Francis J. "Bing" West is an American author, Marine combat veteran and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the Reagan Administration. West writes about the military, warfighting, and counterinsurgency. In the Vietnam War, he fought in major operations and conducted over a hundred combat patrols in 1966–1968. For the United States Marine Corps, he wrote the training manual Small Unit Action in Vietnam, describing how to fight in close combat. As an analyst at the RAND Corporation, he wrote a half dozen detailed monographs about fighting against an insurgency. Later, as Assistant Secretary of Defense, he dealt with the insurgencies in El Salvador. From 2003 through 2008, he made 16 extended trips to Iraq, going on patrols and writing three books and numerous articles about the war. From 2007 through 2011, he made numerous trips to embed in Afghanistan.
West is the author of ten books. His 2019 collaboration with Marine General Jim Mattis, entitled "Call Sign Chaos: Learing to Lead", was the #1 New York Times Bestseller. A prior book, written with retired Marine Major General Ray "E-Tool" Smith, The March Up, was awarded the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation's General Wallace M. Greene, Jr. Award for non-fiction, as well as the William E. Colby Award for military history. The Veterans of Foreign Wars presented West with its National Media Award in 2005, after he wrote the book No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah. His book The Strongest Tribe, is a history of the Iraq War that was a New York Times Best Seller and was ranked by Foreign Affairs magazine as #7 among the top foreign policy books of 2009. Into the Fire ranked #8 on the New York Times Best Seller List. In The Strongest Tribe and in a subsequent article in Military Review about counterinsurgency lessons, West argued that the current doctrine of nation-building and winning hearts and minds by economic development was based on Western liberal theory rather than the realities of battle. West has grave reservations about extolling the effects of "non-kinetic COIN". He believes that the warriors, not the people, defeat warriors, and that America's mistake in both Iraq and Afghanistan was to concede all authority to appoint and to remove for cause military and police officers. He believes American policymakers tried to do too much with too little in too short a time. His articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The National Review, and The Washington Post He is the recipient of the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Medal, the Marine Corps Heritage Award, the Goodpaster Prize for Military Scholarship, the Father Clyde E. Leonard Award, the Free Press Award, the Marine Corps Correspondents' Distinguished Performance Award, the Veterans of Foreign Wars' National Media Award and the Marine Corps Russell Award for Leadership.
