Robert M. Cassidy, Ph.D.

Senior Fellow

Colonel Robert M. Cassidy, U.S. Army, is a member of the Royal United Services Institute and is currently serving at the U.S. Naval War College. 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 warfare, and military culture. He earned the Diplôme d'Études Supérieures de Défense from the French Joint Defense College at the École Militaire in Paris.

Colonel Cassidy has served in a variety of organizations as a special operations strategist, a battalion commander, a special assistant to a four-star general, a brigade operations officer, a divisional cavalry executive officer, an airborne air cavalry troop commander, a support platoon leader, and a scout platoon leader. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1981 and served as an NCO interrogator in the 82nd Airborne Division. He has served on several operational deployments, to Iraq, Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf, Egypt, and the Caribbean. He also served as an assistant professor of international relations at West Point.

Colonel Cassidy has published over a dozen articles on irregular warfare in Parameters, Military Review, RUSI Journal, Small Wars and Insurgencies, the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Defense Concepts, and the Baltic Defence and Security Review. He has been the author of two books: Peacekeeping in the Abyss: British and American Doctrine and Practice after the Cold War and Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror: Military Culture and Irregular War. Stanford University Press published the latter in paperback. Cassidy most recently published “The Virtue of Punishment: the Enduring Salience of the Soviet War in Afghanistan” in the Defense Concepts autumn 2009 issue. Colonel Cassidy is currently conducting research for his next book, War and Punishment: Pursuing Peace among the Pashtuns. He has spoken in several academic and public forums about strategy and war.