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Names: Barno joins the CNAS empire

Washington’s newest major national security think tank is upping its Afghanistan IQ even further; Retired Lt. Gen. David Barno is joining the Center for a New American Security. Barno, the commander of combined forces in Afghanistan from 2003-2005, will join an already impressive list of Afghanistan and Iraq experts at CNAS. CEO Nathanial Fick was ...

SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images
SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images
SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images

Washington's newest major national security think tank is upping its Afghanistan IQ even further; Retired Lt. Gen. David Barno is joining the Center for a New American Security.

Washington’s newest major national security think tank is upping its Afghanistan IQ even further; Retired Lt. Gen. David Barno is joining the Center for a New American Security.

Barno, the commander of combined forces in Afghanistan from 2003-2005, will join an already impressive list of Afghanistan and Iraq experts at CNAS. CEO Nathanial Fick was a Marine Corps Infantry officer there and later taught counterinsurgency in Kabul. President John Nagl served in Iraq as a lieutenant colonel after writing the counterinsurgency volume Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife. Fellow Andrew Exum served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and advised current commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

Barno was most recently the head of National Defense University’s Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies. In comments reported today, he was optimistic about the current mission in Afghanistan, telling NPR that Afghanistan “could look a lot different in the next six months or a year from now,” depending on governance and security.

Barno will move over to CNAS in May, where he will have a broad portfolio as senior advisor and senior fellow, including defense policy, veterans’ affairs, and other topics. CNAS was started up in 2007 by now Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Kurt Campbell and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy.

Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.

Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.

A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.

Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin

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