John A. Nagl

@DrJohnNagl

Member - FPRI Board of Advisors

Non-Resident Senior Fellow - National Security Program

Research Areas:

Military, Warfare, Counterinsurgency (Afghanistan)

Dr. John Nagl is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s National Security Program, Professor of Warfighting Studies at the U.S. Army War College, and a Professorial Lecturer at George Washington University. A retired Army officer, author, and strategist, he saw combat in Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He serves on the Board of Advisors at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia and at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington DC think tank of which he was the second president from 2009 until 2012.   He served for eight years as the ninth Head of the Haverford School outside Philadelphia, leading an organization dedicated to the education and character development of boys and young men.

Dr. Nagl was a Distinguished Graduate of the United States Military Academy Class of 1988 who served as an armor officer in the Army for 20 years. His last military assignment was as commander of the 1st Battalion, 34th Armor at Fort Riley, Kansas training Transition Teams that embedded with Iraqi and Afghan units. 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, earning the Combat Action Badge and the Bronze Star. Dr. Nagl taught national security studies at West Point’s Department of Social Sciences and in Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program and served as a Military Assistant to two Deputy Secretaries of Defense. He earned his Master of the Military Arts and Sciences Degree from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, where he received the George C. Marshall Award as the top graduate, and his doctorate from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

His books include Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam; Knife Fights:  A Memoir of Modern War; and, with Katie Crombe, A Call to Action:  Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force.

Books

Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam

Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice