John Nagl, a retired Army officer and a research professor at the United States Naval Academy appeared on This Week in Defense News to discuss the importance of counterinsurgency to the future of American military operations. "I think that the character of warfare in our modern age is changing. The very fact that we are so good at the American way of war makes it almost impossible for anyone to compete against us and therefore our enemies are likely to continue to choose to fight us as insurgents," Nagel argued.
Additionally, Nagl defended the U.S. drone program and assessed its achievements in the fight against al-Qaeda.
"I think the drone program has improved dramatically over time. We are much better at correlating data from a number of different programs, some of which have been much in the news recently, and we dramatically reduce the amount of collateral damage we do. In fact, we have been so successful with the drone strikes against al-qaeda central in the tribal regions of Pakistan in particular that we are now reaching the point of diminishing returns."
Full Interview:
