The world today looks nothing like the world of the 1960s. It looks a lot more like the world of the early 1910s and 1930s. Multiple countries vie for advantage.
> Since 2015, Russia, China, India, Iran, Israel, France, and North Korea have all established military space programs. China’s and Russia’s space commands are close on the heels of the United States, and according to the Secure World Foundation, the United States has idled certain of its offensive-technology programs while China and Russia actively test the same capabilities. ...
There's a theory of what causes war among major powers that goes like this. Wars result when one side miscalculates how the other side will respond. You can see elements of this in WWI. Certainly the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor fits the bill. And it almost did us in during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Combine multiple players jockeying for position, a close connection between space and nuclear weapon command and control, and a new domain that blunts the advantages of incumbants, and you get a fertile breeding ground for crisis.
Then there's the "use it or lose it" angle to consider and the fact the US has the most to lose in all of this:
> All military assets are surrounded by a “use it or lose it” ethos, says Joan Johnson-Freese, the author of Space Warfare in the 21st Century and a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. Once conflict begins, all holdings are seen to be at risk: you need to fire that missile before it’s taken out. “The military is taught to assume the worst, and to react to it,” she told me. “Because space assets are so far away, and there is a high potential to not be sure what is happening, high risk and threat must be assumed.” This is commonly referred to as “the tyranny of distance.” When the rules are not plain, whether in peacetime or war, the situation is “exponentially” more dangerous. ...