John A. Nagl (born 1966) is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army who is regarded as an influential expert in counterinsurgency.
After growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, he attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he graduated near the top of his class in 1988. He was chosen as a Rhodes Scholar and studied international relations at St. John's College, Oxford. He served as a tank platoon leader during the Gulf War, then returned to school to eventually earn his M. Phil and D. Phil at Oxford's St. Antony's College.[1] His research focus was on counterinsurgency: his dissertation was a comparison of the British and American militaries as they dealt with insurgencies in Malaya and Vietnam, respectively. This work would later be made a book-length treatment published under the title Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, after an observation by T. E. Lawrence about the difficulty of fighting guerrillas.
After his studies, he was appointed to a professorship at West Point, which he held until deploying in 2003 as an operations officer with 1st Battalion 34th Armor Regiment, 1st Infantry Division stationed near Khaldiya, Iraq. Recently, he co-authored the US Army's counterinsurgency field manual (FM 3-24), and currently[2] helps train MiTT teams -- small groups of soldiers tasked to develop the Afghan National Army and Iraqi security forces. Already notable in military circles, his public profile was further raised with an interview on Comedy Central's The Daily Show on August 23, 2007.
The US Army's counter insurgency field manual is in places remarkably similar to earlier texts.[3]
Nagl is renowned for his extensive mentorship and tutelage of junior officers. He is affiliated with a rising group of mid-level military intellectuals, many of whom who have been tapped, at one time or another, to provide insight and recommendations to General David Petraeus. These officers include, but are not limited to Colonel Michael Meese, Lieutenant Colonels Douglas Ollivant, Mike George, Jen Easterly, Paul Yingling, Bill Ostlund and Charles Miller, as well as Dr. David Kilcullen. This crop of the new "best and brightest" were heavily influenced by their time together as associate professors at the United States Military Academy's Department of Social Sciences, which COL Meese now leads.
Nagl has retired from the U.S. Army and became a fellow on July 14, 2008, at the Center for a New American Security in Washington D.C.[4] He has also recently published a series of articles and op-ed pieces regarding the need for a permanent Army Advisory Corps.[5] After its top leaders left for senior positions in the Obama administration, Nagl was named CNAS' president. He is a member of the Mission Essential Personnel Board of Advisors.[6]
Nagl is married to Susi Varga, whom he met while a student at Oxford; they have one son, Jack.
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