Bio
Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC, and an adjunct professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University. His 42-year government career included tours at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of State, and the Department of Defense’s National War College, where he was a professor of international security. His books on international security include “A Whistleblower at the CIA: The Path of Dissent;” “National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism;” “Bush League Diplomacy: How the Neoconservatives are Putting the World at Risk;” “The Wars of Eduard Shevardnadze;” “The Phantom Defense: America’s Pursuit of the Star Wars Illusion;” “The End of Superpower Conflict in the Third World,” and “Gorbachev’s Retreat: The Third World.”
He has written numerous articles and opeds that have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, Foreign Policy; Harper’s Magazine; the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; and the Foreign Service Journal. His TV appearances include the PBS Newshour; the Amy Goodman Show; NBC; and CBS. He has lectured at college campuses all over the country as well as to numerous chapters of the World Affairs Council, the Council on Foreign Relations, and various veteran organizations. In 1991, he testified before the Senate intelligence committee in order to block the confirmation of Robert M. Gates as director of the CIA.
Recent News and Latest Book
“Rogue Nations” and “Failed States”: America Doesn’t Know the Difference
It would be easy to blame Donald Trump for the disarray in the transatlantic alliance, but twenty-five years of American exceptionalism is the real culprit. The aggressive expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the Clinton and Bush administrations over the objections of our West European allies began a period of discontinuity that still exists. Bush deepened the disarray in 2002 with his “axis of evil” speech that set the stage for the invasion of Iraq. Bush and Barack Obama considered Afghanistan the “good war,” which brought two full decades of chaos throughout Southwest Asia.
Robert M. Gates: Poster Child for Bureaucratic Deceit
From 2001 to 2015, the number of U.S. servicemen and women in Afghanistan exceeded 100,000, although four secretaries of defense (Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Gates, Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel) conceded privately that the war was not winnable and that no strategy would alter our glide path to defeat.
