The Future of American Warfare: The Rise of Special Ops

Admiral William H. McRaven said that, “Folks within the Special Operations community listen to Linda Robinson, and when they listen to her I listen to them…” Robinson visited the Wilson Center for a discussion of her book, One Hundred Victories: Special Ops and the Future of American Warfare. She spent much of the last two years in Afghanistan studying the evolution of special ops in their largest and longest deployment since Vietnam. In this interview, Robinson provides insight and context on this evolution of U.S. military strategy. 

Linda Robinson is a senior international policy analyst at RAND. She has been an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Public Policy Scholar at the Wilson Center. Her book about the U.S. Army Special Forces, Masters of Chaos, was a New York Times bestseller; Tell Me How This Ends, which is about the Iraq War, was a Foreign Affairs bestseller and a New York Times notable book. Robinson received the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Reporting on National Defense in 2005. She has conducted field research on special operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Latin America, and elsewhere over the past twelve years. Her newest book is titled, One Hundred Victories: Special Ops and the Future of American Warfare.