Dr. Peter Vincent Pry

Episode 182: “Are We Misreading Putin’s War Aims” with Dr. Peter Vincent Pry

This episode is a follow-up to my conversation a few weeks ago with Dr. Peter Vincent Pry about our concerns that our Administration’s responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine could lead to nuclear war. Today, we consider also an alternate possibility that Vladimir Putin is playing a much deeper game than most in the West have imagined. As Executive Director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, former Chief of Staff of the Congressional EMP Commission and Director of the US Nuclear Strategy Forum, Dr Pry brings a vast and imaginative knowledge of history and of modern warfare. “Most analysts, including myself, thought that the relevant scenario was Crimea and that the Russians would go for a quick, almost bloodless, victory,” speculates Peter, “but there is another Russian way of war that was right under our noses. And that is a long protracted war …  it’s almost like they’re deliberately doing everything they can to try to provoke the West to intervene, to jump into the war.” There are a lot of strange things in the way the […]

Episode 177: “A Nuclear War Scenario” with Dr Peter Vincent Pry

This is a very upsetting episode. I’m joined by my frequent guest Dr Peter Vincent Pry and we’re talking about Ukraine and the likelihood of nuclear war. Dr Pry is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, served as chief of staff to the congressional EMP Commission, and director of the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum. Just recently, he published a piece titled, “The Nuclear Crisis Nobody Knows” “I think we’re facing an unprecedented danger that we’ve never experienced in the nuclear missile age, worse than Cuba, a circumstance where we are on the threshold of a nuclear war, nuclear attack, from Russia.” Nobody knows what’s in Putin’s mind but apparently he going to just keep using his conventional forces to overwhelm the Ukrainians and eventually achieve victory in Ukraine at a conventional level. But many people predicted that the Russian conventional military would just steamroll through Ukraine in a couple of days, and that hasn’t happened. So what’s the probability Putin then decides, “I’m under pressure from my political enemies and I’ve got to wind this […]

Episode 172: Ukraine: Is the Biden Administration Unleashing Furies It Does Not Understand? with Dr Peter Vincent Pry and J. Michael Waller

There are growing calls among political elites in Washington for the United States to “do something” about preventing a Russian invasion of the Ukraine.  But do we have the military capabilities to stop it? Why do we want Ukraine to join NATO? Does Ukraine matter?  Why are American politicians who have been so soft toward Moscow for their entire political careers all of a sudden turn uber hawks against Vladimir Putin. Are we pushing China and Russia to make common cause with each other? Does the Biden foreign policy team have a clue what they’re doing? To get some answers to these and many many other questions, two seasoned national security analysts – and returning guests – Peter Pry and Mike Waller – weigh in. J. Michael Waller, PhD, is Senior Analyst for Strategy at the Center for Security Policy and  Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, is the former Executive Director of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security Some sample observations:  “Russia and China are already in an alliance that poses the most formidable combination that the Western […]

Episode 138: “Thinking Again about the Unthinkable” with Dr. Peter Vincent Pry

This show comes at time that this episode’s guest, Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, calls our “hinge of fate.” Our topic is his riveting paper “Surprise Attack: ICBMs and the Real Nuclear Threat” where he lays bare the world’s current and future nuclear warfare realities. It’s an issue that many simply do not want to think about. As Peter puts it, “when it comes to nuclear weapons, U.S. and Western strategic culture mostly thinks and acts in a state of denial and unreality. Nuclear weapons of mass destruction are antithetical to our ethos.” But as Leon Trotsky warned, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” By contrast, totalitarian states – China, Russia and North Korea – love, celebrate, and parade nuclear missiles as symbols of their omnipotence and their potential “final solution” to the vexing existence of free peoples, like the United States. The U.S. “Triad” comprises decades old bombers, ICBMs and missile submarines, requiring years to modernize, while Russia, China, and North Korea have mostly new systems and are developing new delivery vehicles that […]

Episode 90: “Forget Covid 19. Worry about EMP.” With Dr. Peter Vincent Pry and Frank Gaffney.

It’s time to wake up to an existential risk that looms infinitely larger than anything posed by the Covid 19 virus.      Electromagnetic pulse (EMP). EMP can be caused by a naturally occurring solar storm, a nuclear weapon or something as simple as a manmade suitcase sized device and would collapse electric grids and electrical critical infrastructures all over the world   A nationwide blackout lasting one year could kill up to 90 percent of the American people, through starvation, disease, and societal collapse. Moreover, EMP is the ultimate cyber-weapon in the military doctrines and plans of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. The threat is not theoretical.  A solar storm EMP occurred in 1859 at the dawn of our electrical age and destroyed telegraph systems everywhere in the world. “Today, the impact would be catastrophic. Power grids would collapse all over the world. And all of the life sustaining critical infrastructures, telecommunications, transportation, business, finance, even food and water, depend directly or indirectly upon electricity. And advanced electronic civilization in the whole world, even in African countries depend […]