Ce travail offre une analyse holistique de la politique spatiale américaine après laguerre froide vue sous l’angle de l’armement limité de l’espace extra-atmosphérique. Prenantappui sur la distinction entre les notions de « militarisation » et d’« arsenalisation » del’espace, il cherche à répondre à la question suivante : pourquoi les États-Unis n’ont-ils pas,depuis la fin de la guerre froide, arsenalisé l’espace ? Dans le cadre de la théorie réalisteréflexive, la thèse montre que ce profil bas s’explique par la quête de l’honneur, laquelleimpose la mise en place d’une politique « hégémonique » fondée sur la recherche de lalégitimité et de la reconnaissance mutuelle entre les États-Unis, les autres puissancesspatiales établies et le reste du monde. La « sous-arsenalisation », en tant qu’alternative audéploiement d’armes spatiales, se situe à l’intersection de trois logiques liées, chacuned’entre elles, à la fameuse triade classique : le prestige, le profit et la sécurité. Plusprécisément, cette étude porte sur les différents programmes de coopération et efforts delibéralisation de l’espace par le marché et de régulation des armements dans l’espaceconduits par les États-Unis depuis l’administration Reagan jusqu’à la présidence Obama. / This work offers an holistic analysis of the US space policy after the cold war fromthe point of view of the limited arming of outer space. Building on the distinction madebetween “militarization” and “weaponization of space,” it seeks to answer the followingquestion: why did the United States not choose to weaponize space since the cold war hasended? Within the framework of a reflexive presentation of realism, the thesis show that thislow profile is better explained by the quest for honor, which gives rise to a distinctive form of“hegemonic” policy, resulted in struggle for recognition and legitimicacy between the UnitedStates, other established space powers and the rest of the world. “Under-weaponization,” asan alternative to actual deployment of space weapons, lies at the intersection of three logicseach related to the classical motivational triad of fear, honor, and interest. More specifically,the study outlines the different programs of cooperation and efforts of market liberalizationand regulation of space armaments led by the United States since the day’s of the Reaganadministration until the end of the Obama presidency.

The thesis deals with the question of militarization and weaponization of the outer space and it analyse the actor's behaviour regarding space militarization and weaponization. The aim of the thesis is to find out whether the key actors cooperate or not in dealing with the use of the outer space. The relations between the key actors are analysed from the perspective of the game theory, particularly with the two models of behaviour: prisoner's dilemma and the tragedy of the commons. These models are used based on the assumption that they best describe the relations between actors in international relations as either cooperative or competitive. The aim is to evaluate whether these two models are valid in researching the behaviour of the key actors in the question of militarization of space. The analysed actors are the United States, Russia and China, as these are the three most important and successful space-faring nations with the biggest potential in the future of space exploration. Analysing their relations, the thesis attempts to evaluate whether the two models of the game theory are valid or not. For evaluating the prisoner's dilemma, bilateral relations are analysed, for the tragedy of the commons, their multilateral relations are analysed. What we learn from the analysis is that both models...