Wayne A. Schroeder, Ph.D.

Dr. Wayne A. Schroeder is Director of the Ph.D. program in Statecraft and Strategy at The Institute of World Politics. He also teaches courses in Defense Strategy, Planning and Budgeting; Nuclear Strategy and Arms Control; American Foreign Policy; U.S. Bilateral Security Agreements; and International Organizations and Multilateral Diplomacy. He is also a doctoral student advisor at IWP. He has had a 46-year career in Washington with service in government, industry, public policy, the military and higher education.

Schroeder served as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Resource Planning/Management) in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) from 2001-2004, receiving the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service. He also served as a Professional Staff Member for the U.S. Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee (1981-86) under its chairman, the late Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), with responsibilities for oversight of defense R&D programs. Earlier in his career, he was on the Corporate Engineering and Washington Operations staffs of Lockheed Martin and was a Senior Research Analyst with Logicon RDA. From 2010-15, he chaired the Macroeconomic/Defense Topline team for the Professional Services Council’s annual vision forecast to the aerospace and defense industry, receiving two awards for outstanding leadership in analysis and forecasting.

Dr. Schroeder has numerous writings on defense and security topics, and has contributed to trade, industry, and think tank studies. In 2023, he wrote a series of articles for Orbis on the U.S. defense program in the era of Great Power Competition. From 2019-20, he served as Project Director for the Atlantic Council’s 2020 report, Moving Out: A Comprehensive Assessment of European Military Mobility, and, in 2019, wrote, NATO at Seventy: Filling NATO’s Critical Defense-Capability Gaps. In 1998, he co-edited Use of Underground Facilities to Protect Critical Infrastructures, a publication of the National Academy Press.  He is working on a forthcoming book to be published by the Naval Institute Press for its Commanders-in-Chief book series: National Security in the Nixon Era: Conflict and Diplomacy in the Cold War.

Schroeder is a Member of the Board of Advisors of the Foreign Policy Research Institute and is a Nonresident Senior Fellow, Transatlantic Security Initiative, with the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council. He is also on the Board of Directors of Kele Global and is a member of the Economics of National Security Association, the US Naval Institute, and the Eisenhower Foundation.

An H.B. Earhart Foundation Fellow, Dr. Schroeder received his Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (1981), specializing in Defense and Strategic Studies. He earned an M.A. in Political Science from Portland State University (1976) and graduated from the University of Oregon with a B.A. in Political Science (1974). He served for more than ten years as a strategic intelligence officer in the U.S. Army Reserve, achieving the rank of Captain. Appointed by former Virginia Governor George F. Allen, Jr., he served as a member of the Board of Visitors of Mary Washington College (1995-1999). Long committed to viewpoint diversity in higher education, he is a member of Heterodox Academy.

Wayne Schroeder is married to Deborah Fell and resides in Bethesda, MD.  He has three children, Eric, Gretchen, and Grace, and three grandchildren, Carson, Ava and Evelyn.