SWJ Blog is a multi-author blog publishing news and commentary on the various goings on across the broad community of practice.  We gladly accept guest posts from serious voices in the community.

Iran's Political, Demographic, and Economic Vulnerabilities by Keith Crane, Rollie Lal and Jeffrey Martini; Rand Corporation Monograph. Iran is one of the United States' most important foreign...

Charlie Rose Show - A conversation with two former Secretaries of State, James Baker and Warren Christopher, about the war powers debate. National War Powers Commission - Miller Center of Public...

Major General Kevin Bergner, MNF-I Spokesman, and Rear Admiral Kathleen Dussault, Joint Contracting Command-Iraq/Afghanistan Commander, speak with reporters in Baghdad on 9 July 2008.

Worlds of Enemy Combatants By Michael Innes - Cross-posted at CTLab On 3 July, The New Republic's TNR Conversation with Josh Patashnik hosted the Brookings Institution's Benjamin Wittes, author of...

Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt Remarks at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Future Land Warfare Conference 12 June 2008 The Land Environment -- Moving Towards 2018...

New MH-53M Helicopter Exhibit Opens By Rob Bardua, National Museum of the US Air Force Several high ranking officials from Air Force Special Operations Command, industry and the community recently...

... There is certainly a wide body of criticism of FM 3-24, to which most of the regulars here are familiar with. Many units who have employed the FM have found strengths and shortfalls in the manual...

Charlie Rose Show - An hour with Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough. David McCullough has been widely acclaimed as a "master of the art of narrative history," "a matchless writer." He is...

Iraq's Water Woes By Captain Timothy Hsia News today in Iraq is centered on contracts currently being negotiated between the Government of Iraq and major oil companies. This has occupied much of the...

Rear Admiral Patrick Driscoll, MNF-I Spokesman, and Brigadier Carew Wilks, Director of Energy Operations for the Multi-National Force-Iraq Energy Fusion Cell, brief reporters in Baghdad on 6 July...

Part I of selected excerpts from Small Wars II, an unpublished U.S. Marine Corps document written in 2003. Noel Williams is the primary author. The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of...

The Syria Card By David J. Haimsky The ongoing, peace talks between Israel and Syria have been relatively underreported in the news media, and are surprisingly seldom discussed in policy circles in...

Since 1922, Military Review has provided a forum for the open exchange of ideas on military affairs. Subsequently, publications have proliferated throughout the Army education system that specialize...

I thought I'd share with SWJ readership an article recently published in Army magazine (May 2008). In particular - I draw your attention to discussion of our infatuation with the term "Irregular...

Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH) asks the question: Is the American era in the Middle East over? The argument was first made by Richard Haass in a Foreign Affairs article published in 2006....

Symbols of America - US Department of Defense Bush, Mullen Send Independence Day Greetings - John Kruzel, AFPS Independence Days - George Will, Washington Post Vindicators of the Declaration -...

I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory! --Signature line of Small Wars Council member William F. Owen

The Marine Corps of 2025 will fight and win our Nation's battles with multicapable MAGTFs, either from the sea or in sustained operations ashore. Our unique role as the Nation's force in readiness,...

We received an e-mail several days ago concerning the new American University of Iraq and getting an entry posted here has been at the top of our list... Our partner in the Afghanistan COIN Academy...

Expeditionary Law Enforcement By John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus Cross-posted at Defense and the National Interest where it was originally published on 29 June 2008. Washington is overflowing with...

A Unified General Framework of Insurgency Using a Living Systems Approach by Ensign Shanece Kendall, Naval Post Graduate School, June 2008. This thesis develops a unified general framework of...

Australian Army Journal Special Edition: Counterinsurgency This edition of the Australian Army Journal marks a departure from established practice in that it is a thematic edition dedicated...

Colonel Lewis Craparotta, Commander of Regimental Combat Team 1, speaks from from Camp Fallujah, providing an update on ongoing security operations in western Iraq on 30 June 2008. Colonel Robert...

Occupation Plan for Iraq Faulted in Army History - Michael Gordon, New York Times ... The story of the American occupation of Iraq has been the subject of numerous books, studies and memoirs. But...

General David H Petraeus: The General's Knowledge - Charles Sennott, The Sunday Times General David H Petraeus, the commander of US forces in Iraq, looked exhausted. A competitive miler who loves to...

Today's Financial Times contains a detailed and thought provoking article by Andrew Woods on efforts by Major General Douglas Stone and Task Force 134 in conducting "counterinsurgency inside the...

Charlie Rose Show - A discussion about North Korea's Declaration of Nuclear Materials with David Sanger, White House correspondent for The New York Times.

With a hat tip to Daniel Troy of the Consortium for Complex Operations - United Press International recently ran a three part series titled Emerging Threats: USAF Counterinsurgency authored by Shaun...

The latest issue of Joint Force Quarterly has been posted. JFQ is published for the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, by the Institute for National Security Studies, National Defense University, to...

Notes Towards a Theory of Information Operations (IO) - Marc Tyrrell, In Harmonium Yesterday (June 26, 2008), Andrew Exum posted a blog entry over at Small Wars Journal on Information Operations. As...