A nation must think before it acts.
Kenneth Pollack served on the staff of the National Security Council as Director for Persian Gulf Affairs (1999-2001) and Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs (1995-96), and as the CIA’s Iraq-Iran military analyst (1988-95). He is now Director of Research for the Saban Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the Brookings Institution and a regular presence on the national broadcast media. His books include The Threatening Storm (Random House, 2002) and Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991 (University of Nebraska Press, 2002). He received his Ph.D. from MIT.