See all blog entries by John Nagl.

 

John Nagl is a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. A retired US Army officer, his last assignment was as Commanding Officer of 1st Battalion, 34th Armor at Fort Riley, Kansas.  He led a tank platoon in Operation Desert Storm and served as the operations officer of a tank battalion task force in Operation Iraqi Freedom.  A West Point graduate and Rhodes Scholar, Nagl earned his doctorate from Oxford University, taught national security studies at West Point, and served as a Military Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense.  He is the author of Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife:  Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam and was on the writing team that produced the Army's new Counterinsurgency Field Manual.

Major Works

Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam Preface to the Paperback Edition  Reviews: Amazon Rethinking the Future Nature of Competition & Conflict Seminar Series, 1 August 2006 Kansas City Star, 28 December 2006

 

FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency Buy from Amazon         Download PDF Read the Forword to the University of Chicago Press edition. Media Coverage: Principles, Imperatives, and Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency, Military Review, March-April 2006 (with Eliot Cohen, Conrad Crane, and Jan Horvath) David Martin, CBS Evening News, 22 March 2006 - story NPR Day to Day, 15 December 2006 - story The Daily Show, 23 August 2007 - interview Sean Naylor, CSPAN, 8 September 2007 - interview Mark Benjamin, Salon, 27 September 2007 - story

Iraq

Peter Maass, The Counterinsurgent, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, 11 January 2004

US Strategy in Iraq, The Charlie Rose Show, 31 March 2006 (Hosted by James Fallows, with Conrad Crane and Bob Sorley)

A Better War in Iraq, Armed Forces Journal, August 2006

Army Wrote the Book on Iraq - 65 Years Ago, Chicago Tribune, August 2007

Here, Bullet - Brian Tuner, Review, RUSI, December 2007

US Army LTC John Nagl - NPR Interview, 4 February 2008

Adapting for the Long War

New Rules for New Enemies, Armed Forces Journal, October 2006 (with Paul Yingling)

Training Transition Teams at Fort Riley, Kansas

It's Time for an Army Advisor Corps

NPR Morning Edition, 5 December 2006 - story

Newsweek, The Perils of the Pentagon's New Iraq Strategy, 18 December 2006

NPR Morning Edition, 27 March 2007 - story