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Linda Robinson is a senior fellow for women and foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Robinson is a distinguished author, analyst, and prize-winning former foreign correspondent with forty years of experience in international affairs and national security. Her research and journalism have taken her around the world, and she frequently lectures at international conferences. She has testified before Congress multiple times. At CFR, Robinson is writing a book on global women’s leadership. Her areas of research and writing also include women’s political participation and economic empowerment.
Robinson was a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation from 2013 to 2022, where she also directed the Center for Middle East Public Policy from 2020 to 2022. Her wide-ranging research at RAND received five awards. She co-authored over twenty RAND publications including Rethinking U.S. Strategy in the Middle East: Sustainable Partnerships, Strategic Investments (2021); Making Victory Count After Defeating ISIS (2017); and Improving Strategic Competence: Lessons from 13 Years of War (2014). Her trade books One Hundred Victories (2013), Tell Me How This Ends (2008), and Masters of Chaos (2004) were critically acclaimed, best-selling works of reportage published by PublicAffairs. She also wrote Intervention or Neglect (1991), a book about U.S. policy in Central America. She has published widely in major newspapers and foreign affairs journals and provided commentary on PBS’s Washington Week in Review and other programs.
Robinson was previously a fellow at CFR, the Wilson Center, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. She was a foreign correspondent and senior writer for U.S. News and World Report and senior editor of Foreign Affairs magazine. In government service, Robinson served as chair of the Army War College Board of Visitors, for which she received the Outstanding Civilian Service Award. She has also served in other advisory capacities, most recently as senior advisor at the U.S. State Department for the U.S. Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability.
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The world’s nations are lagging woefully behind in meeting targets for achieving gender equality by 2030, but a new round of initiatives has stirred hope of progress.
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Find out where women around the world wield political power—and why it matters.
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As a journalist, book author, and sometime adviser with frequent visits to Afghanistan between 2002 and 2015, I offer this distillation of lessons that we might learn from the United States’ longest war.
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The rise in attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan by members of Afghan forces may have serious implications for the overall campaign in Afghanistan, as the endangerment of troops calls into question plans for a sustained advisory presence past 2014, says CFR’s Linda Robinson.
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Osama bin Laden’s killing helped spawn a crisis in Pakistan and left tough al-Qaeda-affiliated movements in the Mideast and Africa, says CFR’s Linda Robinson.
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What is the best way to stabilize Afghanistan at a time when international forces are scaling down commitments? Putting Afghan troops in the lead of their own counterinsurgency efforts, writes CFR’s Linda Robinson.
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