Nagl later returned to Oxford to earn his DPhil at St Antony's College in 1997. At Oxford, his focus was on counterinsurgency. Nagl's doctoral dissertation was a comparative study of the British and American militaries as they dealt with insurgencies in Malaya and Vietnam, respectively.[3] While at Oxford, he wrote several book reviews in a variety of military journals, focusing initially on the history of armored warfare,[4] and later on the Vietnam War and guerrilla warfare.[5]
Nagl retired from the Army and in 2008 became a fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) in Washington D.C.[10] Many commentators, including CNAS fellow Andrew Exum and retired Marine Colonel Thomas X. Hammes, lamented his retirement because they saw it as a significant loss for the Army.[11] There was some speculation that Nagl retired because he had been passed over for promotion or otherwise sidelined by the military, as happened to H.R. McMaster, because of his advocacy of counterinsurgency, which had fallen out of favour with senior commanders by 2008.[12] However, Exum confirmed on his Abu Muqawama blog that Nagl was not eligible for promotion to Colonel in 2008 and argued that Nagl could have a greater influence on defense policy outside the military, particularly if he were allowed to serve in the Department of Defense by a future administration.[13]
Left to right, Peter Bergen, John Nagl and Daniel R. Green, discussing Nagl's new book, Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice, at the New America Foundation, 27 October 2014
After CNAS's founders, Kurt M. Campbell and Michèle Flournoy, left CNAS to serve in the Obama administration, Nagl was named CNAS's president in February 2009 and served until January 2012. Nagl remains a non-resident senior fellow of CNAS. While at CNAS, he co-authored several reports on a wide range of issues, including counterinsurgency,[14] Islamist extremism[15] and the future of the American military.[16] While he was still in the Army, Nagl wrote a report in 2007 for CNAS which advocates for the creation of a permanent Army advisory corps,[17] a proposal that he argued for in an op-ed in the New York Times.[18] His proposal for an advisory corps was favorably cited by American historian Max Boot in a New York Times op-ed about ways to modernize the State Department and the American military.[19]
In January 2011, he and CNAS chief executive officer Nathaniel Fick wrote an op-ed in the New York Times supporting the Obama administration's troop surge and reporting on its early successes.[20] In April 2011, he wrote favorably about President Obama decision to name Leon Panetta, then director of the CIA, as Secretary of Defense, and General David Petraeus, then commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, with whom Nagl had worked on the new Army/Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual, as director of the CIA, noting the increasingly intertwined nature of the relationship between the intelligence and defense establishments in the United States.[21]
Dr. Nagl is an Advisory Board Member of Spirit of America, a 501(c)(3) organization that supports the safety and success of Americans serving abroad and the local people and partners they seek to help.[27]
Already notable in military circles, his public profile was further raised with an interview on Comedy Central's The Daily Show in August 2007.[28] He was also interviewed with fellow counterinsurgency experts Lewis Sorley and Conrad Crane on the Charlie Rose show about the similarities between counterinsurgency during the Iraq and Vietnam Wars in March 2006.[29]
In October 2016, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported[31] that according to court documents, Nagl had found marijuana in his son's backpack and, as punishment, had confiscated it along with the boy's cellphone. Two days later, he discovered the items missing from where he had hidden them and found his son using the phone in a bathroom of the family home. When he attempted to take back the phone, the son refused to hand it over; as Nagl took the phone from his son's hands, the boy "re-engaged in a physical altercation," so Nagl "put his son in a chokehold to end the altercation quickly." Nagl's attorney, Robert Keller, told the Inquirer that "the facts showed that the parent took appropriate steps to discipline a child who was acting inappropriately" and that Nagl was "hoping to return [as headmaster] as quickly as possible." He was reinstated later that week and has since continued his work as headmaster. On October 20, 2016, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, District Attorney John Whelan wrote in a one-paragraph statement[31] that there was "insufficient evidence" to proceed with prosecution and that a charge against Nagl had been dropped.
In 2020, Nagl published an op-ed encouraging military action if President Donald Trump refused leaving office at the end of his constitutional term.[32]
Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (2002) ISBN0-275-97695-5 / paperback (2005) ISBN0-226-56770-2. With a new preface by the author for the paperback edition.
Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice (2014) ISBN1594204985
Cohen, A. A. Galula: The Life and Writings of the French Officer who Defined the Art of Counterinsurgency. Foreword by John A. Nagl. Praeger, 2012. ISBN978-1-4408-0049-8.
References
^"John Albert Nagl". West Point Association of Graduates. Retrieved 2022-04-14.
.jpg)
United States
United States Army
Lieutenant Colonel
