Grappling with centuries-old feuds, defeating a shrewd insurgency, and navigating the sometimes paralyzing bureaucracy of the U.S. military are issues that prompt sleepless nights for both policy makers in Washington and soldiers at war, albeit for different reasons. Few, however, have dealt with these issues in the White House situation room and on the front line. Michael G. Waltz has done just that, working as a policy advisor to Vice President Richard B. Cheney and also serving in the mountains of Afghanistan as a Green Beret, directly implementing strategy in the field that he helped devise in Washington. In Warrior Diplomat: A Green Beret’s Battles from Washington to Afghanistan Waltz shares his unique firsthand experiences, revealing the sights, sounds, emotions, and complexities involved in the war in Afghanistan. Waltz also highlights the policy issues that have plagued the war effort throughout the past decade, from the drug trade, to civilian casualties, to a lack of resources in comparison to Iraq, to the overall coalition strategy. At the same time, he points out that stabilizing Afghanistan and the region remains crucial to national security and that a long-term commitment along the lines of South Korea or Germany is imperative if America is to remain secure.

A new investigation of the role of the modern soldier/diplomat and the nature of military negotiation, in comparison with negotiation in other key contexts. This new book presents a detailed analysis of the role of the military in current operations as negotiators and liaison workers in the field. It shows how very few in the academic world are writing on this specific role of the military and the nature of negotiation in this situation, and such a volatile context. This publication is a first in this context, and has a keen audience in light of the current world order. This study breaks new ground in analyzing the nature of military negotiation in relation to more generic forms of negotiation, and assessing the role of the modern soldier/diplomat in recent deployments around the world. The author is an academic working within the military environment, very few people have the same capacity and accessibility to firsthand evidence and observation. Whilst peacekeeping has grown in the last decade or so, no-one has successfully investigated the role of the military and their approach to non-violent conflict resolution on the ground as few have access to such work to make a viable detailed assessment of the nature of negotiation in a violent context, but Dr Goodwin is able to do so.