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 — While there has been much attention paid to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s difficulty raising his 300,000 new conscripts, there’s been little public discussion […] More
OPINION — In an interview published by Al Jazeera last Thursday, Russian Lt. Gen. Leonid Reshetnikov (ret.) described as “impossible and would make little military […] More
OPINION – “For the first time since 1945, the first time for us as a nation, we have two nuclear adversaries. We have always put […] More
OPINION — Two reports released last Wednesday raise separate questions about the ability of the Defense Department (DoD) and Intelligence Community (IC) to meet the […] More
OPINION — The late Mikhail Gorbachev wrote for the 20th Anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster in April 2006, “Chernobyl opened my eyes like nothing else…One […] More
OPINION — The delayed launch of the Artemis I, unmanned space craft to the moon provides a moment to review the enormous advances taking place […] More
OPINION — The Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB) is an inconspicuous presidential advisory board created by Congress in 2000, to advise “the President and other […] More
OPINION — China, the U.S., and Taiwan showed they can manage a crisis without miscalculations or confrontations taking place based on their handling of the […] More
OPINION — Last Friday, while public attention was focused on Chinese military exercises around Taiwan and the vague threat of possible warfare, a Senate Foreign […] More
OPINION — A senior Pentagon official last Wednesday, described a version of U.S. strategy for the Indo-Pacific region that contrasts somewhat with the hot rhetoric […] More
OPINION — No one has described today’s Russian President Vladimir Putin better than CIA Director William J. Burns did last Wednesday at a security forum […] More
OPINION — With little public notice, the two-decades-long U.S. war on terrorism continues in the Sahel, the semi-arid region of western and north-central Africa. According […] More
OPINION — Last Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated the illegal intelligence department [Division S] of his Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) on its 100th anniversary in […] More
OPINION — Next year’s national defense spending — for the Defense Department, the Department of Energy [for nuclear weapons] and other security agencies — may […] More
OPINION — The Senate Armed Services Committee, by an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 23-to-3 last Thursday, approved a fiscal 2023 Defense Authorization Bill that – […] More
OPINION — Ukraine’s Black Sea ports have been blocked since Russia invaded the country on February 24. Today, Ukraine claims more than 25 million tons […] More
OPINION — How much has the United States learned from past history about undertaking major, large-scale military assistance efforts such as the one now underway […] More
OPINION — The use of nuclear weapons has drawn much questionable talk since Russian President Vladimir Putin began making threats to use them following Russia’s […] More
OPINION — The $40 billion Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act which has passed the House and is expected to be approved this week by the Senate, […] More
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
