1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036
In The Surge: A Military History (Encounter Books, 2009), president of the Institute for the Study of War Kimberly Kagan offers a detailed analysis of U.S.-led counterinsurgency operations in Iraq during 2007 and 2008. The book provides readers with a thorough understanding of how the operations, widely known as "the
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surge," dramatically brought Iraq away from the tragedy of civil war. The author closely followed the Coalition operations in 2007 and 2008, both on the ground in Iraq and from within the academic and foreign policy community in Washington, D.C. According to Brendan Simms of the Wall Street Journal, her book "is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how Iraq was saved from the brink of disaster."
At this book forum, Ms. Kagan will discuss the various elements of the surge and how they were implemented in order to reestablish security and salvage critical American interests in the region. She will be joined by Kenneth M. Pollack, senior fellow and director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, to discuss the content of her book and the implications of her research on modern counterinsurgency doctrine.
| 8:45 a.m. | Registration | |
| 9:00 | Presenter: | Kimberly Kagan, Institute for the Study of War |
| Discussant: | Kenneth M. Pollack, Brookings Institution | |
| 10:00 | Adjournment |
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-862-5929
American Enterprise Institute
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-862-4870
E-mail: VRodman@aei.org
Speaker biographies
Kenneth M. Pollack is the director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. An expert in national security, the military, and the Persian Gulf, he was previously the director for Persian Gulf affairs at the National Security Council. Mr. Pollack also served for seven years as a Persian Gulf military analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. He is the author of A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East (Random House, 2008).
Kimberly Kagan is the founder and president of the Institute for the Study of War, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., that educates civilians about military affairs and provides strategic and operational analysis for America's warfighters. Kagan is a military historian who has taught at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Yale University, Georgetown University, and American University. She is the author of The Eye of Command (University of Michigan Press, 2006) and The Surge: A Military History (Encounter Books, 2009) and the editor of The Imperial Moment (forthcoming from Harvard University Press). Ms. Kagan has published numerous essays, including "Don't Short-Circuit the Surge" in the Wall Street Journal, "How to Surge the Taliban" (coauthored with Max Boot and Frederick W. Kagan) in the New York Times, and "Why the Taliban are Winning—For Now" on ForeignPolicy.com. She writes a monthly column about national security for the Washington Examiner. She has conducted seven battlefield circulations of Iraq since May 2007 for the Multi-National Force–Iraq (MNF-I) commanding general and one of Afghanistan for the United States Central Command (CENTCOM). She participated in the Joint Campaign Plan Assessment Team for MNF-I–U.S. Mission-Iraq in October 2008 and as part of the Civilian Advisory Team for the CENTCOM strategic review in January 2009. Ms. Kagan served in Kabul as a member of General Stanley McChrystal's strategic assessment team, comprised of civilian experts, during his strategic review in June and July 2009.
