Robert M. Cassidy, Ph.D.
Senior Fellow
Robert M. Cassidy is an officer in the U.S. Army. He is a member of the Royal United Services Institute and he is a senior fellow with the Center for Advanced Defense Studies.
Dr. Cassidy has master’s degrees in international relations and diplomacy from Boston University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He earned his Ph.D. from the Fletcher School where he concentrated in strategy, irregular war, stability operations, and military culture. He has the Diplome d'Etude Supérieure de Défense from the French Joint Defense College at the École Militaire.
Colonel Cassidy has served in a variety of organizations as a special operations strategist, a special troops battalion commander, a special assistant to the Commanding General of U.S. Army forces in Europe, and as a brigade operations officer in the 4th Infantry Division. He has served on operational deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, and the Caribbean. He also served as an assistant professor of international relations at West Point.
Dr. Cassidy has published several articles and reviews, which have appeared in Parameters, Military Review, RUSI Journal, Small Wars and Insurgencies, the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Defense Concepts, Small Wars Journal Magazine, and the Baltic Defence and Security Review. In early 2003, Colonel Cassidy published a study with the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute on the Russian counterinsurgency experiences in Afghanistan and Chechnya, which remains salient today. Cassidy has been the author of two books: Peacekeeping in the Abyss: British and American Doctrine and Practice after the Cold War (2004) and Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror: Military Culture and Irregular War (2006) appeared in 2006. Stanford University Press published the latter in paperback (2008).
Colonel Cassidy most recently published a review essay on James Forest’s Countering Terrorism and Insurgency in the 21st Century: International Perspectives in the autumn 2008 issue of Parameters. His article, “Back to the Street without Joy: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam and Other Small Wars,” was re-published by the Marine Corps University Press in U.S. Marines and Irregular Warfare, 1898-2007: Anthology and Selected Bibliography (2008).
