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About the Author
Dr. Roby C. Barrett is a senior fellow with the Joint Special Operations
University (JSOU) Center for Special Operations Studies and
Research. He has over 35 years of government, business, and academic experience
in the Middle East and Africa. He is the president of a consulting firm
specializing in technology applications and systems
for national defense and security and has experience
in space systems, nuclear issues, police and security
systems, command and control, technology development,
and weapons acquisition as related to U.S.
and allied governments. His current research focus is
strategic security issues in the Persian/Arabian Gulf,
including Islam, Iran, the Arabian Peninsula, and
the collapse of state structure in the Levant. He is a
former Foreign Service officer in the Middle East with
postings in Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the
Arabian Gulf.
As a founder of the National History Center within the American Historical
Association, Dr. Barrett specializes in the application of broad historical
and conceptual paradigms to issues of ongoing political and military
conflict and the projection of future trends. He is an area expert and fellow
at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. He provides domestic and
international media commentary on a range of issues from the Palestinian
territories to nuclear proliferation and the challenges of Russian policy in the
Middle East and North Africa.
Dr. Barrett is the senior advisor to the board of directors of the Bilateral
Arab-U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the lead panelist on Middle East and
South Asian Policy, and participates in the Congressional Fellowship Program,
American Political Science Association, and Johns Hopkins School
for Advanced International Studies. He has been a featured panelist for the
German Council on Foreign Relations on Middle East and Gulf Affairs.
Dr. Barrett was an Eisenhower-Roberts fellow of the Eisenhower Institute
in Washington D.C., a Rotary International fellow at the Russian and East
European Institute at the University of Munich, and a Scottish Rite Research
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