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space

Diplomacy:

War and Peace

Suchada Kulawat

Think of “science fiction” without “fiction.”
That’s your glimpse of future war and peace. Far-
fetched? Only partly, experts say.

What was once mystical is now an invisible
battleground. Space is “war-fighting domain.”
In today’s space era, the heavens are physically
reachable. And angels of all sides fall. They do in
wars. Still, some space pundits argue we can aim
for more “peaceful use of outer space” to tackle
global ills like climate change, disaster response,
food insecurity and others. But as geopolitics
shifts by minutes, humankind’s “pursuit of
common good” is in doubt.

For more than 3,000 years, humans’ fascination
with the sky has inspired thinkers, military
engineers, investors and scientists across
civilizations, from Persia and the Mediterranean
to the Ganges and Yellow River.

“The great bird will take its first flight... filling
the universe with stupor… and bringing eternal
glory to the nest where it was born,” noted
Renaissance artist-scientist Leonardo Davinci.

Leonardo’s “Codex on the Flight of Birds”
engineering drawing laid a foundation for
our journey to the stars in today’s “great bird”
spacecraft.

As a military engineer serving the Milanese
court in his earlier years, Leonardo produced
war machine drawings, from armored vehicles
to first aerial map. He advanced Renaissance
warfare technology.

Yet, some 2,700 years before Leonardo, celebrated
female Indian philosopher Gargi Vachaknavi,
according to the Vedic oral record, asked: On
what, then, is space woven?

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