Discourse at the speed of relevance.

We define ‘small wars’ as conflict and competition below the threshold of major interstate conventional wars. Irregular warfare, competitive statecraft, “grey zone”, and liminal strategies and approaches are all part of this exploration. Our goal is to add richness, breadth, and depth to the active dialog that occurs in many cloistered or siloed venues be they academic, government, or private sector. In this, we seek input from everyone ranging from the soldier and interagency practitioners of small wars to their leadership, to those that make and inform policy at the local, national, and international level. These are international issues, so we encourage international participation.

We value what we like to call “Small Wars thinking.” Small Wars thinking is thinking about the human element in the full spectrum of competition and conflict up to and including conventional and nuclear war. It includes but is not limited to all aspects of lawlessness, subversion, insurgency, terrorism, political resistance, non-violent resistance, political violence, urban operations, stability operations, post-conflict operations, cyber operations, information and influence activities e.g., (information operations, public diplomacy, psychological operations, and military information support operations), working through, with, and by proxy forces and populations, irregular warfare, political warfare, economic warfare, alliances, diplomacy, and statecraft in all regions of the world.

Mission and Editorial Policy

“Discourse at the speed of relevance”

We believe that responsive publishing and open dialog around well-formed ideas grounded in experience and/or deep study (ideally both) serves our community better than the protracted processes found in other venues to incrementally advance the rigor of a piece before its eventual exposure to light. We want to publish viewpoints on today’s issues today, rather than in months or years.

We are nonpartisan and will not publish anything of a partisan nature, on the other hand, we can and will publish articles critical of national security decisions and policy making. We will not publish articles that are ad hominem attacks.  However, we can publish articles that are critical of decisions and actions made by military or government officials. We seek to publish all sides of an issue. If we select an article for publication with one viewpoint, we will be observant for articles of an alternate viewpoint to publish as well.

As the world’s leading university for innovation, ASU’s team has developed methods to rapidly fact-check and review essays and Opinion-Editorials to ensure quality. We use human-AI teaming to ensure submissions are evaluated and presented with feedback to authors to ensure publication can take place in days rather than weeks and months.

The bulk of our editorial feedback will be minor formatting and mechanical edits, but we will also ruthlessly combat disinformation and misinformation. The red pen should not hinder the discourse, it should enhance it.

Problems will come up from time to time. Authors who choose to submit their work to us do so courageously, realizing that they are subject to our fact checking followed by a public wire brushing by our discriminating and vocal readers for any errors. We want to encourage constructive and critical comment on posts through monitored threads. Our content monitoring teams will remove comments that do not meet our standards for netiquette.

Quality and Provenance

SWJ (main site) is NOT a peer-reviewed journal; however, our editorial staff is focused on ensuring the author is an authentic voice, provides a coherent argument or analysis, and expresses a view about any issue relevant to small wars and national security. This is a broad spectrum and nearly limitless as we believe small wars will always be a part of great power and strategic competition and even state-on-state conventional warfare, though small wars may be on the periphery not the main effort in such conditions.

We screen submissions so that we are reasonably convinced that the articles we publish are worthwhile additions to the discourse in the community.  To us, that means they are:

• Concise and tightly argued enough to be worthy of the time of our busy readers.
• Serious, thoughtful work from a stakeholder worth understanding, if not necessarily agreeing with.
• Relevant and of interest to practitioners of small wars.
• Factual, analytical, or otherwise substantive.
• Written well so that the message comes through clearly.

We do not screen articles for their compliance with a house position or agenda. The flip side of that is that we do not necessarily agree with what we are publishing. We do not pretend to own the dialog or preach any gospel.  SWJ does not promote any position, other than one of rigorous reflection and cross-examination given the complexities of small wars.  The point is not for us, the editors, the authors, or for any site user to be right, but for all of us to be more and better informed.

We are happy to publish unpopular positions, provided their unpopularity is due to their inconvenient substance. As the SWJ founder, Dave Dillege, once said, “sacred cows make the best burgers.” We agree with Dave and strive to continue his legacy. But we are no more interested in whiny contrarianism without a pragmatic discussion of alternatives and considerations than we are in mindless drifting with the prevailing winds.