Peter Huessy

Peter Huessy is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, where he focuses on nuclear deterrence and modernization, arms control, and defense policy.

Mr. Huessy has spent the past four decades laying out the requirements for nuclear deterrence and modernization, arms control, and defense policy, as well as the companion efforts on missile defense, space, non- and counterproliferation, particularly using public diplomacy to further US policy. His work has also focused on the threats from Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran.

In 1983, Mr. Huessy created a series of Congressional breakfast seminars (initially just for members of the US House and Senate) to help with the Reagan administration’s nuclear modernization strategy. The 1983 series was augmented in 1984 with a companion series on missile defense; with space being added in 2014; and the National Nuclear Security Administration added in 2020. Since 2010, Mr. Huessy has also created and hosted 22 Nuclear Triad symposiums. 

Since 1981, Mr. Huessy has been an adviser on policy and legislative issues to a group of aerospace industries in the strategic deterrent business. From 1993 to 2011, he was with the National Defense University Foundation and from 1981 to 1993 with the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis.

He is the author of a weekly nuclear-focused essay with the National Interest and delivers a nuclear news digest on the Don Smith podcast every weekend. Several times monthly he discusses top strategic issues on CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor as well as with Frank Gaffney’s Secure Freedom Radio.

For nearly a decade, Mr. Huessy was also a guest lecturer on the history of US nuclear deterrent policy at the United States Naval Academy. He has also guest lectured at the Institute for World Politics, Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, the JHU-Applied Physics Lab, Global Strike Command, and US Strategic Command.

He has written for the National Review, the Washington Times, Human Events, the Gatestone Institute (where he is a fellow), Family Security Matters, ICAS, Ravenna Associates, the National Interest, The Hill, and Inside Defense.

Mr. Huessy received a degree in anthropology and the history of ancient civilizations, international relations, and US national security policy from Beloit College in 1972, graduating magnum cum laude and as a Porter Scholar. He studied at Yonsei University in 1969-70 in Seoul, Korea as part of his Beloit degree program, including work periods as a research assistant with Senators Gaylord Nelson and William Proxmire. From 1976 to 1981, Mr. Huessy was with the Environmental Fund and was special assistant for International Energy and Environment for the US secretary of the interior.