Seth Jones

Biography

Seth G. Jones is presently senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, where he worked from 2003 to 2009.

He served as the representative for the commander, U.S. Special Operations Command, to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations in 2010, and in 2011, as a plans officer and advisor to the commanding general, U.S. Special Operations Forces, in Afghanistan (Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command–Afghanistan).

From 2002-2009, he was Adjunct Professor, Security Studies Program, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, where he taught classes on "Counterinsurgency" and "Stability Operations."

He has also served as Adjunct Professor, Center for Homeland Defense and Security, United States Naval Postgraduate School, since 2005.

Jones attracted considerable attention for his historical analysis of Afghanistan and Pakistan in his book In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan. The book examines the collapse of the Zahir Shah regime, the rise of the anti-Soviet war, the Afghan civil war in the early 1990s, the Taliban take-over of much of the country in the late 1990s, the U.S-led overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001, and the subsequent insurgency.

Jones also received considerable attention for his work with Ambassador James Dobbins on nation-building. Their RAND book America's Role in Nation-Building, which examined the U.S. history of nation-building since World War II, suggested that the U.S. needed nearly 500,000 soldiers to stabilize Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's government. L. Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, took the study to U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush. Based on the study's conclusions, Bremer suggested that the United States military needed to reconsider downsizing its forces in Iraq and, on the contrary, increase them to help patrol cities and villages. But Bremer's memo was ignored.

Jones is the author of The Rise of European Security Cooperation (Cambridge University Press, 2007). He has published articles on U.S. foreign policy in The National Interest, Political Science Quarterly, Security Studies, the Chicago Journal of International Law, International Affairs, and Survival, as well as such newspapers and magazines as The New York Times, Newsweek, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, and Chicago Tribune.

He was graduated from Bowdoin College in 1995, and received his MA (1999) and PhD (2004) from the University of Chicago.

Jones is married and has two daughters.

Foreign Policy Views

On March 21, 2017, Seth G. Jones outlines an Afghanistan foreign policy strategy for the new Trump administration, in the article, “How Trump Should Manage Afghanistan: A Realistic Set of Goals for the New Administration.” (Jones) Jones describes that the current administration faces major issues in Afghanistan. The country is still a vital state in combating the war on terror. Jones discusses that the United States should have a realistic set of goals for Afghanistan. He states, “The United States should thus not expect the Afghan government to defeat the Taliban on the battlefield over the next four years of the administration. Instead, Washington should set a more realistic goal: to ensure that the Taliban doesn’t win. In order to do this, Washington could take several steps.” (Jones) Jones lays out two main areas the United States should focus on. First, the United States should continue to encourage for governance reform in the country. Past elections have been riddled with corruption. The United States has to push to make sure this does not happen. He also determined that the United States should encourage a “diplomatic reconciliation” with the Taliban. The next point Jones makes has to do with the amount of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. General Nicholson has requested, “several thousand additional troops.” (Jones) Jones concludes that this is a reasonable request.

Selected works

Books

Articles