Barbara Elias

Barbara Elias is the Sarah & James Bowdoin associate professor of government & legal studies at Bowdoin College, specializing in international relations, insurgency warfare, U.S. foreign policy, national security, and Islam and politics. She is on the editorial board of the Irregular Warfare Initiative, a jointly sponsored program between the Modern War Institute at West Point and the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project at Princeton University. Elias received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in political science and was the director of the Afghanistan/Pakistan/Taliban Documentation Project at the National Security Archive in Washington D.C. Her first book, Why Allies Rebel: Defiant Local Partners in Counterinsurgency Wars (Cambridge University Press, 2020), was awarded the 2022 Best Book Award by the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) of the International Studies Association (ISA), as well as named Best International Security Book 2021 by the American Political Science Association (APSA). Her latest book project examines structural flaws in U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine in the U.S. interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam.

Elias’s project, “The Unexpected Home Front: Roots of Domestic Radicalization in U.S. Counterinsurgency Wars,” investigates how foreign military occupations affect domestic politics in democracies through a comparative examination of American and French counterinsurgent campaigns in Algeria, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The project analyzes key factors contributing to veteran radicalization and national polarization, including insurgent strategies designed to foster divisions, counterinsurgency strategic failures, narratives of futile sacrifice, and subsequent domestic political mobilization.