Risa Brooks is Allis Chalmers Professor of Political Science at Marquette University, an adjunct scholar at West Point’s Modern War Institute, and a nonresident senior associate in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Professor Brooks is the author of Shaping Strategy: The Civil-Military Politics of Strategic Assessment (Princeton University Press, 2008). She is also coeditor (with Lionel Beehner and Daniel Maurer) of the Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations: Politics, Society and Modern War (Oxford University Press) and coeditor (with Elizabeth Stanley) of Creating Military Power: The Sources of Military Effectiveness (Stanford University Press, 2007). She received her PhD from the University of California, San Diego, and her professional experiences include positions as research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and postdoctoral fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. She has served as associate editor for the academic journals International Security and Security Studies. Her research interests include US and global/comparative civil-military relations, political violence and militant organizations, and the Middle East and North Africa region.