Welcome

Welcome! I am an assistant professor and the Benjamin Foulois Chair in International Security Studies at the Air War College, at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery Alabama.

Since 2022 I have been the course director for the War College’s Regional Security Studies program, one of PME’s most extensive in-residence field study courses.

As an instructor in the US Air Force’s Senior PME Institution, I focus on advanced officer education to train a rising generation of senior leaders, advisors, and planners.

I am both a political scientist and a historian, focused on the fields of foreign policy analysis, security studies, and the Middle East. My research and teaching focus on the impact of civil-military relations and bureaucratic politics on strategic planning and military effectiveness, especially during counterinsurgency, as well as the Arab-Israeli Conflict and Persian Gulf security.

My current research projects focus on questions of civil-military coordination during counterinsurgency campaigns. While the importance of “unity of effort” has long been established, the pervasive interagency conflict has been a recurrent theme in the history of counterinsurgency, undermining campaign effectiveness. I focus on the ways in which the systems designed to promote coordination succeed and fail, and how this impacts the development and implementation of strategy.

A second research project traces changing Gulf Arab engagement with the Arab-Israeli peace process, focusing especially on Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Prior to serving at the War College, I was a visiting assistant professor in the Government Department at St. Lawrence University, in Canton, NY. I received my PhD in Political Science at Yale University in 2018, and my MA in Middle East History at Tel Aviv University in 2010.