Sebastian Gorka

Sebastian Gorka
Born United Kingdom
Education Ph.D. in Political Science
Alma mater University of London
Corvinus University of Budapest
Occupation Professor, author
Website thegorkabriefing.com

Sebastian L. Gorka is a national security professional specializing in irregular warfare, including counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. He is a full-time Professor of Strategy and Irregular Warfare and Vice President for National Security Support of the Institute of World Politics[1] in Washington, DC and the Chairman of Threat Knowledge Group. Previously he served as the Major General Matthew C. Horner Distinguished Chair of Military Theory at the Marine Corps University.[2] He is a founding member of the Council for Emerging National Security Affairs[3] and has served as the Associate Dean for Congressional Affairs and Relations to the Special Operations Community at the National Defense University. Gorka is also currently affiliated with USSOCOM’s Joint Special Operations University, and [4] is a regular instructor for the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School in Fort Bragg, as well as the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. He has testified before Congress[5] on the threat of ISIS and Global Jihadism and briefed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Intelligence Council, the National Counterterrorism Center and the Commandant of the Marine Corps.[6] Born in the United Kingdom to Hungarian parents, Gorka became an American citizen in 2012.[7]

Gorka is the author of 2016 New York Times bestseller [8] book, Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War published by Regnery.[7]

Early life and education

Sebastian Gorka is the son of Paul and Susan Gorka who escaped from Communist Hungary during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. He was born and raised in the U.K. where he attended St. Benedict’s School for Boys, Ealing Abbey, and received his first degree from the University of London.[6]

Gorka married Katharine Cornell Gorka on July 6, 1996 in Hungary.[9]

Gorka is a graduate of the University of London where he received his Bachelor of Arts honors degree in Philosophy and Theology. At university, he joined the British Territorial Army reserves, serving in the Intelligence Corps. [10]

He holds a Masters in International Relations and Diplomacy from the Budapest University of Economic Sciences and Public Administration. After that institution was renamed the Corvinus University of Budapest, he went on to study for, and receive a Ph.D. in Political Science, writing a dissertation on the strategic differences between the politically motivated terrorism of the Cold War and religiously motivated terrorists such as Al Qaeda.[11]

Gorka was also a Kokkalis Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Gorka was detained January 2016 at the Ronald Reagan Airport in Washington D.C. for attempting to board a plane with a handgun in his luggage. Gorka was charged with a weapons offense.[12][13]

Career

Sebastian Gorka briefing at SOCOM Wargame Center
Gorka briefing at SOCOM Wargame Center

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, Gorka left the U.K. to work in the first freely-elected government of the newly democratic Republic of Hungary. In Budapest he served in the Ministry of Defense for 5 years working on international security issues and Hungary’s future accession into NATO.

In 1997 Gorka was awarded the second Partnership for Peace International Research Fellowship at the NATO Defense College in Rome.[14]

In 1998 Gorka was awarded the Kokkalis Fellowship at Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government. At Harvard he became one of the founding members of the Council on Emerging National Security Affairs, CENSA.[3] Before starting the second year of his public policy fellowship, he was hired by the RAND Corporation in the fields of transatlantic security and counterterrorism. In 2000 Gorka moved back to Budapest to establish and head the Center for Euro-Atlantic Integration and Democracy, where he continued his work on security.

After the September 11th attacks of 2001, Gorka became a public figure in Hungary when he was asked by Magyar Televízió, the Hungarian National Television Corporation, to provide live commentary on the events occurring in the United States, and then later in Afghanistan and around the world as part of the Global War on Terror. One year later he was asked to serve as an official expert on the parliamentary investigatory committee created to uncover the Communist background of the new Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Medgyessy. It had been revealed, soon after the 2002 general election, that Medgyessy, who had served in the Communist government prior to 1989, had been an undercover officer in the Secret Police, the organization which had maintained the previous dictatorship and helped crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.[15] Gorka rejected Medgyessy's claims of having not spied on people when he was a secret policemen.[16]

After the committee's mandate elapsed, Gorka and his wife Katharine Gorka established The Institute for Transitional Democracy and International Security, an independent think-tank. The group focuses on issues of international security and democratic transition in post-dictatorial regions. Katharine Gorka had been the director of the USAID-funded Democracy Network program for Central and Eastern Europe. All through the 1990s and early 2000s, Gorka was a contributor to the Jane's Defence Weekly group of publications out of the U.K., writing for Jane's Intelligence Review and others.

In 2004, Gorka joined the faculty of the new US initiative, the Program for Terrorism and Security Studies (PTSS), a Defense Department-funded program based out of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmsich-Partenkirchen, Germany.[17] At the same time Gorka began to teach for USSOCOM's Joint Special Operations University, MacDill Air Force Base. He served on the faculty of the PTSS until he and his family moved to the United States in 2008. In America Gorka joined the US Defense Department as a professor for the National Defense University, Fort McNair, Washington D.C. There he taught on the ASD(SOLIC)-funded Masters Program in Irregular Warfare and Counterterrorism as part of the Combating Terrorism Fellowship Program,[18] where he was named Associate Dean of Congressional Affairs and Relations to the Special Operations Community. Gorka then left government service in order to assume the privately-endowed Major General Horner Distinguished Chair of Military Theory at the Marine Corps University.[2] In August 2016, he joined The Institute of World Politics on a full-time basis as Professor of Strategy and Irregular Warfare, and also serves as Vice President for National Security Support.[1]

With his wife, Katharine Gorka, he also runs the private Virginia-based company Threat Knowledge Group. TKG provides training and strategic support to the armed services, the FBI, elements of the US Intelligence Community, and state and local law enforcement.[19] He is co-author and editor of several reports through TKG.

Between 2011-2013 Gorka taught US National Security and Foreign Policy for Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy.[4]

Since 2014 Gorka has acted as editor for National Security Affairs for the Breitbart News Network.[20]

Since 2015 he has maintained TheGorkaBriefing.com, a site which hosts his public analyses and media interviews.[21] Gorka has appeared on the BBC and CNN, and is a regular guest on the FOX News Channel, the FOX Business Network, WABC’s the John Batchelor Show, the Sam Sorbo Show, and the Lars Larson Show.

Gorka is a two-time recipient of the US Department of Defense Joint Civilian Service Commendation, first awarded to him the by US Special Operation Command.[22]

Policy Positions

Gorka presenting his testimony, "Ten Years On: The Evolution of the Terrorist Threat," to the House Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, June 22, 2011
Gorka presenting his testimony, "Ten Years On: The Evolution of the Terrorist Threat," to the House Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, June 22, 2011

In his articles, Congressional testimony,[23] and his 2016 book, Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War,[7] Gorka claims that since 9/11 America has become superb at applying force against high value terrorist targets, whether through the use of drone strikes or Special Operations raids, but is still losing the war against what he terms the "Global Jihadi Movement" (GJM). This lack of success is the result, according to Gorka, of America failing to counter the ideology of Global Jihadism and the Obama Administration's belief that terrorism is the result of unemployment and lack of education instead of ideology.

Gorka has argued[24] that America acts astrategically due in part to the influence of the Cold War. According to Gorka, This lack of strategic behavior has made decision makers and strategists reactive instead of proactive and fundamentally incapable of prioritizing American national interests.

Gorka has claimed that Carl von Clausewitz's writings (or flawed interpretations of his works) have had a negative impact on the Western understanding of unconventional warfare.[25]

In the post-2001 debate between the pro- and anti-Counter-insurgency (COIN) circles, Gorka has argued that COIN and FM 3-24, or the so-called "Petraeus Manual", were un-American approaches and fatally flawed choices for both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gorka has frequently criticized[26] the intrusion of politics and what he describes as political correctness into counterterrorism practices and policies. Gorka has claimed that both the Bush and Obama administrations have excised mention of religion when analyzing and discussing the terrorist threat, which he says has made America less capable of defeating groups like Al Qaeda or the Islamic State. Gorka has advocated the teaching of works of key Jihadist theorists within the military and law enforcement communities and the inclusion of their Enemy Threat Doctrine within the intelligence cycle.[23]

Publications

Congressional Testimony

References

  1. 1 2 Phillips, Quinn. "Sebastian Gorka to join IWP faculty full-time this August". www.iwp.edu. Retrieved 2016-08-02.
  2. 1 2 "Academic Chairs | Sebastian L. Gorka Ph.D.". www.mcu.usmc.mil. Retrieved 2016-06-03.
  3. 1 2 "The Council for Emerging National Security Affairs (CENSA) - Board of Advisors". www.censa.net. Retrieved 2016-06-03.
  4. 1 2 "Sebastian Gorka". www.iwp.edu. Retrieved 2016-06-03.
  5. 1 2 "HASC Testimony | The Gorka Briefing". The Gorka Briefing. 2016-02-08. Retrieved 2016-06-03.
  6. 1 2 "About Dr. Sebastian Gorka | The Gorka Briefing". The Gorka Briefing. 2014-12-01. Retrieved 2016-06-03.
  7. 1 2 3 Gorka, Sebastian (2016-04-11). Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War. Regnery Publishing. ISBN 9781621574576.
  8. ↑ "E-Book Nonfiction Books - Best Sellers - The New York Times". Retrieved 2016-06-27.
  9. ↑ "WEDDINGS;Katharine Cornell, Sebestyen Gorka". The New York Times. 1996-07-07. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-06-03.
  10. ↑ provide source
  11. ↑ Gorka, Sebestyén (2007). "Content and End-State-based Alteration in the Practice of Political Violence since the End of the Cold War: the difference between the terrorism of the Cold War and the terrorism of al Qaeda: the rise of the "transcendental terrorist" (PDF). Corvinus University of Budapest. Retrieved June 3, 2016.
  12. ↑ "www.washingtonpost.com". Retrieved 2016-02-01.
  13. ↑ Case# CR16001184-00 Virginia Court Case System
  14. ↑ Gorka, Sebestyén (1997). "Invocation of Article Five: Five Years On". NATO Review. NATO. Retrieved June 3, 2016.
  15. ↑ Matild, Torkos. "Titkos ügynök a kormány élén". mno.hu. Retrieved 2016-06-03.
  16. ↑ "Secret service past returns to haunt Hungary's leaders". The Independent. 2002-08-26. Retrieved 2016-06-03.
  17. ↑ "George C. Marshall Center - European Center for Security Studies - Public Web - ttest". www.marshallcenter.org. Retrieved 2016-06-03.
  18. ↑ "Combating Terrorism Fellowship Program (CTFP) | The Official Home of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency". www.dsca.mil. Retrieved 2016-06-03.
  19. ↑ "About". Threat Knowledge Group. 2014-10-17. Retrieved 2016-06-03.
  20. ↑ "Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Author at Breitbart". Breitbart. Retrieved 2016-06-03.
  21. ↑ "The Gorka Briefing with Dr. Sebastian Gorka". The Gorka Briefing. 2013-10-21. Retrieved 2016-06-03.
  22. ↑ "Sebastian Gorka Ph.D. | LinkedIn". www.linkedin.com. Retrieved 2016-06-03.
  23. 1 2 "Resources | The Gorka Briefing". The Gorka Briefing. 2015-04-20. Retrieved 2016-06-03.
  24. ↑ "Discussion on the Rise and Power of ISIS". C-SPAN.org. Retrieved 2016-06-03.
  25. ↑ "Age of IW: So What?". Issuu. Retrieved 2016-06-03.
  26. ↑ "Obama Neuters War on Islamic Terrorists". Accuracy In Media. 2012-05-23. Retrieved 2016-06-03.
  27. ↑ HASCRepublicans (2011-06-22), Ten Years On: The Evolution of the Terrorist Threat Since 9/11, retrieved 2016-06-04
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