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A
This week on Books the Battles, we're bringing you a special preview of the SAS Space Power discussions. Now, if you're a regular listener to this podcast, you'll remember that our students were recording their own podcast for our Space Power course. All those will be coming soon over on their own channel. This week, we're bringing you One of the 12 new podcast episodes produced by them this year. If you'd like to check out more, you can search for Space Power discussions on your favorite podcast cast platform. And you can catch last year's season one while we anticipate this year's season two. We hope you enjoy.
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B
Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our episode of the SAS Space Power Discussions. I'm Dennis Rice, and I'm a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Space Force.
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C
And I am Lauren Harrison, a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Air Force.
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D
And my name is Sam Nornell. I'm a major in the US Air Force. Just wanted to begin with that. All opinions expressed here are our own and don't necessarily represent the Department of Air Force or any other affiliated organizations. This episode is just one in a series of discussions that we and our classmates are recording about space power and space strategy as part of our Spring 2026 space power course at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, sas. So today we're going to be reviewing and discussing the book by Dr. Deganet Pykowski called the Power of the Space Club. But before we get into our book, our cast here just wanted to give a little bit about their career and some prior space background so our audience can get a sense of who we are and where we're speaking from. So, Lauren, if you wanted to kick us off.
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C
Yeah, thanks, Crash. So, I'm Lauren Harrison, as I said, and I'm a military brat, but I do claim Washington State as my home. So go Hawks. I graduated from the Air force Academy in 2010 as a political science major, minored in Arabic, went on to become an AWACS pilot, where I spent most of my time in the Air Force. And then I had a little bit of exposure to the Space Force as a legislative liaison working on Capitol Hill. And then I also had the privilege of preparing the Vice Chief of Space Operations for his readiness hearings last year. So now I am a student here at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies.
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D
So I.
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C
So that's a little bit of my background.
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D
Yeah, thanks. So, yeah, Sam Darnell, you might hear some of my compatriots call me Crash. I am a graduate of Purdue University. I Majored in air Engineering, so some study if you will, on space early. And then my background in the Air Force is I've, I've been a career mislead, so working with ICBMs, but I have had some space exposure, if you will, and my time at the US Air Force Weapons School and then also at the US Air Force Warfare center where we got to see some of the projects and lines of effort from SpaceX did some fairly heavy integration with our space compatriots and the Space Weapons instructor course. And then yeah, just from there went to CNCs at the naval War College in Newport. And now I'm a student here at
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B
sas and again I'm Dennis Rice. And so I'm the token, one of the token guardians here in our SAS class. But I like to say that I have probably the least amount of space experience as opposed to my fellow guardian teammates. So as an Air Force intelligence officer for my career prior to being in the Space Force, I spent no time in space. And I was one of the few though that applied when applications were open because I thought that it was going to be interesting and cool to help build out this new service. And so here I am. And over the last couple of years though, I've been the Deputy Senior Intel Officer over at Space Forces Indo Pacific, which is one of the new space components over at indopacom. And so the last couple of years I've had my fire hose in space and now I have no excuse to say that I don't know anything about space being the token guardian. So yeah, and that's me in a nutshell.
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C
Cool. Now I'd like to do a quick background on the author of our book before we dive into the subject. So, Dr. Pakowski is a prominent Israeli scholar and policy expert. She specializes in the intersection of international relations, technology and grand strategy. She's widely recognized for her work on space policy, cybersecurity and the role of emerging technologies in global power dynamics. She is also a Senior Lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the Department of International Relations and is a non resident scholar at, at George Washington University for Space Policy Institute. She also has a little bit of government experience as well, not just in academia. So she has served as a senior Advisor in the Strategy Division for Israel's National Cyber Directorate. And Dennis, would you like to offer up a summary of the book for the audience?
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B
Yeah, just to get us started. So I think what Pieskowski has try to challenge is she disagrees. At least this is what I took away from it Right. Like, she disagrees with this idea that nation states have pursued efforts in space purely for national security and this sort of competition. And she argues that it's so costly to develop things indigenously in space that there has to be something else that's driving these nation states to invest such, this monstrous amount of resources towards something that may or may not have civil benefits to their population. And so she argues that it's better explained that these nation states are actually trying to get into this, what she terms as a space club. And she argues that it's this idea that being part of the space club gives governments this sort of international presence and power. And how I describe it, to kind of put it in layman's terms, is like if you walk into a room, wherever you go, there are some people that you just know who they are, what they do because of whether their accomplishments in the past or maybe the sort of resources that they have. And so internationally, she. I think she's arguing that countries who have developed their indigenous space capability, when they walk into this like, quote, unquote international room, other countries will automatically want to talk to them and want to engage with them because they recognize that, hey, this is a country, this is a nation that has taken the time and has proven the competency to develop things in space. And so they are worth talking to. That's kind of a nutshell how I summarize Paskowski's book.
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D
Yeah, no, I love that analogy. I think it really hits to really all audiences. We've all been part of some social construct where it means something to be part of that group, to be in the inn, if you will. So coming from a Cold War era context of competition and limited participation, getting some kind of cooperation and a status as a space going nation definitely means something. But those historical contexts matter because there were real barriers to entry within that timeframe. But I love that summary of it and the frame up of the book. So let's just dig a little bit deeper. Lauren, can you tell me what you thought was the real meat of the book? Some of its particular strengths?
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C
Yeah, for sure. So that need to belong that you mentioned, I think it's ingrained in the human heart and it's something we can all kind of connect with. But it's also difficult to quantify and analyze. But I think the author does a really great job of trying to tackle that issue and how that idea of belonging and joining the club influences and drives state behavior. She finds that there are two categories of states that are affected by this pull to be among the haves rather than what she calls the have nots. So first there are those who feel that indigenous space capabilities, which, as Dennis mentioned earlier, are very expensive and also space exploration capabilities are expected of them to maintain their status quo power. So they're kind of already in the club and they feel this expectation to continue those investments. And then the second category is that there are those who desire more power for domestic or geopolitical reasons, even if the costs of doing so don't appear rational in terms of the tangible benefits. And so the author uses what I found to be a very persuasive methodology of pairing similar states that have very different space policies to sort of isolate what those factors are that influence their perceptions. So the case studies she uses are the pairing of France and Britain, Canada and Australia and India and Israel. And she does that to show that states pursue their own capabilities when such behavior is consistent with domestic and national perceptions of what's expected of them. So just as an example, the case in France, of France and Britain, I thought was a strong argument that she made where she pairs them together because they have highly similar baseline characteristics, but ultimately adopted totally different space policies. For example, she points out that both share histories as world powers, both have open democracies and are nuclear armed states, and both are members of the UN Security Council. They also have comparable economic productivity, population size, and both operated under the American strategic umbrella during the Cold War. But their approaches to space were strikingly different. France viewed it as a vital component of its grand strategy and consistently prioritized indigenous space. And the author links this to France's cultural pride and independence. Britain, on the other hand, opposed establishing a national space agency, relinquished its space know how by sharing its knowledge and capabilities to launch objects into space, and took a more pragmatic, practical approach to pursuing a more narrow set of space capabilities that would provide economic benefit as it cooperated with the United States and other allies. So. So the author describes how Britain sort of embraced its own decline and shifted from a strategic vision of space to a more pragmatic position. And so by pairing these two similar nations, the author is able to isolate how the differing political cultures and national narratives that these nations had ultimately dictated the country's perceptions of their global status and drove their space ambitions. So I felt like it was a strong logical argument that she made. And again, she repeats that in several other cases as well. And she also leaves room for the role of national leaders. She talks about how de Gaulle used nuclear tests and satellite launches in his own favor. For example, there was a successful satellite launch that occurred just days before the 1965 election to kind of like show his success as a leader. And so her model kind of captures the domestic and the international perceptive factors that influence state behavior and sort of drive them to join the club. So crash, what do you think? Did you capture any of the weaknesses of the book?
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D
Yeah, to me I thought a notable weakness was transposing her space club model into what we have now with the post Cold War commercial era. So while she touches on it towards the end, with the rise of the new space commercial actors like Space, SpaceX and Blue Origin, the current construct kind of blurs the line of what were state centric clubs. Today, if private corporations are providing the launch capabilities that used to define a superpower, the traditional gatekeeping mechanisms of nation state space clubs begin to deteriorate. So an example of this in recent history is that if you look at SpaceX rideshare program that they've been doing over the last several years, you know, there's over 20 different countries that they're providing these services to. Just to list a couple, you know, you have Canada, Japan, Italy, New Zealand, Israel, uae, Indonesia and of course many more. But this has huge ramifications on each country's domestic launch capability. Where some countries might look at that capability and look to pair with it, you know, come alongside SpaceX versus others which look to edge against that capability. SpaceX could be cornering a market which could limit competition and hamper its independence, especially along political realm. And when I looked at this from a military perspective, we always think of things in a multi domain perspective. Space has ramifications on the air and the sea domain, but there's also this bleed over between the commercial sector and national economies, political vulnerability contributions when other nations look at SpaceX and see it's intertangling with the national defense initiatives of the United States. So you might not always want to pair with that just based on the ramifications of does that, is that a perception of supporting the US writ large in all of its security endeavors, or is there a way to come alongside that for economic benefit of that individual nation without tacitly supporting the US if you will. And of course I'm not like discounting her model entirely there, there is obvious ties to being within a space club, even in a, in a private to state orientation. It's just no longer pulled directly from the strings of the US federal government. Another good example of this I think happened last month. On February 18, SpaceX took off from Cape Canaveral, went into space, dropped off 23 Starlink satellites and then landed in the Sound just off of the Bahamas. And of course, you know, the Deputy Prime Minister of the Bahamas was like, oh, this is amazing. The quote is this was instrumental for the Bahamas to take part in the cutting edge of innovation and give a small country the chance to participate in the aerospace industry. So there is some mapping of that model onto this new what I'd say private to state orientation, but it's no longer just a straight instrument of state to state control. There's now this complexity within how much control does the government Exert, does the US government exert on a private institution like SpaceX to partner with other specific nations? That's just one particular weakness of the book. Let's scope out a little bit, talk more broadly about space strategy and space policy. And we've talked a lot on this course, in particular on that. So I was wondering, Dennis, if you can point to how does this book fit within that conversation of larger space policy and space domain?
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B
Yeah, thanks. So I think the kind of bookends of the discussions that we have during this space power course is that space isn't just especially, this is especially important for US military folks, right? Like it's not just this military war fighting domain that for much of the general population there's this idea of this. It's kind of this unifying area that could cut through national competition. And one of our books by Bono, to the Province of All Mankind kind of speaks to the kind of peaceful side of that, of that spectrum versus one of the books that we had as well that we read in Bowen, where in his book the Original Sin shatters the illusion that space was ever peaceful because he ties it back to the historical cases where every sort of space endeavor had some sort of military or national security purpose. And so in between those two ends of the spectrum, I think Paikowski kind of falls in the middle here where she acknowledges that states try to join or maintain their status in this idea of a space club. But it's also kind of clear from her case studies where some nations also use it not just for military or war fighting purposes. I think about France and the amount of investments that they've had that have been mostly with the amount of investments that they're putting into European Space Agency, as in mostly for civil and sort of space exploration purposes. And so they are using space to elevate themselves in kind of the international field, but doing so in such a way that is less of a war Fighting focus, at least relative to the United States and some other countries. And so that's kind of where this book and sort of the tensions that we have. But what do you guys think about that?
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C
Yeah, I would agree that I've kind of viewed Pakowski's argument as somewhere in the middle as well. It's like while she acknowledges that there are some material realities of rockets and satellites, she doesn't deny that that's a thing. But her core argument is that the space club is more of a social construct that defines a state's identity and status. So I think it just adds one more layer of understanding where the realism or utopianistidealist camp don't quite capture the full picture. But when you layer on top these social factors of a state's desire to sort of fit in or belong to a powerful club, I think it just helps us further our understanding of what's really going on in international relations in this area.
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D
Yeah, I didn't necessarily characterize it. That spectrum is an interesting counterposing argument, but I took more of Pykowski's argument as more of a direct refutation of dolmen and astropolitik, where Dolman is advocating that the US Needs to seek this benevolent hegemony and gain the ultimate high ground, particularly in leo, he sees conflict and military control of outer space as this inevitable thing that's going to happen. So I think Pykowski would rebuff that perspective and say that there are means to gain membership within the space club that provide a sort of peaceful deterrence. If nations can project power simply by launching a satellite, because everyone knows an SLV equals an icbm, you know, a space launch vehicle, they gain a sort of status and deterrence without triggering what we would call a classical security dilemma. I think her emphasis on soft power and prestige leads to believing that space strategy isn't just about putting weapons into space and controlling the high ground. It's about convincing the rest of the world that your political system, your economic system, is just better, it's more advanced than other players. And so I'm not saying I necessarily agree with this perspective, but I. I think she would say that she's pretty squarely against Dolman's assertion of astropolitical strategy and needing to gain the high ground for military control purposes alone. I think she's saying it. It's more nuanced than that. There's this soft power element to it that is an interplay between states. As Lauren pointed out, the domestic messaging that you want to go alongside that as well as the international play amongst the club.
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B
Yeah, I think one of the things that. I agree that, yeah, I think she would strike against Dolman in that case. And I think one of the things that we talked about in class is where Dolman's argument was done in 2001, 2002, where we kind of. The United States were. Yeah, the United States kind of missed that boat to kind of lead the way. Crash, you mentioned earlier and you talked about the rise of the commercial and private industry. Now, where. I feel like this is where her model doesn't account for it as. As. As well. And maybe it. She just didn't think about it, which is fine because the developments in the space industry are. Are ongoing and very dynamic where the private industry has developed their own kind of space club separate from state governments that state governments have to contend with because personalities like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, they've developed their indigenous capability to. To field space capabilities that we now have to deal with. And to some degree, to your point, about a lot. A lot of the messaging on the private side of the House isn't about war fighting. It's about the betterment of all mankind. And that's the message that. That they're broadcasting. And a lot of people are finding resonating. And so that's an interesting kind of dynamic there that state governments now have to deal with as well.
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C
Where I think her argument kind of complements Dolman is that she helps us better understand the prestige aspect of realpolitik, which is still a realist thing. Power is power. But I think oftentimes in the United States, we think of power as how many jets we have on the ramp. We think of hard power. And this kind of shows that prestige, in the view of many states, is more. It has a social dynamic to it that I think sometimes we fail to account for to our own detriment. And that kind of ties into what we wanted to talk about next, which is how can the US Apply this? I think that understanding those social dynamics is something that will help us improve our position, maybe leverage, like some diplomatic aspects of clubs, especially in an age where international national regimes are kind of eroding in their power. Maybe there are ways that from a diplomatic standpoint, we can use clubs to sort of influence state behavior. And then I guess another one that I think the. Another point I think the US could benefit from and Crash, kind of alluded to it earlier, is how commercial space is changing the boundaries of the club. We recently read a couple books On Commercial Space from when the Heavens Went on Sale and Rocket Dreams. Highly recommend both books, but I think the US has to consider how it can leverage its booming commercial space sector to gain and maintain influence in the club while still ensuring that our security standards are upheld. What do you guys think? Do you think commercial space makes this book obsolete or what are your opinions on that?
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D
Yeah, I wouldn't say obsolete. It definitely dates it to the standpoint of like, it's not necessarily as Dennis talk about, as dynamic to the environment that we're seeing today. Again, the relationship between wanting to go fast and innovating within the commercial sector is kind of at odds with some traditional perspectives of these levers of maintaining political control. So if, if you have that tension within the commercial sector, what elements do I as a government, the US Government put in place to maintain control of a market that I want to innovate, but at the same time I want to make sure I can still manipulate it to my ends that I need. So I think that's an unanswered question at this point. How do we do that effectively is not really addressed within this book. Like I said, it touches on it subtly at the end, but it's just ever changing with each initiative of SpaceX and how they're continuing to just change the spacelift market.
- [24:10]
B
Especially some of the things that really going, pulling back and tying back to part of the objectives that we have here at SaaS is understanding strategy and how do we just operate in this anarchic, complex world. I think the start of where you're arriving to, of finding this balance between government and commercial here in, in the space area or developing space technologies, I think at first just kind of recognizing that tension where the private industry is really has certain capabilities that the government doesn't have, which is kind of speed and energy and this kind of sort of startup mentality that at least for companies like SpaceX has demonstrated that it can do things at speed and at scale at. And they've proven that that model can work right. But where the traditional government system is not perhaps dated, but not necessarily irrelevant, is that governments have to think about sustainment and long term staying power. And I think there's a, there's a bit when Paikowski talks about this tension between techno nationalism, which quickly is just her idea that nations can produce space technology indigenously and that gives them sort of leverage because they can corner the market on that technology versus techno globalism, where you can use it to like cooperate with others. And that also has kind of gives you some international power so that because you can strengthen allies and partners, because you can cooperate on technology, but at the same time you don't want to cooperate on everything because nations are realistically driven to try to maintain some sort of advantage. And I think there's no, I don't necessarily think that there is an answer to figure out that balance, but it's the constant recognition that those, that tension exists and trying each and every day to figure out, okay, where are we at in that spectrum today and what's going on in world events? And then how do we, where should we slide? Left or right, if that makes sense.
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C
Yeah, it's a complicated question. So Crash, what do you think about this book can apply to allies and partners? I mean, we kind of talked about how commercial space challenges the hegemony of states. That probably changes the ballgame for middle powers. What are your thoughts on that?
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D
Yeah, I thought the book was definitely salient to our relationship with allies. You know, it made me think a lot of the Woomera manual and talking about the existing international law and norms that are existing within space and how much do each adherent to that abide by those rules and potential limitations. I also thought of Klein and how emerging space powers can begin to use non military, but still space based means to exert influence within the international arena. But Pykowski's case studies on Britain and France in particular, as Lauren pointed out, show that middle powers or emerging space powers can use space programs to buy a seat at the table.
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B
Right.
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D
In global governance that has ramifications on international cooperation. France developed the deamont rocket largely just to assert independence from the US strategic umbrella. And yes, it was absolutely domestically to react institute some of that grandeur of France. But today European nations are pooling resources to build systems like Galileo, so they aren't dependent on US GPS as we talked about before. There's going to be players on both sides of that. You know, how much do they look to cooperate and how much do they look to hedge against capabilities that the US is producing? So I think space is one of the really ultimate signaling tools of nations to show that they're advanced, they're, they're capable players and partners rather than just dependence on within an alliance.
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C
Yeah, yeah, that's good. So do you guys want to finish up with what our main takeaways were or something that stuck with you from the book?
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B
Sure. Yeah, I, I'll, I'll start off, I think tying into Crash's point about some of the, when he mentioned the emerging Space powers and what they're trying to do. I. I connect it to what I did. One of the jobs that I had in my position back at indopacom, where there's countries. There are countries in the Pacific and all over the world that are emerging in the space industry and are looking to the United States for leadership and help. And I think the U.S. the U.S. space Force and the guardians that are working in that space, I think have this incredible opportunity to try to strengthen those allies of partnerships, but also put the United States in a position where they can balance helping others, while at the same time keeping the United States in a position where it can maintain some sort of relative advantage. And so that's. That's my main takeaway from this book. What about you, Lauren?
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C
Yeah, that's a good, practical takeaway. I think my takeaway was more philosophical. I think that her argument puts a premium on constructivism. And it was persuasive to me that perception and how we perceive our national identity influences the way we behave on the international stage. And in each of Bukowski's case studies, the difference between the two states in each pairing hinged on the role that that state perceived itself to be playing in world politics. It reminds me of the quote that the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts. And we've talked a lot in SAS about information warfare and subversion as well. And I think there's a connection there between how our perceptions of our own national identity as Americans affect our future, not just in space, but really the nation that we're going to hand off to the next generation of Americans. How about you, Sam?
- [29:58]
D
I think the thing that will stick with me the most out of it, and Dennis has already touched on this, is that tension between techno nationalism and techno globalism. You know, we want the economic benefits of a globalized commercial space market, but at the same time, we also want to protect our national security advantages. And space technology is this inevitable realm of dual use, which means that really every commercial sector advantage could lead to some kind of flattening of military advantages. That really leads into the second point of that, which is there's the dilemma that we talked about of cooperation versus isolation. And that has ramifications on how we do foreign policy today. So, as we've seen in so many other books, McDougal touches on this, and the Heavens and the Earth comes to mind. During the Cold War, U.S. isolated adversaries and cooperated with allies only under strict rules. But today in the modern area, if we replicate that kind of context, we could very well end up just pushing some of those allies into the arms of our competitors. So I don't think we can simply rinse and repeat some of the methodologies that we've employed in the past in this incredibly dynamic domain. It looks different. There's different players to include the private sector. So we, we just can't take history and say it's repeating itself here. I think it just looks a little bit different. That really concludes today's discussion. Thank you so much for joining us on this SAS Space Power discussion session. We hope you listen in to many other groups reviews of the books during this curriculum, but we've enjoyed our time with you and hope you continue to listen in. Thanks.