Oppose Any Foe: The Rise of America's Special Operations Forces

Event Status
Scheduled

Please join the Clements Center for National Security on Wednesday, September 6 at 5:00 p.m. for a talk with Mark Moyar on his new book "Oppose Any Foe: The Rise of America's Special Operations Forces." Dr. Moyar is the director of the Program on Military and Diplomatic History at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. This event, which is co-sponsored by the Strauss Center for International Security and Law, is free and open to the public, but seating is limited. 

Dr. Mark Moyar, author of six books and dozens of articles, has worked in and out of government on national security affairs, international development, foreign aid and capacity building. He holds a B.A. summa cum laude from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Cambridge.

Dr. Moyar’s newest book is "Oppose Any Foe: The Rise of America’s Special Operations Forces" (Basic Books, 2017). The first comprehensive history of America’s special operations forces, the book builds upon research he conducted while working at U.S. Special Operations Command. In his book "Aid for Elites: Building Partners and Ending Poverty with Human Capital" (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Dr. Moyar illuminated the nexus of international development, governance, and security, and the value of human capital in each of these sectors. He critiqued U.S. national security policy during the Obama era in "Strategic Failure: How President Obama’s Drone Warfare, Defense Cuts, and Military Amateurism Have Imperiled America" (Threshold, June 2015).

Dr. Moyar is the author of two groundbreaking histories of the "Vietnam War: Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965" (Cambridge University Press, 2006), and "Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism in Vietnam" (Naval Institute Press, 1997; Bison Books, 2007). "Triumph Forsaken" was the subject of a conference at Williams College and the book "Triumph Revisited: Historians Battle for the Vietnam War" (Routledge, 2010). At present, he is working on the sequel to "Triumph Forsaken."

His book "A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq" (Yale University Press, 2009) ranks among the most original and influential works on counterinsurgency. Drawing upon case studies in counterinsurgency leadership, the book advocates an alternative approach to counterinsurgency, focused on empowering the right people rather than on implementing the right methods. The NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan commissioned a Dari translation of "A Question of Command" for use in training Afghanistan’s security forces, and the book is widely read among the U.S. armed forces and civilian agencies.

Dr. Moyar is a member of the Hoover Institution Working Group on the Role of Military History in Contemporary Conflict, and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. From 2004 to 2010, he served as a professor at the U.S. Marine Corps University, where he held the Kim T. Adamson Chair of Insurgency and Terrorism. He has also taught at Texas A&M University and the Foreign Service Institute and served as a senior fellow at the Joint Special Operations University. Dr. Moyar has worked as a consultant for the senior leadership of the Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan, U.S. Central Command, U.S. Special Operations Command, the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan and the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan.

Dr. Moyar’s articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. He speaks at a wide range of public and private institutions around the world. Among the subjects on which he speaks are capacity building, leadership, human capital development, foreign policy, grand strategy, counterinsurgency, development, higher education, patriotism and military history.

Date and Time
Sept. 6, 2017, All Day