Wednesday, Mar. 13, 2013

Foreign policy expert to speak

Military historian and foreign-policy analyst Max Boot will visit Derby Auditorium at 1:30 p.m. Friday for the latest installment of the Combat Leader Speaker Program.

Boot has written four books, including his latest work, Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present.

Frank Miranda, training specialist with the Directorate of Training, said the speaker program is a good opportunity for Soldiers to supplement their formal training with an informal discussion.

“The Combat Leader Speaker Program provides the attendees an opportunity to enhance their professional development and learn valuable lessons based on firsthand experiences of the guest speakers,” Miranda said. “Guest speakers are not just current or prior military service members, but also civilian representatives of various organizations.

“These CLSP events are informal and very interactive discussions. This format allows both the attendees and the speaker the opportunity to gain insights of the topic from one another in a true, shared-learning experience.”

Boot is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

He is also a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and the Los Angeles Times, and a regular contributor to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, and other publications.

One of Boot’s previous books, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power was selected as one of the best books of 2002 by numerous newspapers, won the 2003 General Wallace M. Greene Jr. Award from the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation as the best nonfiction book pertaining to Marine Corps history, and has been placed on Army, Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy professional reading lists. More than 100,000 copies of his books are in print.

Boot has also served as an adviser to U.S. commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He was a senior foreign policy adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2007-2008 and served as a defense policy adviser to Mitt Romney’s campaign.

Boot is a frequent public speaker and guest on radio and television news programs, both at home and abroad.

He has lectured on behalf of the U.S. State Department and at many military institutions, including the Army, Navy, and Air War Colleges, the Australian Defense College, the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School and West Point.

In 2004, he was named by the World Affairs Councils of America as one of “the 500 most influential people in the United States in the field of foreign policy.”

In 2007, he won the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism, given annually to a writer who exhibits “love of country and its democratic institutions” and “bears witness to the evils of totalitarianism.”

Before joining CFR in 2002, Boot spent eight years as a writer and editor at the Wall Street Journal, the last five years of which was spent as op-ed editor.

From 1992 to 1994, he was an editor and writer at the Christian Science Monitor.

Boot holds a bachelor’s degree in history, with high honors, from the University of California, Berkeley and a master’s degree in history from Yale University.

He was born in Russia, grew up in Los Angeles, and now lives with his family in the New York area.