John Nagl
John A. Nagl (born 1966) is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army who is regarded as an influential expert in counterinsurgency.
After growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, he attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he graduated near the top of his class in 1988. He was chosen as a Rhodes Scholar and studied international relations at St. John's College, Oxford. He served as a tank platoon leader during the Gulf War, then returned to school to eventually earn his M. Phil and D. Phil at Oxford's St. Antony's College.[1] His research focus was on counterinsurgency: his dissertation was a comparison of the British and American militaries as they dealt with insurgencies in Malaya and Vietnam, respectively. This work would later be made a book-length treatment published under the title Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, after an observation by T. E. Lawrence about the difficulty of fighting guerrillas.
After his studies, he was appointed to a professorship at West Point, which he held until deploying in 2003 as an operations officer with 1st Battalion 34th Armor Regiment, 1st Infantry Division stationed near Khaldiya, Iraq. He co-authored the US Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (FM 3-24), and then[2] helped train MiTT teams – small groups of soldiers tasked to develop the Afghan National Army and Iraqi security forces. Already notable in military circles, his public profile was further raised with an interview on Comedy Central's The Daily Show on August 23, 2007.
According to anthropologist David Price, the counterinsurgency field manual is in places remarkably similar to earlier texts.[3]
Nagl retired from the Army and became a fellow in 2008 at the Center for a New American Security in Washington D.C..[4] He has also recently published a series of articles and op-ed pieces regarding the need for a permanent Army Advisory Corps.[5] After its top leaders left for senior positions in the Obama administration, Nagl was named CNAS' president. He is a member of the Mission Essential Personnel Board of Advisors.[6]
Contents |
[edit] Books
[edit] Authored
- Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (2002) ISBN 0-2759-7695-5 / paperback (2005) ISBN 0-226-56770-2. With a new preface by the author for the paperback edition.
[edit] Foreword by
- The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (2007) ISBN 0-226-84151-0 / FM 3-24. Foreword by Nagl to the University of Chicago Press edition.
- Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq during World War II (2007) ISBN 0-226-84170-7
- The New Counterinsurgency Era (2009) ISBN 978-1-58901-488-6
[edit] References
- ^ Peter Maass. "Professor Nagl's War", The New York Times, January 11, 2004. [1]
- ^ Olmsted, Andrew. "From the Front Lines" RockyMountainNews.com Accessed September 4, 2007. [2]
- ^ Price, David "Pilfered Scholarship Devastates General Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual", CounterPunch, October 30, 2007. [3]
- ^ High-Profile Officer Nagl to Leave Army, Join Think Tank – washingtonpost.com
- ^ [Institutionalizing Adaptation – Center for a New American Security http://www.cnas.org/en/cms/?145 – A Battalion's Worth of New Ideas – newyorktimes.com http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/opinion/02nagl.html?ref=opinion ]
- ^ "MEP Board of Advisors". Missionep.com. 30 November, 2010. http://missionep.com/company/boa. Retrieved 2011-3-21.
[edit] External links
- Biography at Small Wars Journal
- An interview with Nagl for the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
- Link to Daily Show interview
- Interview on Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife at the Pritzker Military Library
