Bing West

F.J. Bing West is a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly. He previously served as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, responsible for defense policy around the globe during the Reagan administration. An expert on the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as defense, national security and geopolitical issues, he penned The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq.

West is also the author of six books on national security and the military. His Vietnam classic, The Village, has been on Commandant of the Marine Corps Reading List for twenty years. His novel, The Pepperdogs, is in film development by Universal Studios. The March Up won the Marine Corps Heritage Prize and the Colby Award for Military History in 2004. His most recent book, No True Glory, was cited in The Washington Post as a “top ten” book on foreign policy and won the 2006 National Media Award from the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Film rights to No True Glory were sold to Universal, with Harrison Ford to play the lead role. West wrote the first screen treatment.

West was cited by The Los Angeles Times as one of the top ten journalists covering Iraq, where he has made 11 trips over the past four years and embedded with over 30 US battalions. His articles appear regularly in The Atlantic Monthly, The Wall St. Journal, The New York Times and Slate, and in professional journals like the Military Review. He appears frequently on The News Hour, CSPAN and NPR.

A graduate of Georgetown University and Princeton University, he served as a Marine infantry officer in Vietnam, seeing combat in the villages and jungles. His subsequent travels to battlefields include El Salvador, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Kuwait, Iraq, the Congo, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, The Philippines and Korea. He has also been an analyst at the Rand Corporation, a visiting professor at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, Dean of Research at the Naval War College and Vice President of The Hudson Institute.

His awards include the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Medal, the Department of the Navy Distinguished Civilian Service Medal and Tunisia’s Medaille de Liberté. He is a consultant to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and a member of the Middle East Institute, St. Crispin's Order of the Infantry and the Council on Foreign Relations.