Small Wars Journal

Journal

Journal Articles are typically longer works with more more analysis than the news and short commentary in the SWJ Blog.

We accept contributed content from serious voices across the small wars community, then publish 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.

by Lucas Winter | Fri, 07/22/2016 - 10:50am | 5 comments

This paper looks at the genesis, evolution and growth of the Syrian Army’s “Tiger Forces” and their leader Suheil al-Hassan.

by Rick Chersicla | Fri, 07/22/2016 - 1:58am | 0 comments

American special operations support efforts aimed at building West African military capability over the last five years have been largely successful. 

by Charles J. Dunlap, Jr. | Thu, 07/21/2016 - 1:35pm | 6 comments

Does the NATO treaty “automatically” require the U.S. use force to defend a NATO ally?  The short answer is “no”.

by Drew Calcagno | Thu, 07/21/2016 - 8:20am | 1 comment

What happens when social protection runs awry – rather than enabling market-led development, al-Shabaab creates a structure that rejects it.

by Casey Carr | Wed, 07/20/2016 - 9:31am | 0 comments

With catastrophe and resiliency, there is a clear movement away from bio-politics and the antics of social engineering.  Populations are becoming more viewed as interconnected networks.

by Michael J. Dawdy | Wed, 07/20/2016 - 7:46am | 2 comments

As the US peers into the future of irregular conflict, there are historical trends of the likely prevalence of Unconventional Warfare in the coming decades as a policy tool of choice.

by Richard M. Ingleby | Tue, 07/19/2016 - 1:18am | 29 comments

Scholars and students of warfare have yet to look at military occupations collectively to see if any common themes, trends or correlations emerge.

by Jason Cooley | Tue, 07/19/2016 - 1:10am | 0 comments

During the campaign against Islamic extremism, policymakers were more concerned about the conduct of organizations which wanted to assume power in various states.

by Thomas Hader, by Peter Kent Forster | Mon, 07/18/2016 - 10:27am | 1 comment

As ISIS continues to employ capable means to radicalize individuals and encourage directed and inspired attacks, the threat of homegrown attacks is unlikely to cease anytime soon.

by James A. Chambers, by Kasi M. Chu, by Chelsea B. Payne, by Catherine R. Platt | Mon, 07/18/2016 - 9:57am | 0 comments

Given the military’s privileged position in Burma, US organizations experienced in capacity development could build partnerships that foster healthcare and professional military reforms.

by G. Murphy Donovan | Sat, 07/16/2016 - 4:53pm | 50 comments

If global government were possible today, the end of national and local democracy would begin.

by Nicholas T. Williams | Sat, 07/16/2016 - 4:17pm | 0 comments

ISIS supporters have taken to twitter to unofficially claim responsibility for the attacks as retaliation for the death of Abu Omar Shishani.

by Colin McElhinny | Fri, 07/15/2016 - 1:35pm | 0 comments

While the details of the current SOF mission in Yemen are few, there are several one can glean from recent press that assist in evaluation of the mission.

by Darren E. Tromblay | Thu, 07/14/2016 - 7:56am | 1 comment

Asymmetric tactics are not Russia-Ukraine unique; they are employed against the United States and have been for quite some time.

by Darrell Fawley | Thu, 07/14/2016 - 6:04am | 0 comments

As the Army transitions to a more flexible, adaptive force able to operate with little or no forewarning across a broad range of environments and conflicts, its PT program remains rigid and fixed.

by Richard A. McConnell, by Edward N. Edens, by Angela J. Allen, by Joseph M. Ladymon, by Annie L. Robinson | Thu, 07/14/2016 - 3:01am | 0 comments

A literature review and a description of three cases of ADM planners substituting alternative theoretical models to that of PMESII-PT in the process of the Army Design Methodology.

by Christopher Knight | Wed, 07/13/2016 - 11:06am | 0 comments

The Iran-Iraq War played a major role in the violence we see today and it is time to recognize just how much of an impact this conflict actually had.

by Thomas R. McCabe | Tue, 07/12/2016 - 2:01am | 2 comments

The extremely confused land war against ISIS in Syria and Iraq continues to grind on, with the current situation trending somewhat against ISIS in Iraq, less so in Syria.

 

 

by Robert P. Chamberlain | Tue, 07/12/2016 - 1:18am | 1 comment

Rather than fall into the trap of starting with revolutions and working backwards, this paper starts from general theories of the state, society, and war and work forward.

by Scott E. Bruck | Mon, 07/11/2016 - 10:38pm | 1 comment

Three types of trade relationships promote conflict - incompatible types of government, asymmetry of trade volume and possibilities for third-party influence.

by Barnett S. Koven | Mon, 07/11/2016 - 5:18am | 0 comments

Getting COIN training for host nation forces right is especially important given that instances of intrastate dynamics such as insurgency and civil war are on the rise.

by Adam Klus | Sun, 07/10/2016 - 3:08am | 1 comment

Colonel Evgeny Messner, Russian Imperial Army, made a significant contribution to understanding irregular warfare. His flagship concept of myatezh voina remains relevant.

by Sajid Farid Shapoo | Fri, 07/08/2016 - 10:45am | 3 comments

The Darbha attack was a reminder of why the Maoist insurgency has repeatedly been called India’s biggest internal security challenge. This paper is an attempt to understand this very challenge.

by Philip Y. Kao | Thu, 07/07/2016 - 10:34am | 0 comments

This paper explores Unified Quest 06 in order to show how and under what circumstances civilian-military and interagency constructs struggle to serve as true interfaces.

by Leslie Stanfield | Thu, 07/07/2016 - 9:53am | 1 comment

My hypothesis, the Intelligence Community has been unable to predict cyber-attacks against the United States, is false.

by Greg Simons | Wed, 07/06/2016 - 7:22am | 2 comments

“The central fallacy at the heart of the current narrative is that it employs a single prism to view a complex world.”

by Robert C. Hodges | Tue, 07/05/2016 - 2:28am | 0 comments

Without international support from Western nations and friendly neighboring states, the future of Libya is sure to be at the will of al-Baghdadi and ISL.

by Kwarkye Gyedu Thompson | Mon, 07/04/2016 - 12:41pm | 0 comments

Transitional justice, within a short period, has become one of the most dominating debates in rule of law, human rights protection, democracy and nation building.

by Paul Kamolnick | Sat, 07/02/2016 - 3:22am | 0 comments

“More evidence for extreme marginalization, implosion, and the Islamic State Organization’s certain future as a hunted underground ultra-takfiri terrorist criminal entity.”

by U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command | Fri, 07/01/2016 - 11:21am | 0 comments

Are you or your organization interested in submitting a paper that would influence how the Army generates and employs a Cyber-proficient Force for 2025 & Beyond?

by Jeff W. McGuire | Wed, 06/29/2016 - 8:16am | 1 comment

Small Wars Journal book review of Tribe, On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger.

by Daniel Shaw, by Ryan Hoover | Wed, 06/29/2016 - 6:36am | 0 comments

Today, in the wake of the Orlando massacre, it’s time to come to grips with the reality of active killer events. Let us not repeat the unfortunate mistake of passivity in Orlando.

by James Emery | Wed, 06/29/2016 - 5:56am | 0 comments

The Islamic State and al-Qaeda are fiercely competing for leadership of the global extremist jihadi movement.

by Robert Bunker, by Khirin A. Bunker | Tue, 06/28/2016 - 6:45am | 0 comments

An important bi-lateral U.S.-Mexico conference on “Promoting The Rule Of Law In Mexico” was held at the University of San Diego on Friday 10 June 2016.

by John Maier | Fri, 06/24/2016 - 7:42pm | 0 comments

In confronting the brutality of ISIS, its social media savvy, its maneuver warfare ability, and its foreign fighter cadre, the US government has adopted a limited approach.

by Aidan Parkes | Fri, 06/24/2016 - 6:01pm | 0 comments

This report explores the influence of regional state actors in Afghanistan’s political stability and focuses on armed extremism and the opium economy as the two primary factors of instability.

by Paul Angelo | Thu, 06/23/2016 - 11:55am | 0 comments

Colombia appears poised to secure by the close of this year a historic peace deal with the country’s largest and most formidable illegal armed group.

by Phil W. Reynolds | Wed, 06/22/2016 - 7:27pm | 0 comments

There have been only 51 interstate wars and 418 internal, ethnic conflicts since 1945. State wars tend to be impersonal but ethnic conflicts are personal with fighters knowing each other.

by Geoffrey Goff | Tue, 06/21/2016 - 2:20pm | 5 comments

Cultural differences, deception, mistrust, and miscommunication all obscure the process of evaluating which individuals have information that would be helpful to US forces and which do not.

by Jessica Anderson | Tue, 06/21/2016 - 10:08am | 0 comments

ISIS can rightfully be regarded as a terrorist organization, rather than a state, and that categorizing it as a terrorist group is beneficial to the U.S. in its efforts to dismantle and defeat it.

by David J. Garren | Mon, 06/20/2016 - 7:43pm | 3 comments

The assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists warrant our sustained attention because they raise fundamental and far-reaching questions about the limits of state authority.

by G. Murphy Donovan | Mon, 06/20/2016 - 7:15pm | 10 comments

What can we reasonably expect to achieve besides another generation of White House and Pentagon sissies kicking the Muslim can down the road?

by Phil W. Reynolds | Mon, 06/20/2016 - 9:06am | 0 comments

In the past two hundred years, states have gone from winning some eighty percent of internal conflicts to less than half that by the end of the twentieth century.

by Joshua M. Sturgill | Sun, 06/19/2016 - 6:38pm | 1 comment

Developing mission specific tasks and deploying company sized elements increased flexibility to the Army.

by Octavian Manea | Thu, 06/09/2016 - 7:03pm | 1 comment

Interview with Luis Simón, Research Professor, Institute for European Studies; Director, Brussels Office, Elcano Royal Institute; and Associate Fellow, Baltic Defense College.

by James A. Sisco | Wed, 06/08/2016 - 4:39pm | 2 comments

A population-centric approach that uses identity analysis in planning cycles at strategic, operational, and tactical levels enables the DoD.

by Gustav A. Otto, by AJ Besik | Wed, 06/08/2016 - 9:43am | 2 comments

“Mad Scientist” series - Megacities are hard, issues and problems compound over things that were solvable in other environments.

by David T. Miller | Mon, 05/30/2016 - 7:33pm | 0 comments

The incoming president’s administration will receive an important source of analysis in shaping its foreign policy agenda - the quadrennial Global Trends report produced by the NIC.

by Bryan Lee | Mon, 05/30/2016 - 7:14pm | 0 comments

The media has remained largely silent about the security preparations for the games.

by Octavian Manea | Sun, 05/29/2016 - 6:46pm | 2 comments

A Small Wars Journal discussion with Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster.