Email: carter.malkasian@nps.edu

Professor Carter Malkasian was the senior civilian advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford from 2015 to 2019. He has extensive experience in conflict zones, especially Afghanistan and Iraq, and has published several books. He in Garmser district in southern Helmand province, Afghanistan for two years (2009 to 2011), as the State political officer working alongside five consecutive infantry battalions, Afghan tribal leaders, and Afghan local leaders in villages on the Helmand River. Before that, he was a civilian advisor to the I Marine Expeditionary Force in al-Anbar province for one year in 2004–2005 and six months in 2006. He also worked Kunar in 2007 and Honduras in 2012; and was General Dunford’s senior advisor in Afghanistan from March 2013 to August 2014. His newest book is the award-winning The American War in Afghanistan: A History. The New York Times rated it as one of the top 100 books of 2021. His 2013 book, War Comes to Garmser: Thirty Years of Conflict on the Afghan Frontier (Oxford University Press), won the 2014 silver medal for the Council on Foreign Relations’ Arthur Ross Book Award. Other books include Illusions of Victory: The Anbar Awakening and the Islamic State, A History of Modern Wars of Attrition, and The Korean War, 1950-1953. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley and completed his doctorate in history at Oxford University. He speaks Pashto.