Details
This seminar, featuring special guest The Honorable Frank Miller and Ambassador Eric Edelman, examines the 2026 strategic landscape as the United States confronts simultaneous nuclear competition with Russia and China, ongoing threats from Iran and North Korea, and the erosion of post–Cold War stability. We will explore whether current U.S. nuclear modernization—Sentinel ICBMs, Columbia‑class SSBNs, B‑21 bombers, SLCM‑N, and expanded pit production—can meet the demands of this emerging “three‑body” nuclear era amid intensifying debates over New START, upload potential, and the future of arms control. The discussion will also assess regional deterrence challenges, industrial‑base bottlenecks, and a politically divided Congress as policymakers work to rebuild credible, flexible, and scalable deterrence for 2026 and beyond.
Speakers
Host of Huessy Seminars, Mr. Peter Huessy is President of his own defense consulting firm, Geostrategic Analysis, founded in 1981, and from 2021-3, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute. From 1981-1992, he was also the National Security Fellow at the AFPC, IFPA and JINSA. He was then the senior defense consultant at the National Defense University Foundation for 22 years during which he hosted over 750 national security seminars and public policy events. And from 2013-2021 he directed similar public policy outreach with the Air Force Association on nuclear, missile defense and space policy.
Mr. Huessy has served as an expert defense and national security analyst for over 50 years, helping his clients cover congressional activities, arms control group efforts, nuclear armed states actions, and US administration nuclear related policy, budgets, and strategies, while monitoring budget and policy developments on nuclear deterrence, ICBM modernization, missile defense, space, nuclear arms control, and overall nuclear modernization.
He also analyzes the nuclear activities of North Korea, China, and Iran. This also includes monitoring activities of think tanks, non-governmental organizations, and other US government departments, as well as projecting future actions of Congress in this area. His specialty is developing and implementing public policy campaigns to secure support for important national security objectives. And analyzing nuclear related technology and its impact on public policy, including a study of which he prepared for the Aerospace Corporation in 2019. He contributed to a NIDS nuclear policy book in 2023, and for over 40 years has authored a weekly nuclear report “The ICBM Ear.”
The Honorable Franklin C. Miller
Mr. Miller served for thirty-one years in the U.S. government, including twenty-two years in the Department of Defense – serving under seven Secretaries in a series of progressively senior positions – and four years as a Special Assistant to President George W. Bush and Senior Director for Defense Policy and Arms Control on the National Security Council staff. Following his retirement from government in 2005, Mr. Miller joined The Cohen Group for five years, first as a Vice President and later as a Senior Counselor.
For his government service, Mr. Miller received the Defense Department’s highest civilian award, the Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Medal, five times, and has received similar high-level awards from the Department of State, the Department of the Navy, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Nuclear Security Administration, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. In addition, Mr. Miller has been awarded the Norwegian Royal Order of Merit (Grand Officer), the French Legion of Honor (Officer), and Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun (Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon). In December 2006 he was awarded an honorary knighthood – a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) – by Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his many contributions to U.S.-U.K. relations during his decades of government service.
Mr. Miller currently serves on the U.S. Strategic Command Advisory Group. He was a member of the Defense Policy Board from 2008-2020. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Director of the Atlantic Council of the United States. He is Chairman Emeritus of the Board of The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also serves on the Board of Directors of Airbus US Space and Defense and Sandia National Laboratory.
Mr. Miller received his BA (Phi Beta Kappa) from Williams College in 1972. He received an MPA from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School in 1977.
Amb. Eric S. Edelman
Ambassador Eric S. Edelman retired as a Career Minister from the U.S. Foreign Service on May 1, 2009. He is currently Counselor at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and a fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He was the Miller Center for Public Policy’s James R. Schlesinger Professor for 2016 at the University of Virginia and is currently a non-resident fellow there. He is also Distinguished Scholar in the Gemunder Center of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. From 2009-2013 he was a senior associate of the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the United States Institute of Peace 2011-2022. In 2010 he served on the Congress’s Independent Panel to review the Quadrennial Defense Review and in 2013-2014 he served on the National Defense Panel. From 2017-2018 he Chaired the National Defense Strategy Commission appointed by the Congress to review the new National Defense Strategy. He was vice chair of the Congressional commission to review the 2022 National Defense Strategy that issued its report in July 2024.
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