On 20-24 September 2021, the NESA Center hosted a delegation from the Iraq Capstone and Iraq’s National Defense College for a five-day seminar series. Amidst the ongoing Iraq-United States Strategic Dialogue, the United States Department of Defense sought to provide its Iraqi counterparts with a survey of the professional military education (PME) methods to ranking officers in the United States Armed Forces for the benefit of Iraq’s military education system.

Over the course of ten seminars, members of the NESA Center’s faculty and guest speakers delivered remarks on the fundamentals of PME and military strategy in the United States. Day one started with NESA Director LTG (Ret) Terry Wolff and NESA Professor Richard Wiersema. The following days of the seminar included NESA Professor Daniel Curfiss, NESA Professor Dr. Michael Bell, Ambassador (Ret) Marc Grossman, NESA Professor Ali Ahmad Jalali, NESA Professor David DesRoches, and NESA Professor Dr. Michael Sharnoff. They delivered lectures on a variety of topics, including thoughts on COVID-19, the national security policymaking process in the United States, foreign policy challenges, strategic leadership, an introduction to the U.S. government, policy decision making, perspectives on senior professional military education, a diplomat’s perspective on Afghanistan and the Taliban’s road to Kabul, asymmetric warfare and regional considerations.

Members of the Iraqi delegation also had the chance to engage with NESA faculty members and guest speakers in dialogue, asking hard-hitting questions of speakers and providing an Iraqi perspective on the multitude of issues discussed throughout the week.

The views presented in this article are those of the speaker or author and do not necessarily represent the views of DoD or its components.