Faculty

Colonel Cassidy joined the Naval War College faculty in August 2011. He is a senior fellow with the Center for Advanced Defense Studies and is a member of the Royal United Services Institute Advisory Board.  Cassidy has master’s degrees in international relations, diplomacy, and strategy from Boston University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and the Naval War College. He has the Diplôme d'Études Supérieures de Défense from the French Joint Defense College. He earned his Ph.D. from the Fletcher School where he concentrated in strategy, security studies, and international law. Colonel Cassidy has served in a variety of organizations as a special operations strategic planner, a battalion commander, a special assistant to two senior generals, a brigade operations officer, a divisional cavalry executive officer, an airborne air cavalry troop commander, a support platoon leader, and a scout platoon leader.  He also served as an assistant professor of international relations at West Point and as an NCO interrogator in the 82nd Airborne Division.  Colonel Cassidy has served on several operational deployments, to Iraq, Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf, Egypt, and Grenada. He most recently served as the special assistant to the commander of ISAF Joint Command in Afghanistan from June 2010 to June 2011. Colonel Cassidy has published a number of articles on irregular warfare and is the author of three books that include Peacekeeping in the Abyss and Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror.  

The Marine Corps University Press published his latest book in January 2012. This recent book is a study of the insurgencies and counterinsurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan for the first decade of the wars there since 2001. Some of his published work is below.