NSA Alumus promoted and published

Abstract

Colonel Michael Fenzel (US Army), who defended his ph.D. dissertation in the NSA Department in 2013 ("No Retreat: the Failure of Soviet Decision-making in the Afghan War, 1979-1989"), has been promoted to brigadier general (BG). His next assignment will be in Afghanistan. Based on the dissertation, his book, No Miracles: The Failure of Soviet Decision-Making in the Afghan War is being published by Stanford University press (November 2017). In his book, BG Fenzel explores why and how that although the Soviet Union's senior leaders had become aware that their strategy in Afghanistan was unraveling, their operational and tactical methods were not working, and the sacrifices they were demanding from the Soviet people and military were unlikely to produce the forecasted results, operations in Afghanistan persisted for four more years.