Afghanistan: Where do we go from here?

Linda Robinson is director of the Center for Middle East Public Policy and a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. She is a frequent public speaker and a prize-winning former foreign correspondent with 30 years of experience in international affairs and national security. Her research and journalism have taken her around the world, including on extensive sojourns in the Middle East and South Asia. She is also a noted author and has written on America's war in Afghanistan in her 2013 book "One Hundred Victories: Special Ops and the future of American Warfare" which is reviewed here.

Her research at RAND has received five awards. Her RAND publications on the Middle East include Rethinking U.S. Strategy in the Middle East: Sustainable Partnerships, Strategic Investments (2021); Making Victory Count After Defeating ISIS (2017); and Improving Strategic Competence: Lessons from 13 Years of War (2014). Her books Tell Me How This Ends, One Hundred Victories, and Masters of Chaos were critically acclaimed and best-selling works of reportage published by PublicAffairs Books.

Before joining RAND in 2013, Robinson was a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Wilson Center, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. She was a foreign correspondent for U.S. News and World Report and senior editor of Foreign Affairs magazine. Robinson served on the boards of the National Defense University and the Army War College. For her contributions as chair of the latter board, she received the Army’s Outstanding Civilian Service award.