by Chris Frates
National Journal
Nagl is the latest high-profile shift by CNAS veterans in an out of government. Co-founder Michele Flournoy was Pentagon policy chief under Defense Secretary Robert Gates for three years but has announced she is leaving in February. Similarly, Colin Kahl ended his extended term as deputy assistant secretary of defense, keeping watch over middle east policy, to return to CNAS as a senior fellow and to teaching at Georgetown University.
Nagl will become a research fellow at the U.S. Naval Academy, teach counterinsurgency to midshipmen, and "investigate the influences of culture upon warfare." He will maintain a status with CNAS as a non-resident senior fellow.
Comments
<blockquote>(GG) Maybe I should throw my name in the hat for the CNAS presidency :)</blockquote>
Not a chance. Plus I got a gripe -- Gian Gentile stole my best line.
<blockquote>
Best Defense
DON BACON
4:40 PM ET
July 1, 2011
Look on the bright side --
COIN is dead. R.I.P.
No more nation-building.
No more COIN industry.
No more asking troops to be nice to the (un)friendly locals.
Counter-insurgency was a misnomer anyhow. They weren't (aren't) insurgencies, they are resisted occupations slash civil wars.
Now we have a new policy -- global assassination. Strike that -- Muslim nation assassination. It appears to have legs, at least until they start reciprocating the honors close to home, or at home.
The conventional forces still need to be justified, so that's where China comes in, just like the good old days.</blockquote>
And then months later came Gian.
<blockquote>“COIN is Dead: U.S. Army Must Put Strategy Over Tactics“, Gian P. Gentile (Colonel, US Army), World Politics Review, 22 November 2011</blockquote>
But I don't mind, he's one of my heroes.
Wow! Nagel goes to run a water pump station in Siberia. Military politics is a lot like Kremlinology. He's teaching Midshipmen-- all of the only culture and language he knows-- about other cultures and how they matter when Americans shoot up the places where these cultures caused us to shoot them up. There's a certain sadness about how those who led our young men and women in pointless wars always land on their feet in cushy jobs while the real combat vets end up unemployed and having to trek 50 miles to get treatment for PTSD and medical care that's more like drug trials-- statistically validated one size fits all!
It also looks like all the Middle East partisan fat cats have bought themselves another think-tank. Well, they alone care enough to throw big chunks of their wealth to influence on behalf of their issues with slick gobbledygook "this is it" propaganda. But that does say a lot about how our young PhDs in social sciences are finding themselves as orthodox scribes writing slick pamphlets for their only available employers. Whatever happened to the "meaningful dialogue" notions of the 1960s that so characterize our notion of democracy?
the article said this:
"Nagl will become a research fellow at the U.S. Naval Academy, teach counterinsurgency to midshipmen, and 'investigate the influences of culture upon warfare.'"
In other words will he be teaching midshipmen how the navy can do its part in "changing entire societies" just like we have done over the past ten years in Iraq and Afghanistan with Nagl's FM3-24 creation?
Maybe I should throw my name in the hat for the CNAS presidency :)