John Noonan is a conservative national security commentator and analyst. He is a principle defense writer for The Weekly Standard, and currently works as a policy adviser at the Foreign Policy Initiative.[1][2] Noonan is a graduate of the distinguished military history program at the Virginia Military Institute, where he also received his officer's commission in the United States Air Force.[2]
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Before moving to the FPI, the then Captain Noonan served in the United States Air Force's Global Strike Command as a Minuteman III launch officer.[2][3] While he still on active duty, he started a defense blog for Military.com called OPFOR (a military acronym for opposing force).[4] OPFOR was one of the first military blogs drawn on by Michael Goldfarb of the Weekly Standard to refute the war reporting of Scott Beauchamp in 2007.[5][6][7] Later that year, Noonan joined the Standard as a defense stringer and blogger. He is the second military blogger, after the [8] blog's Andrew Exum joined the Center for a New American Security, to assimilate into Washington's influential defense policy community.[2][9]
Noonan has drawn fire from liberal and progressive groups for his aggressive foreign policy positions, particularly on US nuclear weapon issues.[10][11][12] In June 2010, the Institute for Policy Studies lumped the former airman in with the "more hawkish extreme" of the Republican Party, along with Cliff May, Edwin Meese, and Frank Gaffney.[13] After publishing an article on Russia's growing sphere of influence at The Weekly Standard, he was accused of openly advocating for a renewed state of Cold War between Washington and Moscow.[14][15] He also assumed a sharply hawkish posture on the 2008 South Ossetia War, calling the refusal of European nations to admit Georgia into NATO the result of "Chamberlain-esque conflict aversion."[16]
Despite that criticism, Noonan has been reported amongst a group of conservatives who are gaining increasing influence in Washington.[17] His practical experience working with nuclear weapons placed him in a point position for conservative opposition to President Obama's nuclear disarmament initiatives, as has his ability to accurately project the outcome of certain geopolitical events such as the recent wars in Lebanon and Georgia.[4][18]