If nature abhors a vacuum, so does power. If a strategic emptiness exists somewhere, it will be eventually get filled; somebody will take control of it. That's the story of geographical assets all through history: hilltop and harbors, gold mines and oil fields; if they aren't defended, they will be seized. But this abhorrence of a literal power vacuum in the physical world has a figurative parallel in the mental world; if there's an open question, it will eventually be filled up and answered.

And so it is in politics; any time a new controversy opens up, politicians and rhetoricians rush into the public square, elbowing each other for mindshare. This is a problem for American space-power proponents today; they have right goal, which is to establish a robust tangible presence in space, but they are not necessarily developing a robust presence in the intangible realm of ideas and arguments here on Earth. By contrast, the opponents of space power may have a wrong idea about outer space -- that if the U.S. doesn't occupy it, nobody else will, either. -- But by dint of articulation and repetition, they are proving effective at occupying much of the mental space that people allot to politics and punditry. Last week, as noted here, the single most powerful content provider in the country, The New York Times , devoted some 8,000 words to warning against "the coming space war." And now, a like-minded chorus of critics has taken up the cry: no "weaponization" of space.

Space-power proponents can't afford to ignore the advance of this opposing argument. After all, the maintenance of a power position must have two elements. First, the powerful must have a physical dominance, which keeps enemies at a geographical distance. And second, power utilizers must have the sort of intellectual dominance described above, which enables them to crowd out rival ideas. These two forms of power need not be dictatorial; indeed, they should be consensual. But when this unity of deeds and doctrine is achieved, power is effective and enduring.

One might consider as a strong precedent the way the Roman Empire kept order in the Mediterranean. For about 500 years, from the 1st century B.C. to the 4th century A.D., the Romans controlled the littorals washed by the Mediterranean. The Romans were generals, to be sure, not admirals; they had no sense of navigation, and their maps were a joke. But they understood power. Everything one needs to know about their grand strategy in regard to the Mediterranean can be summed up in the Latin name for it: "Mare Nostrum"