Mark Moyar

Education

Harvard University
B.A. in History, 1993

University of Cambridge
Ph.D. in History, 2003

Books

Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968 (New York: Encounter, 2023).

Oppose Any Foe: The Rise of America’s Special Operations Forces (Basic Books, 2017).

Aid for Elites: Building Partners and Ending Poverty with Human Capital (Cambridge University Press, 2016).

Strategic Failure: How President Obama’s Drone Warfare, Defense Cuts, and Military Amateurism have Imperiled America (New York: Threshold, 2015).

A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).

Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2006).

Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism in Vietnam, (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1997; new edition, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007).

Monographs

Countering Violent Extremism in Mali (Tampa: Joint Special Operations University Press, 2015).

Persistent Engagement in Colombia (Tampa: Joint Special Operations University Press, 2014). (co-authored with Hector Pagan and Wil R. Griego)

Village Stability Operations and the Afghan Local Police (Tampa: Joint Special Operations University Press, 2014).

The Third Way of COIN: Defeating the Taliban in Sangin (McLean: Orbis Operations, 2011).

Development in Afghanistan’s Counterinsurgency: A New Guide (McLean: Orbis Operations, 2011).

Book Chapters

“Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara: Theory Over History and Experience,” in Hal Brands, ed., The New Makers of Modern Strategy: From the Ancient World to the Digital Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023), pp. 789-816.

“Village Stability Operations and the Afghan Local Police, 2010-2015,” in Donald Stoker and Edward B. Westermann, ed., Expeditionary Police Advising and Militarization Building Security in a Fractured World (Solihull: Helion, 2018), 209-241.

“The Era of American Hegemony, 1989-2005,” in Roger Chickering, Dennis Showalter, and Hans van de Ven, eds., Cambridge History of War, Volume 4: War and the Modern World, 1850-2005 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

“Counterinsurgency Leadership: The Key to Afghanistan and Iraq,” in Nicholas J. Schlosser and James M. Caiella, eds., Counterinsurgency Leadership in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Beyond (Quantico: Marine Corps University Press, 2011).

Four chapters in Andrew Wiest and Michael Doidge, eds. Triumph Revisited: Historians Battle for the Vietnam War (London: Routledge, 2010).

“The War Against the Viet Cong Shadow Government,” in John Norton Moore and Robert F. Turner, eds., The Real Lessons of the Vietnam War: Reflections Twenty-Five Years After the Fall of Saigon (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2002), pp. 151-167.

Selected Articles

“A Warped Mirror,” City Journal, October 20, 2017

“Ken Burns’s ‘Vietnam’ Is Fair to the Troops, but Not the Cause,” Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2017

“Was Vietnam Winnable?” New York Times, May 19, 2017

“How American Special Operators Gradually Returned to Somalia,” The Atlantic, May 14, 2017

“America’s Dangerous Love for Special Ops,” New York Times, April 24, 2017

“USAID Should Further U.S. Interests, Not ‘Safe Spaces’,” Wall Street Journal, March 19, 2017

“The World Fears Trump’s America. That’s a Good Thing.” New York Times, December 9, 2016

“The Case for the Militarization of Foreign Aid,” War on the Rocks, November 1, 2016

“Billions Wasted in Foreign Aid—but at Least It’s Not Elitist,” Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2016

“The White House’s Seven Deadly Errors,” Hoover Institution, December 10, 2015.

“How Obama Shrank the Military,” Wall Street Journal, August 2, 2015

“Vietnam’s Giap Reappraised,” Wall Street Journal Asia, October 9, 2013

“Lesson of Afghanistan Crash Is Not to Rush for Exit,” Bloomberg, August 9, 2011

“The Kings We Crown,” New York Times, May 1, 2011

“Leadership in Counterinsurgency,” Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, vol. 34, no. 1 (winter 2010)

“Right Man, Right Time,” Military History, vol. 27, no. 3 (September 2010).

“Petraeus’s Opportunity,” Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2010

“Can the Afghans Keep Order?” The Daily Beast, February 18, 2010

“How to Whip the Afghan Army into Shape,” Foreign Policy, December 22, 2009.

“An Officer and A Creative Man,” New York Times, December 20, 2009

“Counterinsurgency and Professional Military Education,” Small Wars Journal, December 11, 2009.

“Afghanistan and Leadership,” Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2009

“Can the US Lead Afghans?” New York Times, September 4, 2009

“Grand Strategy after the Vietnam War,” Orbis, vol. 53, no. 4 (Fall 2009).

“Vietnam: Historians At War,” Academic Questions, vol. 21, no. 1 (March 2008).

“The Phoenix Program and Contemporary Warfare,” Joint Force Quarterly, no. 47 (4^th Quarter 2007).

“Optimism and War,” New York Sun, September 18, 2007

“Halberstam’s History,” National Review, July 5, 2007

“Worst in History?” Wall Street Journal, May 22, 2007

“The Current State of Military History,” The Historical Journal, vol. 50, no. 1 (March 2007).

“Knowing When to Let Go,” Washington Post, December 6, 2006.

“An Iraqi Solution, Vietnam Style,” The New York Times, November 21, 2006.

“Rewriting the Vietnam War,” Historically Speaking (September/October 2006).

“Political Monks: The Militant Buddhist Movement during the Vietnam War,” Modern Asian Studies, vol. 38, no. 4 (October 2004).

“Hanoi’s Strategic Surprise, 1964-1965,” Intelligence and National Security. Vol. 18, no. 1 (Spring 2003).