All Policy Analysis by Andrew Exum

Violent clashes in Beirut on January 25 between students of rival political parties have overshadowed the promising news that Lebanon received pledges of $7.6 billion at the Paris III donor conference on Lebanon's economy. The violence, which was largely along sectarian lines, was the latest in a series of escalating

In the context of debate surrounding U.S. military strategy in Iraq, Prussian military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz offers this classic directive: it is essential to understand the nature of the war you are fighting. To this end, the U.S. military in Iraq no longer faces a traditional insurgency conflict --

Hizballah's thirty-three-day fight against the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) this summer offered a number of disturbing precedents. Political implications and strategic goals aside, the "July War" showcased Hizballah's evolution into an adaptive, skillful, cohesive fighting force capable of registering some measure of success on the battlefield against a much larger

The New York Times invited several experts with unique personal experience in Iraq to comment on the Iraq Study Group Report. Andrew Exum is currently a Soref fellow at The Washington Institute; in 2003 he led a platoon of Army Rangers in Iraq. The fates of 26 million Iraqis and

This week Senator Hillary Clinton, citing a secret Pentagon report that suggested some marines killed in Iraq might have survived had they been wearing more body armor, became the latest in a long line of politicians to castigate the Pentagon for a supposed failure to adequately protect our fighting men

BEIRUT -- When we first felt the blast, my girlfriend and I were walking down Hamra Street in West Beirut toward the American University. Tara had flown in from New York City just a few hours earlier on Monday, and I was showing her around the city for the first

Many Americans, feeling that we did not have enough troops in Iraq, were pleased when the Defense Department announced last month that 20,000 more soldiers were being sent to put down the insurgency and help rebuild the country. Unfortunately, few realized that many of these soldiers would serve long after