Linda Robinson

Linda Robinson is an adjunct senior fellow for U.S. national security and foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), where she is currently writing a book on Afghanistan and conducting a study on the future of special operations forces.

A best-selling author and analyst, Ms. Robinson has reported on conflicts (including ten insurgencies), political transitions, and other foreign policy issues in thirty-five countries over two and a half decades. Her books include Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search for a Way Out of Iraq, a Foreign Affairs bestseller which was named one of the 100 Notable Books of 2008 by the New York Times; Masters of Chaos: The Secret History of the Special Forces, a New York Times bestseller; and Intervention or Neglect: Central America and Panama Beyond the 1980s. She has been a senior writer for national security and terrorism and Latin America bureau chief at U.S. News & World Report and senior editor at Foreign Affairs magazine. She has published widely on special operations forces, counterinsurgency, stability operations, and insurgencies based on extensive field research in South Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and other leading newspapers and policy journals, including Foreign Affairs, Survival, National Journal, The New Republic, and World Policy Journal. She has appeared in national and international media, including PBS's NewsHour and Washington Week in Review, Washington Journal, NPR's Morning Edition and Talk of the Nation, BBC, Al Jazeera, and other U.S. news networks.

Ms. Robinson was senior adviser to U.S. Central Command's Afghanistan-Pakistan Center and has provided strategic analysis, studies and concepts on defense, diplomacy, and counterinsurgency as an expert consultant. She is serving a three-year appointment to the U.S. Army War College Board of Visitors and is a frequent lecturer domestically and internationally at civilian and military educational institutions and policy conferences.

Ms. Robinson was a Nieman fellow at Harvard University, senior consulting fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a media fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, and author in residence at John Hopkins SAIS Merrill Center for Strategic Studies. She received the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Reporting on National Defense and other awards. She is a longtime member of CFR and IISS.