Is real-life ‘Star Wars’ America’s manifest destiny?

On December 18, 2025, the White House released an executive order on “Ensuring American Space Superiority.” The document begins with a premise that is less policy than existential stance: “Superiority in space is a measure of national vision.” This technical roadmap finds room for the terminology of providence, suggesting that a country’s greatness is now to be measured by its cosmic reach.

The order attempts to revive a specific American mythology. Since the 1960s, we have been told that space is the “final frontier,” a phrase that carries a reminder of 19th-century manifest destiny. The document reaffirms belief in America’s providential expansion, positioning the United States as the nation destined to lead in exploration, security, and commerce. It transforms orbits and planets into strategic high ground, repositories of resources that serve national ends.

Business leaders such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are the cultural heroes of this narrative.

We are, it seems, in the midst of a new space race. The memory of Apollo 11, that singular image of the Stars and Stripes planted in the lunar dust, remains the template. The order calls the return of Americans to the moon through the Artemis Program by 2028, a deadline meant to reassert leadership in a domain now crowded with rivals. The primary antagonist in this narrative is China, which has announced its own plans to land taikonauts on the moon by 2030. Former NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has been blunt, citing China’s aggressive claims in the South China Sea as an analogy for what might happen in lunar locales.

While the 1967 Outer Space Treaty forbids claiming sovereignty in space, there is fear that the first mover will gain de facto control. The rhetoric has shifted. We have moved from the cooperative optimism of the Apollo-Soyuz era to a harder-edged strategic competition. The order even revokes certain prior structures, such as the 2021 National Space Council, in favor of a more “America First” approach. This is a shift from the “global commons” to the “ultimate high ground.”

The technical ambitions of the order are sweeping. It delineates four priority areas, beginning with a permanent lunar outpost by 2030. To achieve this, the government is leaning heavily on the “power of American free enterprise.” The order sets a target of attracting $50 billion in private investment into U.S. space ventures by 2028. Business leaders such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are the cultural heroes of this narrative, visionary risk-takers who are expected to provide the commercial replacement for the aging International Space Station by 2030.

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Photo by Barney Wayne/Keystone/Getty Images

However, beneath the talk of economic growth and high-paying aerospace jobs lies a more somber preoccupation with security. The order directs the Pentagon to demonstrate prototype missile defense technologies, an “Iron Dome for America” in space. The U.S. Space Force is no longer merely a passive observer but now must develop capabilities to directly counter threats. We are entering an era of satellite dogfighting, where maneuverable spacecraft practice close-approach maneuvers near U.S. assets. In 2024, intelligence revealed that Russia was developing a nuclear-powered vehicle capable of carrying a weapon into orbit, a development the order addresses by instructing agencies to draft plans for countering such placements.

Perhaps the most striking technical goal is the National Initiative for American Space Nuclear Power. The order calls for deploying nuclear reactors on the moon and in orbit by 2030. This deployment is a significant challenge, building small nuclear plants for extraterrestrial use, but it is seen as a necessary precursor for faster deep-space travel and energy-intensive lunar mining. The intent is to ensure that the foundational architecture of space activity, 50 or 100 years from now, bears a “Made in USA” stamp.

This drive for superiority explicitly equates technological progress with national destiny. The White House fact sheet links these efforts to a “pioneering legacy” that stretches from Lewis and Clark to the moon. The narrative is designed to rally public support, turning scientific milestones into geopolitical trophies. By connecting cosmic endeavors to broadband internet and weather forecasting, the administration tries to frame space superiority as a bread-and-butter issue rather than a merely abstract concern. Yet it cannot answer the deeper questions about our relationship with space. Marshall McLuhan once noted that with satellite technology, the Earth has become a “global theater” enclosed by a man-made environment. From this god’s-eye view, the planet becomes a dataset to manipulate rather than a home to nurture.

The order bets squarely on expansion, following the logic of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who said that, while Earth is the cradle of humanity, one cannot live in a cradle forever. However, as we venture out, the stakes are not merely who gets there first, or who builds the most, but whether our reach for the stars elevates the human spirit or merely extends our appetites into the void. The destiny we are shaping is, for the first time, interplanetary. Whether we go as guardian angels or warring gods remains the crucial question.