Gordon M. Goldstein

Gordon M. Goldstein is a scholar of international affairs who has served as an international security advisor to the strategic planning unit of the executive office of the United Nations secretary-general and as a Wayland fellow and guest lecturer at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. He is the author of Lessons in Disaster (New York: Times Books/Henry Holt and Co., 2008), from which this excerpt is adapted.