Author profile: Bleddyn E. Bowen

Dr Bleddyn E. Bowen is a Lecturer at the Defence Studies Department, King’s College London, which is located at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, UK Defence Academy. Bleddyn’s research specialises in spacepower theory, classical strategic theory, and modern warfare. Bleddyn has published on spacepower theory and naval analogies, the politics of space debris removal, and EU space strategy.

Review – Space Warfare in the 21st Century: Arming the Heavens

Bleddyn E. Bowen • Apr 12 2017 • Features

A fair introductory text for newcomers to space security, but for those already experienced in space policy the arguments and controversies will be quite familiar.

Review – Justifying Ballistic Missile Defence

Bleddyn E. Bowen • Jun 24 2012 • Features

Columba Peoples considers why it is that successive US administrations have pursued missile defence and calls for a critical approach to understand the role of technology in security.

The Causes of the Iraq War: Implications for Morgenthau, Wendt, and Waltz

Bleddyn E. Bowen • Jun 7 2012 • Essays

Some classical realist and constructivist principles allow us to make sense of the Iraq war, but a neorealist fixation on the distribution of material capabilities does not.

How did the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki start a ‘nuclear revolution’?

Bleddyn E. Bowen • Jun 8 2011 • Essays

Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not mark the beginnings of a ‘nuclear revolution’ as it is understood. The strategic environment and technological capabilities for a revolution did not exist in 1945 and not until much later.

Space Warfare: a 21st Century Battleground

Bleddyn E. Bowen • Apr 30 2011 • Articles

The USA is not the only power with key interests in outer space, and will have to pander to other sensitivities in the future. Russia, China, the EU and commercial actors are prevalent in their discussions. We must ask the questions who are we defending from, and to whom are we going to deny the access of space?

The Application of Force and Strategy in Sun Tzu and Clausewitz

Bleddyn E. Bowen • Dec 16 2010 • Essays

Whilst separated by great distances in time, geography and culture, both Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz can be seen to have developed a rather similar outlook on strategy and the application of force. Whilst both are mutually complementary, Clausewitz has the better overall work on strategy. One would do well to read both On War and The Art of War before becoming a statesman

Outer Space, and Security as Integration in Europe

Bleddyn E. Bowen • Dec 5 2010 • Essays

Wæver claims that security is indivisible, that security on the European level equates to security on the state level. Therefore the state-level definition of security must be similar, if not the same, as the European-level definition. This mitigates the validity of his concepts. Europe may not yet be a true, or complete, referent object because state interests have to be satisfied to keep Spaceship Europe in orbit

Why was China Receptive to American Overtures during the Early 1970s?

Bleddyn E. Bowen • Mar 11 2010 • Essays

This essay is concerned with possible Chinese motives for accepting, responding to, and reciprocating American overtures and relatively friendly diplomatic moves in the early 1970s. It suggests that strategic understandings of motives carry the greatest weight and the more persuasive argument.

A Cold War without Nuclear Weapons

Bleddyn E. Bowen • Feb 4 2010 • Essays

Nuclear weapons increased the state’s destructive power, particularly after the development of thermonuclear weapons, with effectively no limits. With greater destructive yields and shorter delivery times courtesy of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), it is commonly understood that had the cold war turned hot, it would have been the end of civilisation as we know it. But did nuclear weapons keep it cold?

Ballistic Missile Defence and 21st Century Stability in International Relations

Bleddyn E. Bowen • Sep 1 2009 • Essays

This essay determines the effect of National Missile Defence (NMD) is primarily destabilising. However this has to be put in the wider context of relations between the US, China and Russia – for the destabilising effect of NMD is very much characterised by how it is used and what kind of policy it is a part of.

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