While Deploying Weapons in Space, the US Pulls Together an Exclusive 'Moon Agreement' Club — Multilateral Outer Space Governance System Under Pressure

US Defense Secretary Hegseth announced a weapons innovation initiative last week, publicly declaring that the US military needs to dominate "any future battlefield, from underground to beyond the Moon." The remarks came shortly after the US confirmed for the first time that it has deployed weapons in space. According to a report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Hegseth's wording places "underground" and "beyond the Moon" side by side as operational domains, in direct conflict with the principle established by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty that "the Moon shall be used exclusively for peaceful purposes."

The report pointed out that, unlike the US-Soviet rivalry of the 20th century, one side of the new round of the Moon race is the US government plus billionaire capital such as SpaceX and Blue Origin, while the other side is a Russia-China alliance. Competition among the parties around lunar nuclear reactor construction, lunar resource development and even military uses is heating up simultaneously.

At the multilateral level, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty explicitly prohibits weapons testing or military use on the lunar surface, and was adopted unanimously by the UN General Assembly. However, as reported by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the US has chosen to bypass the UN and instead promote the Artemis Accords led by NASA. The Accords attempt to reaffirm support for the Outer Space Treaty and set rules on space debris and resource utilization through non-legally binding "principles."

So far 76 countries have signed the Artemis Accords, but Russia and China have explicitly refused to join. Hussein Badin, a space law expert at the University of Sydney, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that any relevant treaty "must be negotiated within the UN framework, not outside of it," and stressed that new rules must be detailed and must explicitly address military activities, resource extraction and environmental concerns.

Counter-moves at the UN level are also advancing. According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, a working group of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space published the latest round of draft legal principles in April this year, recommending that the Moon and its resources should not become the property of any state or organization, and reiterating the need for peaceful uses of the Moon. The draft remains a non-binding recommendation, but stands in contrast to the resource-development-encouraging path of the Artemis Accords.

The "broad and vague" nature of the Outer Space Treaty itself has left room for unilateral action. The treaty does not address lunar mining. The 1979 Moon Agreement attempted to fill the gap by characterizing the Moon as the "common heritage of mankind," and envisioned establishing an international licensing and benefit-sharing mechanism, but only 18 countries have ratified it, and neither the US nor Russia is among them. Badin stated bluntly that some US companies view the benefit-sharing concept as "an attempt to socialize the Moon."

In 2015, the US passed domestic legislation granting its own citizens and private entities the right to own and sell space resources. Luxembourg, the UAE and Japan subsequently passed similar laws. Space law expert Cassandra Steele told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that these moves are "an expansion of the boundaries of possibility" — that around Article II of the Outer Space Treaty and its "non-appropriation principle," parties are forming new interpretive paths rather than directly abandoning the treaty.

Private capital leverage was described by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as a unique variable in the current round of competition. Steele warned: "Without SpaceX, the US cannot land on the Moon, but SpaceX can do it even without the US, even without government contracts." She described a scenario viewed as a real risk: even if SpaceX is commissioned by NASA, it may still land first in resource-rich lunar regions, and through artificial intelligence and robotics build mining infrastructure sufficient to deter later arrivals. The report also mentioned that a SpaceX rocket has already crashed into the lunar surface, creating a crater.

Steele also noted that any military conflict on the Moon would constitute a "flagrant violation" of the principles of the Outer Space Treaty and "may also violate the UN Charter," but she stated bluntly that "this administration does not care about these things." She told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in summary: "The effectiveness of the Outer Space Treaty depends on how much states are willing to let international law be effective overall."

In the legal vacuum surrounding the Moon, whoever can arrive first and remain present is in fact reshaping the rules; and "remaining present" is being redefined by a series of US policy actions as: pulling together an exclusive club, permitting private extraction of resources, and extending the operational domain to "beyond the Moon."