Center for a New American Security

Sea, air, space, and cyberspace constitute the global commons – those areas or dimensions of the world no one state controls but that act as the connective tissue that binds the international system together. Goods manufactured overseas have to be shipped in large containers on huge cargo ships over vast oceans. The orders for the goods and requisite parts assembled in a factory must be transmitted over networks that constitute the Internet. The container ships carrying goods use satellites to navigate and communicate. These capabilities do not happen by accident—they are the result of decades of effort by governments and private corporations to build a “system of systems” that allows for global commerce. These systems exist within and between the global commons: the high seas, air, space and cyberspace.

In this way, the global commons provide the foundation of the international economic and political system. Dependable access to the commons is the backbone of the international economy and political order, benefiting the global community in ways that few appreciate or realize. Over 90 percent of global trade, worth over $14 trillion in 2008, travels by sea.  Every year, 2.2 billion passengers and 35 percent of the world’s manufactured exports by value travel through the air. 

Governments, militaries, and corporations around the world rely on space for communications, imagery, and accurate positioning services, making space a $257 billion industry in 2008 alone.  Financial traders in New York City use the Internet to transfer $4 trillion, greater than 25 percent of America’s annual GDP, every day.  Moreover, any computer in the world with access to the Internet can access and transmit information to any place in the world within seconds, allowing unprecedented connectivity for global social networks, commercial enterprises and militaries.

The interconnectedness and interdependence brought by the globalized economy contributes significantly to stability and prosperity, allowing people, ideas and capital to freely crisscross the world with little regard for international borders. Globalization has lifted millions out of poverty and given emerging regional powers new influence over their own destinies. Indeed, the 2008 U.S. National Defense Strategy claimed that “global prosperity is contingent on the free flow of ideas, goods, and services.”  Clearly, if the United States and the international community want to sustain this level of globalization, the openness of the global commons must be maintained.

In recognition of the increasingly central role of stability throughout the global commons, the Center for a New American Security published Contested Commons: The Future of American Power in a Multipolar World, co-edited by CNAS Fellow Abraham Denmark and Dr. James Mulvenon. The study was published in January 2010 with an event featuring Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead; Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force General Carrol Chandler; renowned aerospace expert Norman R. Augustine; Denmark, and Mulvenon. Watch the event video here. In the latter half of 2010,  CNAS will launch a major study on the cyber commons.