Vanda Felbab-Brown, a Fellow of Foreign Policy and the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution, will present a public talk titled, "Shooting Up: Illicit Economies and Military Conflict" at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, December 7, in Bowl 016, Robertson Hall on the Princeton University campus.

Felbab-Brown focuses on the national security implications of illicit economies and strategies for managing them. She is an adjunct professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

Her research interests include drugs and other illicit economies; counternarcotics policies; insurgency; civil war; terrorism; conflict management; stability operations and reconstruction; positive versus coercive inducement strategies; Latin America; Afghanistan; Colombia; Burma/Myanmar; Peru; Somalia; and U.S. foreign policy.

She is the author of the new book “Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs” (Brookings Institute Press, 2009) which analyzes how involvement in the production and trafficking of illicit commodities, especially drugs, affects the strength of insurgents and governments. In the book the  author challenges the narcoguerrilla premise of U.S. policy abroad which is organized around the premise that the suppression of drug production will service both anti-drug and counterterrorist goals.

This event is sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School and is free and open to the public.