What does “exclusively peaceful” really mean?

In a 30 January release, the European Space Agency announced that it had appointed Laurent Jaffart as the head of the agency’s newly formed Resilience, Navigation, and Connectivity Directorate. The agency explained that the new directorate will be tasked with “bolstering resilience and enhancing navigation and connectivity in line with the security and defence priorities of its Member States, the European Union, and defence-related agencies in Europe.” At first glance, this appears to run counter to Article II of the agency’s founding Convention.

Article II states that “the purpose of the Agency shall be to provide for and to promote, for exclusively peaceful purposes, cooperation among European States in space research and technology and their space applications, with a view to their being used for scientific purposes and for operational space applications.” The importance of the agency’s activities being “exclusively peaceful” was also underscored by the Convention’s autho…