Robert Haddick, USMC (Ret.) is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Mitchell Institute. Haddick supports the Institute’s mission to develop the roles of air, space, and cyber capabilities and explore their contributions to national security strategies. Haddick has lectured widely across the U.S. government on strategy, the strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific region, and special operations.

Haddick is the author of Fire on the Water: China, America, and the Future of the Pacific. The U.S. Naval Institute Press will publish the second edition of Fire on the Water in the spring of 2022. The first edition of Fire on the Water, published in 2014, warned readers about the rapid rise of China’s military power and described how U.S. policymakers and military planners were failing to prepare for the deteriorating security situation in the Indo-Pacific region. The first edition was translated into Mandarin and Korean and was widely sold across North America, Europe, and the Indo-Pacific region.

The fully revised second edition of Fire on the Water updates China’s military modernization through 2021 and forecasts China’s military capabilities into the 2030s. The second edition examines the shortfalls in the U.S response to China’s military expansion over the past decade. Applying the principles of strategy, the new edition describes a detailed approach for maintaining conventional deterrence in the Indo-Pacific over the long term, recommending a strategy that applies U.S. and allied aerospace advantages against China’s vulnerabilities in an affordable and sustainable manner.

Haddick’s work for the Mitchell Institute includes reports on long-range standoff nuclear deterrence; defense reform proposals co-written with a former Supreme Allied Commander for Europe; nuclear command, control, and communications; and an airpower history project conducted for the U.S. Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment.

Haddick served as a contractor at U.S. Special Operations Command. His work there included authoring peer-reviewed monographs for Joint Special Operations University Press on future roles for special operations forces in the Indo-Pacific great power competition; sustaining special operations unconventional warfare campaigns in denied areas; and how special operations forces can contribute to comprehensive deterrence strategies.

Haddick’s service as a U.S. Marine Corps officer included security force assistance activities in East Asia, the Indian Ocean region, and Africa. His duties also included nuclear command and control under the Personnel Reliability Program.