On August 1, 1944, the Polish Home Army rose against Warsaw’s German occupiers. The Soviet Red Army, in force on the Vistula’s eastern bank, had told the Poles that it would attack the Germans as soon as they rose. Instead, the Russians stood by as the Germans killed virtually all 16,000 Polish fighters along with some 200,000 civilians, and destroyed old Warsaw. Germans and Russians faced each other at that location consequent to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, in which the two had effectively jointly erased Poland from the map. 

Europe was never a full partner in its own defense. The very question—Will Europe ever fully partner with the U.S., or will the European Union and NATO continue to downplay the necessity of military readiness?—is no longer meaningful as posed, because the political energies of Europe’s elites are absorbed as they try to fend off attacks on their legitimacy by broad sectors of their population.

Imagine what power would accrue to the nation were its military—on the ground, at sea, and in the air—to be backed by a force able to decide whether or how any other country might benefit from objects in orbital space; if that nation were to control access to orbit, securing such objects and benefits for itself. Today, who can do what to whom in or by using orbital space makes a big difference. The world’s significant militaries live by information from and communications through objects in orbital space. Inevitably, sooner or later, one will bid for the comprehensive capacity to control that space. Better that America be first. Establishing the U.S. Space Force will endow people with the mission—the goal, the will, and the interest—to make U.S. control of space happen.

Self-determination for countries that had been occupied by Nazi Germany—Poland in particular—was foremost of the common objectives to which President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winton Churchill committed on August 14, 1941 after meeting on the British battleship Prince of Wales off Newfoundland. Germany’s invasion of Poland had been the reason why Britain had declared war. Restoring Poland’s freedom was the war’s first-order objective. The Soviet Union’s 1939 partnership with Germany in that invasion and, by August 1941, its alliance with Britain, added a layer of difficulties.