Journal

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.

As applicable as the concept of Security Force Assistance has been before; and as intriguing as it has become, we must accept that SFA has a time, a place, and yes, even limitations.

As a law enforcement officer with over 20 years of experience, I led many Community Policing efforts and observed firsthand the impact of bringing order to crime riddled neighborhoods.

Memetic Theory can potentially provide mathematical modeling tools and concepts to assist Information Operations (IO) officers when conducting IIA.

U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is an example of a great power fighting a guerrilla war in pursuit of geopolitical objectives greater than simply the defeat of a local insurgency.

Anything that distances, atomizes or alienates people - technology, bureaucracy, security - defeats the purpose of public diplomacy.

It is evident that there is still a long way to go before the practice of child recruitment into the armed forces is fully eradicated from the country.

If DOD and the U.S. Army want to maximize their resources to ensure success in building partner nation security capacity with our allies, recommendations contained in this article will strengthen our ability to accomplish this strategic goal.

Attacks against Mexican government officials, law enforcement, and political institutions by drug cartels, fall neatly into the Fourth Generation Warfare paradigm.

Calls for a formalized strategic planning process and grand strategy have been mounting for years.  However, those sounding these calls erroneously remember a past that rarely if ever existed.

Hard-won progress in one of Afghanistan’s most violent districts, with warnings from the Afghan National Army for looming decisions about U.S. involvement in the embattled country.

Since 2006 exceptionally intense drug-related warfare has plagued Mexico and accumulated a death toll ranging from at least 50,000 to perhaps over 100,000 with an additional 20,000 missing.

Is the international system shifting away from one in which technology and organizations hold sway?

The US military’s checkered past with regard to conducting development is evidenced by the recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Although DOD’s Counternarcotics & Global Threats Strategy specifies a comprehensive set of goals and objectives associated with combating TOC, it stops short of providing the details necessary to achieve its desired end state.

While the ‘privatisation of peace’ may not be a worldwide phenomenon, it is undeniable that the private military and security sectors have seen a growth in conflict involvement.

The U.S. Department of Defense and supporting intellectual communities are abuzz with discussions about assessment and how it is conducted.

The inability to craft an effective national policy to deal with the surge of left-wing extremism is a subject of intense policy debate and mounting public concern in India.