Mackubin Thomas Owens is Associate Dean of Academics for Electives and Directed Research and Professor of Strategy and Force Planning at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.
He specializes in the planning of US strategy and forces, especially naval and power projection forces; the political economy of national security; national security organization; strategic geography; and American civil-military relations. In addition to the core course on strategy and force planning, he teaches electives on The American Founding, Strategy and Policy of the American Civil War, The Statesmanship of Abraham Lincoln, Sea Power and Maritime Strategy, Strategy and Geography, and US Civil-Military Relations. From 1990 to 1997, Dr. Owens was Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly defense journal Strategic Review and Adjunct Professor of International Relations at Boston University.
Dr. Owens is a contributing editor to National Review Online, writing primarily on security affairs and the character of American republican government. His articles on national security issues have appeared in such publications as International Security, Orbis, Armed Forces Journal, Joint Force Quarterly, The Public Interest, The Weekly Standard, Defence Analysis, US Naval Institute Proceedings, Marine Corps Gazette, Comparative Strategy, National Review, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Times. He has had over a dozen articles in The Wall Street Journal. He is co-editor of the textbook, Strategy and Force Planning, now in its third edition, for which he also wrote the chapters entitled "The Political Economy of National Security" and "Thinking About Strategy." He currently is working on a book tentatively entitled Sword of the Republic and Empire: A History of US Civil-Military Relations.
Before joining the faculty of the War College, Dr. Owens served as National Security Adviser to Senator Bob Kasten, Republican of Wisconsin, and Director of Legislative Affairs for the Nuclear Weapons Programs of the Department of Energy during the Reagan administration. Dr. Owens is also a Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam, where as an infantry platoon commander in 1968-1969, he was wounded twice and awarded the Silver Star medal. He retired from the Marine Corps Reserve as a Colonel in 1994.
Dr. Owens earned his Ph.D. in Politics from the University of Dallas, a Master of Arts in Economics from Oklahoma University, and his BA from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He has taught at the University of Rhode Island, the University of Dallas, Catholic University, and the Marine Corps' School of Advanced Warfighting (SAW). He has been a program officer for the Smith Richardson Foundation, Senior Visiting Fellow at the Center for Naval Analyses and a consultant to the Los Alamos National Laboratory; Plans Division, Headquarters Marine Corps; and J-5 Strategy, the Joint Staff.
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