Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America’s Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010.
OPINION — The Biden Administration’s fiscal 2023 budget and yet-to-be-publicly-released 2022 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) call for ending research on a low-yield, nuclear submarine-launched cruise […] More
OPINION — Last week, senior Pentagon officials offered some initial lessons learned from the first two months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. At an […] More
OPINION — Remember the April 13, announcement that the U.S was sending Ukraine “unmanned coastal defense vessels” from U.S. Navy stocks as part of an […] More
OPINION — After his speech at the Georgia Institute of Technology last Thursday, CIA Director William Burns was asked about the risks that President Biden […] More
OPINION — Last week, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees held five hearings associated with the fiscal 2023 defense budget. What jumped out at me […] More
OPINION — The Biden administration has made rational decisions on nuclear weapons in both policy – through the soon-to-be-release 2022 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) – […] More
OPINION — “Even if the war stops, when you look at the number of civilians and Ukrainian soldiers and others who have died; and when […] More
OPINION — “I am told that there are responsible officials in Russia that, were he [Russian President Vladimir Putin] to push a nuclear button, they […] More
OPINION — The United States needs to publicly respond to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s coercive threats regarding nuclear weapons. Putin’s most recent coercive nuclear threat […] More
OPINION — We are in a new kind of warfare with Russia and a little-noticed House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee hearing last Tuesday showed, […] More
OPINION — Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has repeatedly threatened the use of his nuclear weapons and now has placed his nuclear deterrence forces on […] More
OPINION — Is this the future of major power conflicts? Remember President Joe Biden’s January 19, 2022, press conference response to a question about sanctions […] More
OPINION — The Biden administration has introduced a new tactic that I’ve called “Deterrence by Disclosure,” as the U.S. makes public its intelligence about Moscow’s […] More
OPINION — FBI Director Christopher Wray’s talk at the Reagan Library on January 31 was titled “Countering Threats Posed by the Chinese Government Inside the […] More
OPINION — Russian President Vladimir Putin has been the center of world attention since last November, when he began a buildup of Russian forces on […] More
OPINION — Last Thursday, in a little-noticed U.S. Treasury Department press release, the Biden administration accused Russia of currently implementing a 2020 information warfare plan […] More
OPINION — Let’s look at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s situation at home, as we try to determine what’s behind his threatening stance toward Ukraine. As […] More
OPINION — As we await the Biden 2022 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and the results of U.S.-Russian security talks that opened yesterday in Geneva, it’s […] More
OPINION — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s four-hour end-of-year press conference told us a lot more about Russia and its leader than just his widely reported […] More
OPINION — Despite U.S. officials regularly voicing concern about lack of knowledge as to where China’s nuclear weapons program has been going, officials have known […] More
OPINION — Buried in the 2,165 pages of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2022, scheduled to come up for a vote […] More
OPINION — Will past weeks of multi-national propaganda focused on military activity along the Ukraine/Russia border lead to a major conflict? Or is all this […] More
OPINION — Despite everything else that’s going on, it’s time for the Biden administration to pay some attention to the tiny Republic of the Marshall […] More
OPINION — Military exercises and psychological warfare operations have been underway for months along the tense Russia-Ukraine and Poland-Belarus borders and care needs to be […] More
