Seminar Abstract

The US targeted killing of Qassem Soleimani on a visit to Iraq is the biggest game-changing event in the Middle East in many years. Motives, implications and long-range consequences for multiple actors in and beyond the region are now matters of intense scrutiny amid much uncertainty. Dr Adam Garfinkle, a former member of the US State Department’s Policy Planning staff, Middle East policy specialist and Distinguished Visiting Fellow at RSIS, and Associate Professor Ahmed Hashim, Head of Horizon Threats and Strategies in RSIS’ Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, will sketch the issues at play.

About the Speakers

Adam Garfinkle is on a year-long engagement at RSIS as Distinguished Visiting Fellow.  Aside from being Founding Editor of The American Interest, Dr Garfinkle has served as Editor of The National Interest, as Principal Speechwriter to the US Secretary of State while attached to the Policy Planning Staff of the State Department, was chief writer of the Hart-Rudman Commission reports, and has taught at several institutions of higher education including SAIS/Johns Hopkins. His PhD in International Relations is from the University of Pennsylvania.

Ahmed S. Hashim is Associate Professor in the Military Studies Programme at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, RSIS, and specialises in Strategic Studies. ​He is Head of Horizon Threats and Strategies in IDSS and teaches in the Military Studies Program. He received his BA in Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick, Great Britain and his MSc and PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has worked extensively in the fields of Strategy and Policy dealing in particular with irregular war and counter-terrorism for the past 20 years prior to taking up his current position at RSIS in 2011 where he teaches courses on insurgency and counterinsurgency, terrorism, and defense policies at RSIS and SAFTI Military Institute (SAFTI MI). He is the author of several books including: Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq (Cornell University Press, 2006); When Counterinsurgency Wins: Sri Lanka’s Defeat of the LTTE (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); and The Caliphate at War: The Ideological, Military and Organizational Innovations of Islamic State (Oxford University Press, 2017). His forthcoming books include: The Iranian Way of War: From Cyrus the Great to Qassem Soleimani, (Hurst and Company, 2020); God, Greed and Guns: State-Formation and Nation Building in Iraq (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020); and Mighty Malians: Creation of National Security and Defence Policies in Qatar, the UAE, and Singapore (Oxford University Press and Hurst and Company, 2021).