Small Wars Journal is our professional e-journal.  It is distributed free of charge, subject to our terms of use. Journal Articles are typically longer works with more more analysis than th enews and commentary we publish in the SWJ Blog. We accept contributed content from serious voices across the small wars community, and present it here as quickly as we can per our Editorial Policy to help fuel timely, thoughtful, and unvarnished discussion of the diverse and complex issues inherent in small wars.

Without international intervention, Syria will continue to slip into deeper sectarianism, which is the worst case scenario for Iraq.

“Afghan Led” is a critical aspect of our counterinsurgency operations that we must grasp to enable ultimate mission success.

The uniformed analytic community largely lacks institutional expertise and struggles to provide commanders with meaningful intelligence products.

A scathing and scholarly critique of the impact of De-Ba’athification on the America’s efforts to stabilize Iraq. 

Further thought is required if this concept is going to succeed in the future.

Historians often turn wars and battles into linear sequences outlining casual chains for which the mind has a natural bias.

Transition can’t simply be, “We are leaving...good luck.”

The barbarians have come and the rules of war and peace stand transformed.

Cyber warfare isn’t hype; it’s real.  

 “We’ve won the war,” General Dan Halutz boasted.

What began as an Israeli air campaign rapidly evolved into an extensive ground war of bloody house-to-house battles that the Israelis were ill prepared to wage. 

Iranian inroads in Africa present a potential new front in the Iranian-US cold war.

An autocratic Iraq will probably be happier doing more business with China and Russia. But the idea of a Sino-Russian strategy in the Middle East is far from simple.

Using security cooperation to prevent, shape ... and win.

Implementing a provocative idea.

The conventional approach taken by most aid programs has been a counterproductive disaster.

Looking to Plan Colombia to create a Plan Yemen.

Or how to shatter organizational stagnation and identify critical tensions preventing creative thinking and improvisation.

The authors lay out the “courses of action” available to Iran at sea, air, ground, in other countries and by conducting terrorism around the globe.

The killing of this (unprivileged, unlawful) combatant enjoyed ample legal authority under both international and domestic law, and is, as a matter of law and policy,...

A look inside the increasingly pivotal nation.

Lebanon has a political system, security force, and national memory to weather the current storm. 

Guadalajara could lose its protected status among drug lords and become the next epicenter for drug-related violence.

Developed to streamline and expedite the orders process, the CONOP has forced leaders to expend time, effort and energy to push the CONOP through the approval process from...

A look at the war and how the administrations have prosecuted it.

There is a danger in the empirical mode of reasoning that it will lead us to think of a thousand locals or twenty counterinsurgents as homogenous units of human being....

America’s maritime and amphibious capabilities are pivotal to the nation’s future ability to deter and defeat adversaries, strengthen alliances, deny enemies...

As the US Treasury imposes sanctions on an Iraqi bank, what defines our relationship with friendly autocracies?

Could a conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan lead to tactical nuclear weapon use?

Life-saving training for deploying forces.