Rebeccah Heinrichs

The outcome of this month’s Camp David summit is anything but ordinary. The national leaders of the Republic of Korea and Japan met with President Joe Biden to discuss mutual commitments to fair economic practices, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific, along with rather specific and pragmatic steps to mature hard power within a tripartite regional security…

Forty years ago, President Ronald Reagan unveiled the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). As long as nuclear weapons exist, the United States would maintain credible deterrence against its nuclear rivals, and President Reagan made sure of that. He believed it was unwise and wrong to leave Americans vulnerable to nuclear attack if deterrence failed. He understood that active…

Whatever the broken processes that have led to passing a behemoth omnibus in a lame-duck session, Senate Republicans did negotiate significant improvements. And now that the bill has passed in the house, it avoids a damaging continuing resolution and precludes the defense bill from becoming a political football in the next Congress. Decades after President Reagan won the Cold War,…

Under Xi Jinping, the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, Chinese aggression toward other nations is coinciding with Beijing’s increased repression domestically. Making matters more challenging, China is backing Russian imperialism against Ukraine with the goal of weakening and breaking up NATO. Read the full article at The Washington Examiner

On October 27, 2022, the Biden administration released the public version of the Missile Defense Review (MDR). The document is commendable in some respects and is concerning in others. Below are some myths and realities about the Biden MDR. Read more at Eurasia Review

America faces a two-front ideological battle: one at home, one abroad. Victory or defeat on either front will influence the outcome in the other such that any loss is calamitous. Across the battlefield abroad sits the Chinese Communist Party, waging information warfare dedicated to convincing the world that America is immoral and incompetent to its…

What’s more alarming than President Trump trying to frighten Kim Jong-un with “fire and fury”? President Biden trying to frighten Americans with Putin. “I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily [use] a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon,” the president riffed at a New York fundraiser, while…

On February 24, 2022, Russia started the largest European war since 1945 as it intensified its invasion of Ukraine to a new level and threatened escalation to nuclear war. Though Vladimir Putin has not detonated a nuclear weapon, he used, and continues to use, his nuclear arsenal to threaten the United States and other NATO nations against…

Volodymyr Zelensky looks like a warrior, ready and able to defend hearth and home if we will only send him the weapons to do it. He well articulates Russia’s assault, the meaning of the war for Europe and NATO, and what Ukraine needs to stop Russia’s imperialism. First Lady Olena Zelenska, speaking to Congress on Wednesday, brought…

This article was co-authored by Prof. Rebeccah Heinrichs, who teaches IWP’s course on Nuclear Deterrence and Arms Control. Nuclear illiteracy has grown since the end of the Cold War. Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling directed at NATO while it continues its war against Ukraine has brought nuclear weapons back into public consciousness. Tom Nichols, author of the Death of…