Paraguay yesterday became the 67th nation to sign Artemis Accords, continued the flood of smaller third world nations that have signed up in the last few weeks following the completion of the Artemis-2 mission around the Moon.

The remarks of NASA administration Jared Isaacman in connection with this event I find most tantalizing:

“They join an ever-growing coalition of like-minded nations committed to the peaceful, transparent, and responsible exploration of space. Established by President Trump in his first term, the Artemis Accords provided the principles for how we explore the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Now, with his national space policy, we are putting the Artemis Accords into practice with our Moon Base. We are creating opportunities for all Artemis Accords signatories, including Paraguay, to join us on the lunar surface and advance our shared objectives in this next era of exploration.” [emphasis mine]

While that national space policy [pdf] accepts the Outer Space Treaty’s limitation on establishing American law on other worlds, including property rights, it also makes its first goal that of promoting private enterprise.

Promote and incentivize private industry to facilitate the creation of new global and domestic markets for United States space goods and services, and strengthen and preserve the position of the United States as the global partner of choice for international space commerce.

Repeatedly the policy emphasizes the importance of private enterprise, with one whole section devoted to outlining ways to encourage commercial non-governmental activities in space.

Isaacman’s statement yesterday is the first time in years that any NASA official has focused on this issue in any way. Trump originally created the Artemis Accords as a first step to overcome the Outer Space Treaty’s ban on private property in space. The thinking appeared to be: Make a large American alliance that would eventually have the clout to change that ban.

During the Biden administration that goal was dumped and was replaced with using the accords to encourage global collectivism. It appears Isaacman is very carefully returning to that original goal, laying out the initial political steps for doing what Trump first wanted the accords to accomplish. He is clearly indicating here that the American moon base will function under an American legal framework, even if initially for diplomatic reasons no one will make that obvious.

The full list of nations in this American space alliance is as follows:

Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

With this signing, the only South American nations that have not signed are Bolivia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana (though French Guiana could be considered a signatory under France).