calm down, you would say there is no real incentive to get further involved than we already are and just to kind of play things as we have in the past and take advantage of opportunities where they exist but not go forward. Because you see what happened with the United States. Again, it got bloodied that way.

I think with regard to space, again, it would be this cooperation in areas that would be less controversial to some extent. Egypt pushes up against various things because it's a very close security partner with the United States, and this is something that the United States is watching very closely. 

The United States also may try to continue to push—depending on what the leadership is in the United States—of more of its space diplomacy and expanding the Artemis Accords. We haven't really talked about that so much, of this, kind of, opposed paradigm that seems to be somewhat constructed in the sense of saying you either join the Artemis Accords or the ILRS, which is the International Lunar Research Station, promoted by China and also technically by Russia as well, and kind of seizes two various aims. This is something that comes up—and Diana can speak to as well, a little bit longer on this. 

And I would imagine that type of—is a safe type of competition of space diplomacy there. Those might be indicators, but then again, there are also some states that have been considering even more joining. So it may be that this evolves into a non-competition, non-competitive area after this.

And this is a separate thing because we're talking primarily—and the conversation is along those military lines, but this is not military. This has to do with governance and world order, but it's all connected in this—in a broader sense.

And what I could imagine also, and I think more relevant, is how many of the wealthy Gulf countries view space. And, you know, I'm thinking more along the lines of the military side of this investment, and how they might see this as how important it was.

And I can imagine the—what they've gained in the sense of being so heavily reliant on information and the United States may really catalyze this movement towards data sovereignty and acquiring their own assets. And how and where they get that will drive what that relationship looks like with the United States, with China as well.

LINCOLN HINES: Yeah, I'll just add on the, kind of, the question about indicators. I think—and this is echoing a lot of the things that Larry just mentioned.

So first of all, I would say, going back to Diana's comment about the unit of analysis for space cooperation being really complex, I think that really, in a nutshell, shows just, you know, how varied different indicators for space cooperation might be. But I would say some of the more really pronounced or substantive ones are where we're going to see the same type of cooperation like we see with China and Egypt. That type of cooperation where you're really getting involved in infrastructure and transferring knowhow is a pretty substantive step in tightening relations.

I would also add to Larry's point, not necessarily that we should view Artemis and ILRS in this sort of race type of lens, but you can see that there are tensions between the United States and China over who gets to be in which respective coalition. And this is illustrated in the case on the UAE.

So will we start seeing more countries that were once reluctant to sign on to the ILRS be more willing to do that today? I think that is an indicator that we can look forward to in the future to try to make sense of whether China's influence is increasing.

DAYANA ALAGIROVA: If I might add something in this millennial pool as a Gen Z here, I—and spending lots of time with the data—I think this versus overlapping dependency is more of a question of the red and blue pill from The Matrix. All credits go to the directors. And now I think it's more of a purple pill because we have commercial actors. We can't just admit that there's gonna be only US-led or China-led world order. We have commercial space actors that are active on both sides.

And from Dr. Hines and Mr. Rubin’s perspective in adding everything into this melting pot, I—very much as a young scholar and as a, like, aspiring PhD—I think this is an amazing moment of time to understand the multipolarity.

And this is not my Russian side speaking about multipolarity. This is more of a trying to understand the complexity of the world and the complexity of the unit of analysis that we are tackling. 

So yeah, I think it's gonna be more of a multipolar and including all these interesting new rising actors as commercial and private sector.

LARRY RUBIN: I wanna just jump in there. Diana, you flatter me by including me in this millennial pool. I'm not sure the others are, but I am a different generation.

Well, I wanted to actually add one interesting thing, is that—and you're entirely right about the role of commercial space. The other interesting thing that we're talking about, going back to Lincoln's comment as well, is a country like Turkey that joined ILRS. And Turkey is fully, in a certain sense, institutionally in the Western camp of being part of NATO, yet it joined this institu—you know, this other organization having to do with this space, but—research on going to the Moon that way—but has not yet joined the Artemis Accords. And I say “yet” because I suspect that there is a push for that to happen, and they may be the first to kind of straddle those. So it really just kind of does show what the challenges are with understanding it this way. 

But at the same time also, another way to think about it—of how states, you know, often try to play the sides off each other. We know about Turkey's diplomacy, and in both having to do with NATO during the 2010s with its relationship with Syria and so forth, and this is just another example of that too playing out in the realm of space.

RYAN VEST: I'm just curious if you think that that's gonna be acceptable across these different, you know, ecosystems. You know, for instance, we've seen recently Turkey trying to buy the F-35 and also Russian S-400, which has created some friction. Do you see similar frictions in the space regime?

LARRY RUBIN: I think it actually is fairly low on the radar, so I'm not 100% sure unless somebody elevates it and, in a sense, tries to, say here, uses it—I hate to use the term “securitize”—or make it that much of a threat there to say, "here's another element that we need to be worried about. They're in with the Chinese, they're part of this organization."

And you could imagine this playing out in Congress that way, and anybody wants to lobby against that deal. I'm not saying they're entirely wrong or right. I'm not stating a position on this. But it's more about I would—I'm guessing, again, maybe this is in the realm of prediction, that it stays under the radar when it comes to these aspects.

'Cause they do try to really push Artemis and ILRS as being non-military. It's just that we're, you know—and I've—we've blended, and I'm myself included in that way, this conversation to cross over on both.

SHEENA CHESTNUT GREITENS: That's one of the things about these dual-use—the dual-use nature of some of these space issues and technologies is that it does—sometimes we cross over or we blend. And when to, sort of, talk about these in both terms and when to disaggregate the military and the clearly non-military uses is a tricky part of the conversation, which is one of the things that makes, I think, your unpacking of the different components pretty valuable.

RYAN VEST: So I was really interested, you know, Diana, you talked a lot about multipolarity and we seem to be coming to some of this multipolar world where the unipolar moment in the United States is ending. How do you think that affects some of these smaller countries that are looking at their own agency and trying to figure out how to realign themselves in a changing world?

LINCOLN HINES: I think the question about multipolarity versus a fragmented world order—I think that, you know, the word—that kind of recurring word that we've had is “complex,” “hybrid.” It's a messier version of reality.

And I think right now we are not entirely clear what the international order is going to look like with changes coming from the United States. You know, there's been recent reporting from, I believe it was the Pew survey that was showing for many countries that for the first time China is seen as more favorable than the United States.

And so we're really at this important kind of inflection point. And I think one thing that our paper draws attention to that I think is important is the role of these smaller non-great power states, and that they actually have quite a bit more agency than a lot of our traditional approaches to international relations suggest.

And I would say that there's a growing body of scholarship that's starting to pay attention to how these smaller and middle powers shape international order. And so I think that aspect of it, the element of agency that we talk about in the paper, is really important for thinking about how, kind of, the complex way, the messy way that our international order may unfold in the coming years.

SHEENA CHESTNUT GREITENS: Larry, Lincoln, Dayana, we want to thank you for joining us today. This has been a really interesting, uh, and I think productive, useful contribution for, for all of our listeners.

LARRY RUBIN: Thanks so much for having us.

LINCOLN HINES: Thanks for having us.

DAYANA ALAGIROVA: Thank you.

SHEENA CHESTNUT GREITENS: It's been great to have you on today. Thanks for joining us on “Horns of a Dilemma,” the podcast of the Texas National Security Review. Our guests today have been Larry Rubin, Lincoln Hines, and Dayana Alagirova, authors of the article "Choosing Orbits: China's Space Diplomacy in the Middle East," which as always can be accessed for free on our website.

If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts, and you can always find more of our work at TNSR.org. Today's episode was produced by TNSR digital and technical manager Jordan Morning and made possible by the University of Texas System. This is Sheena Chestnut Greitens and Ryan Vest. Thanks again for listening.