Center for a New American Security

Well. The place to see and be seen in the defense policy set was certainly tonight's book launch for Tom Ricks,hosted by John Nagl and the Center for a New American Security. I had a dinner to make it to directly following the book launch, and it took an hour for me to just get out of the door. It seemed as if anyone who was anyone in the field of counter-insurgency was there, and quite frankly, I enjoyed speaking to everyone who came up to say hello -- especially the readers of this blog. Dilegge, Kilcullen, Davidson, Fick, Nagl ... it was quite the reception. And if you were really clever, you crafted your entrance at the event for the very moment when Tom was talking about you in front of 500 people.

I'll remember tonight best, though, for the dinner afterward. Thomas Rid -- the German counter-insurgency expert -- not only asked the best question of the night to Ricks* but is also one of the finest hosts I know and quite capable of holding forth cogently on 19th-Century French counter-insurgency theorists even after several glasses of wine as well as some schnapps from his native southern Germany. I am really looking forward to the new article Thomas has coming out in the Journal of Strategic Studies...

*"The successes of Iraq have given rise to some very prominent and powerful officers in the U.S. Army. Has one of the side effects of the development of counter-insurgency theory been a new crisis in political-military relations?" (This is the question as I remember it and was probably not what Thomas said. But I think the "soldier and the state" question post-Iraq is a really good one.)