Suggested reading for graduate seminar at Columbia on US Role in World Affairs

[Bill Moore]

http://www.amazon.com/One-Hundred-Vi...linda+robinson

One Hundred Victories: Special Ops and the Future of American Warfare Hardcover

by Linda Robinson (Author)

http://www.amazon.com/Future-U-S-Spe...linda+robinson

The Future of U.S. Special Operations Forces Paperback

by Linda Robinson (Author)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Way-Knife-...d_sim_kstore_6

The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth
Mark Mazzetti

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/de...transcript.pdf

Transcript from Wilson Center on the future of SOF that contains some relevant comments. You of course can find a lot of comments on how SOF and the CIA will enable aspects of foreign policy (includes shadow wars) in the future if you do a Google search and hit the links at the credible think tanks.

The best books by far were historical accounts of our shadow wars during the Cold War, and the lessons from those wars are still very much relevant today. I did a similar paper on covert operations 25 or so years ago, I'll see if I can find it (long before I had a computer, so it is a hard copy) and send you some of the references. I started has a true believer, and by the time I finished by paper I had serious reservations about the long term impact of these operations in the countries we operated in, and how over use could erode our own moral fiber. There is still a place a covert operations, perhaps more so than ever, but we can't afford to throw caution to the wind. We need to think deeper and more clearly about the longer term impacts before we decide to execute just because it often a relatively simple and cheap course of action.

Please share your paper when it is complete.