For years, I’ve been researching, writing, speaking, advising, and ranting about systemic problems in foreign-policy making, especially with regards to complex conflicts, stabilization and reconstruction, and international development. Today, Melissa Gregg and I submitted the full draft of our joint monograph, “The Dual-System Problem in Complex Conflicts,” arguing that policy systems today are fundamentally unadapted to the complex […]
Read more...Category: Policy & Strategy
Unlearned Lessons and the Dual-System Problem (SSI commentary)
By Robert D. Lamb ■ My most recent commentary focuses why policy systems so often fail to institutionalize lessons learned with respect to conflict, fragility, and development—and what the research community can do differently to help policy makers overcome barriers to effectiveness. > Read the full commentary here
Read more...Thoughts on “Ungoverned Areas and Threats from Safe Havens”
It feels strange that my name (to the degree anyone knows who I am) is still associated with the term “ungoverned” — I hate the term and use it only in scare quotes today, as should be clear to anyone who’s read the final report of the Ungoverned Areas Project (which I led as a Defense Department […]
Read more...Advances and Challenges in Political Transitions: What Will the Future of Conflict Look Like? (CSIS report)
Edited By Robert D. Lamb and Johanna Mendelson Forman ■ The United States has provided support to political transitions worldwide for many years. But it was just 20 years ago that the U.S. government established an office specifically to respond when regimes or conflicts ended and to maintain momentum toward positive change. Today’s conflicts, however, are […]
Read more...How Will We Learn? (CSIS keynote)
By Robert D. Lamb ■ In my final keynote address as CSIS’s conflict director (and my most popular talk to date), I reviewed decades of “lessons learned” in peace and conflict to reveal 15 themes the peacebuilding and stabilization field can’t seem to get right. “When will we learn?” is the wrong question. The more useful question is: “How will […]
Read more...South Asia Regional Dynamics and Strategic Concerns: A Framework for U.S. Policy and Strategy in South Asia, 2014–2026 (CSIS report)
By Robert D. Lamb, Sadika Hameed, and Kathryn Mixon ■ Once the United States withdraws most or all of its forces from Afghanistan, what issues are likely to continue to be of concern to U.S. policymakers in South Asia? What regional dynamics are likely to affect their ability to achieve policy priorities there? While the United […]
Read more...All of My Afghanistan and Pakistan Research in One Place
Quoting from my program’s page at CSIS summarizing our four years of research on Afghanistan and Pakistan: Since 2010, the Program on Crisis, Conflict, and Cooperation (C3) has studied security, governance, and politics in Afghanistan and Pakistan to find potential paths to stability and prosperity. One line of research, focusing on service provision and governance, studied […]
Read more...New COIN Manual
The new, revised Counterinsurgency Field Manual has been published — and I’m pleased to see that it’s actually incorporated a lot of my work on governance and legitimacy (including a page-and-a-half quote from a report I wrote in 2012, and reference to my PhD thesis)! I think this is the first big-time citation of my […]
Read more...Beyond Lessons Learned: Reengaging the Public about Civilian Capabilities
By Robert D. Lamb ■ Originally published in Stability Operations 9, no. 1 (October 2013) ■ It is easy to find examples of successful stabilization and reconstruction projects: just ask any agency that has funded one and the companies or organizations that implemented it. Or ask those of us who have led independent evaluations of […]
Read more...MAC: Prototype of a Tool Linking Program Designs and Local Conditions
I spent a good part of last year on a UK-funded project on “absorptive capacity” — which I think too many people in the international development community still think of as “why can’t poor people spend our money better?” Our answer to that, though this research, was basically: “Because we keep asking them to do […]
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