About

Frank Sobchak Bio Header

AT A GLANCE:
Retired Colonel, US Army

RESEARCH AREAS:
• Peace Operations
• Low-intensity conflict
• Insurgency
• Terrorism
• Counterterrorism
• Special Operations
• Internal Wars
• Middle East conflict
• The Iraq War
• U.S. foreign policy
• Security force assistance
• Espionage
• Civil-Military Relations
• Technology
• Conflict


BIOGRAPHY:
During twenty-six-year career in the US Army, he served in various Special Forces assignments including leading teams and companies advising foreign militaries in war and peace and representing US Special Operations Command as a congressional liaison.  For his final assignment, he led the Army effort to publish an official history of the Iraq War. That effort spanned five years and included the declassification of over 30,000 pages and several hundred interviews. The project’s culmination was the publication of the 1,500-page two-volume set, The U.S. Army in the Iraq War.

He holds a BS in military history from West Point, a MA in Arab studies from Georgetown
University, and a PhD in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He has taught at the US Military Academy at West Point, Joint Special Operations
University, Tufts University, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

PUBLICATIONS:
, Vol. 1 of 2, with Joel Rayburn, editor, and Jeanne Godfroy-Hull, James Powell, and Mathew Morton; (Carlisle, PA.: Strategic Studies Institute, 2019). Co-editor, also author of ten chapters and co-author of two.

, Vol. 2 of 2, with Joel Rayburn, editor, and Jeanne Godfroy-Hull, James Powell, and Mathew Morton; (Carlisle, PA.: Strategic Studies Institute, 2019). Co-editor, also co-author of six chapters.

• CHAPTERS IN A BOOK:
in Landpower in the Long War: Projecting Force After 9/11, (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2019).

in Contextualizing Sectarianism in the Middle East and South Asia, (New York, NY: Routledge, 2023).

• ARTICLES:

(March 2023) | Time


(February 2023) Why the United States Failed to Deter Russia in Ukraine (foreignpolicy.com)

(November 2022) - Modern War Institute (usma.edu)


(November 2022) | The Hill


(September 2021) | Small Wars Journal


(September 2021) - WSJ


(January 2021) | Small Wars Journal


(June 2020) | Opinion (newsweek.com)


(March 2019)  - Defense One


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