Journal

Militias can be essential assets to the establishment of security in coordination with effective counter-insurgency strategy, but they come with risks.

The threat of online Islamic radicalism is a growing issue for the U.S. and the West today; however, little is being done by lawmakers.

The Defense & Strategic Studies Program at West Point organized a multi-disciplinary, academic and professional forum to discuss the many perspectives on potential US military intervention in Iran.

The drone war alone, without a corresponding indirect approach, will, over the long term, force AQAM to get better, harder, more creative, and more resistant to direct attacks.

If the DoD continues to ignore the management and leadership issues facing the APH program it can expect more of the same.

Continuing from Part I and Part II, this next section delivers the initial view of the restructured Pentagon.

Call them sticks and carrots, or direct and indirect, or hard and soft power approaches. Either way, we are at a strategic inflection point.

Much has been written about terrorist groups who make use of the world’s undergoverned spaces, but very little has examined the dynamics of these areas themselves.

Never has it been more important to go beyond simple sound-bites and truly delve into the history and evolution of the Middle East.

Air Operations in Israel’s War Against Hezbollah: Learning from Lebanon and Getting It Right in Gaza & Eagle in the Sky.

SWJ Book Review: David Kilcullen, Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla, New York: Oxford University Press.

SWJ Discussion with Dr. David H. Ucko and Dr. Robert Egnell about their book Counterinsurgency in Crisis: Britain and the Challenges of Modern Warfare.

SWJ Book Review: Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country by Andrew J. Bacevich.

Interview with Brookings Senior Fellow Vanda Felbab-Brown.

The Government of the Republic of the Philippines is confronted by a persistent communist insurgency, the origins of which date back to 1968.

Has the United States Air Force selected the most operationally capable strike aircraft for the future FID mission in Afghanistan?

Ethnic Conflicts and the Muslim Question in Philippine Politics: Why Current Efforts at Conflict-Resolution Fail.

Some have questioned such a panel for cadets.  One officer/faculty member who exemplifies this attitude said this past April, “we don’t want second lieutenant strategic thinkers.”

The practitioners of VSO operate nearly entirely in the spaces of communities damaged by combinations of traumatizing violence, loss, displacement, starvation, death and dismemberment.

How to Improve U.S. National Security Strategies - Presented to The Center for Army Analysis on 17 September 2013.

How quickly a force can achieve national endstates is the speed that is vital to our nation’s elements of national power.  This speed may mean slower operational and tactical speed.

This past Wednesday, the anniversary of 9/11, I was standing in a parking lot and heard the unmistakable sound that is forever imbedded in my mind.

"Still reeling from the Defeat of Global Communism in the War of Ideas."

This Spanish language SWJ-El Centro article is intended to stimulate debate among Latin American security professionals.

As we near the 20- year anniversary of the Battle of Mogadishu, it is worthwhile to look back at US and UN involvement in that effort to see what we have learned and can learn.

Tactics, Techniques and Procedures basic to Infantrymen and modified to fit the Security Force Assistance Team environment.

The future of Egypt’s government, and thus the future of its citizens, foreign relations, economy, security, and many other key areas, is currently a black hole.

Big Expeditionary COIN, a Small Wars Journal Interview with T.X. Hammes.

With the economy groaning, one major conflict finished, and another winding down, the struggle for dwindling resources is well underway. The losers in this struggle are already clear.

This is the third in a series of three articles that discuss analytics of the human dimension of conflict.

This is the second in a series of three articles that discuss analytics of the human dimension of conflict.

This is the first in a series of three articles that discuss analytics of the human dimension of conflict.

Reflections on the "Counterinsurgency Decade": Small Wars Journal Interview with General David H. Petraeus.

Without the funds we have enjoyed for the last decade, we have to increase our emphasis on maximizing the efficiency of military spending.

Small Wars Journal book review: The Young Ataturk: From Ottoman Soldier to Statesman of Turkey by George Gawrych.

The Arab Spring was neither very Arab nor the blossoming of something new as much as a resurfacing of deep-seated conflicts.

Syrian refugee camps in Turkey are major breeding grounds for anti-U.S. sentiment.

The Army must change the definitions of landpower and land control to establish a firm conceptual baseline from which national and military strategies are developed.

H.R.-2606 seeks to turn lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan into practical legacies looking ahead instead of deterrents to action so that cross-border crises of the future can be addressed.

We Americans tend to invent for ourselves a comfortable U.S.-centric vision with an enemy who looks and acts more or less as we do, and a situation in which the fighting is done by conventional military units. 

This SWJ article compares the British handling of the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960) with that of the French in Algeria (1954-1962).

"Along with the rest of the U.S. government, the Department of Defense depends on cyberspace to function. It is difficult to overstate this reliance."

This article is a working paper designed to present the early findings of my research to the field, particularly the model of insurgency which is still in its early developmental stages.

In Afghanistan, and across much of the developing world, agriculture is the primary enterprise and key to local food security, as well as national and regional political stability.

Mexico and the US continue to assert that this a war on drugs, but provide no evidence that the drug trade has diminished despite the mounting death toll and the billions of dollars spent.

It is clear that long-term COIN involving large numbers of US forces will be considered a last resort; however, approaches and programs that supported COIN will remain as actual or potential support to ongoing and future missions.

The civilian population’s diversity, through its multitude of ethnic, tribal and social groups, has made Mali an area of operations with its own challenges and advantages.

Where Mao’s style was measured and subtle, Guevara’s prose is that of a decisive young revolutionary eager for the next victory.

Despite the United States’ ongoing transition from the Middle East toward the Pacific, Africa remains strategically important to U.S. interests.

The human domain is one of the most critical and challenging aspects of modern conflicts and will remain a decisive factor in future conflicts.