Swarthmore political professor and author Dominic Tierney has a national perspective on an international subject: war.

And for the Council's International Perspective Series, he will discuss "The American Way of War: Why We Struggle and How We Can Start Winning Again."

In responding to a scholarly discussion of war on the Michigan State H-Net diplomatic discussion site, he once vividly explained the challenge of adopting an enduring philosophy of war. "America’s experience of war over the last two centuries is an immensely complex topic, and offering a widely applicable theory is a forbidding task. How can we possibly generalize about the diverse experiences of millions of people in missions as varied as the Civil War, counter-insurgency in the Philippines, the invasion of Panama, and Afghanistan today?"

His knowledge of international conflict also extends to the Middle East. Writing for The Atlantic in July, he suggested that Syria's Assad regime was involved in "the devil's gambit," encouraging the rise of ISIS. He wrote, “For Assad, ISIS is priceless. The Sunni extremist boogeyman holds the key to his political survival. As ISIS continues its assault in Iraq … Assad has cemented his alliance with Baghdad, as well as with Iran, Hezbollah and Russia.” Tierney predicted that the U.S. would continue airstrikes as a means of strategic containment.

Tierney, who earned a PhD in international politics at Oxford, serves as an assistant professor of politics at Swarthmore College and is the author or co-author of several books dealing with politics and war.