Browse Small Wars Journal by Topic
Small Wars Journal covers the full spectrum of irregular warfare, military strategy, special operations, emerging conflict domains, and national security practice. Use the topics below to navigate our archive by subject area.
Irregular Warfare
The full spectrum of operations below and alongside conventional war.
Insurgency, counterinsurgency, proxy warfare, hybrid conflict, terrorism, lawfare, non-state actors.
Special Operations
SOF doctrine, employment, and practitioner analysis.
SOF, direct action, civil affairs, psychological operations, unconventional warfare, counter-terrorism.
Military Strategy and Doctrine
Strategic theory, doctrine development, and national defense policy.
Strategy, doctrine, national security strategy, force structure, national defense strategy, force design.
Future of War
Emerging conflict trends, technology, and speculative analysis.
Emerging technology, innovation, character of war, useful fiction, Horizon 2040.
Professional Military Education
PME research, curriculum, and practitioner-scholar dialogue.
PME, CGSC, Army University, JSOU, Joint Professional Military Education, military leadership.
Domains of Warfare
Nine operational domains — cross-cutting classification across all SWJ content.
Land, maritime, air, space, cyber, information, cognitive, human domain, electromagnetic spectrum.
Regional and Theater Security
Regional conflict, theater strategy, and security dynamics by geography.
Middle East, Indo-Pacific, Africa, Europe and Eurasia, Russia-Ukraine, South Asia, Arctic, El Centro.
Drone / AI
Unmanned systems, autonomy, and military artificial intelligence.
Drones, drone warfare, unmanned systems, autonomy, counter-UAS, military AI.
Featured Across Topics
Fake News for the Resistance: The Office of Strategic Services and the Nexus of Psychological and Unconventional Warfare During World War II
Access the web page for this fascinating and important dissertation HERE. Fake News for the Resistance: The Office of Strategic Services and…
Can Bukele Beat Haiti’s Gangs?
This video examines the October 18, 2026 ambush of a UN-backed convoy outside Port-au-Prince, where gangs attacked with explosives and fire a…
How the Army Fights: Insights from the 1973 Arab-Israeli War
The 1973 Arab-Israeli War offers an enduring demonstration of how military forces innovate to overcome sophisticated defenses, restore operational maneuver, and translate…
Correcting Technocentric Myopia: Rebalancing Maritime Intelligence to Counter Shadow Fleet Networks
Introduction While primarily recognized as a state-funded tool to subvert international energy embargoes and sustain conflict funding for the ongoing Ukrainian-Russo war,…
About SWJ Topics
SWJ's topic framework organizes our archive by the primary subject area of each article. Topics are assigned by SWJ editors and reflect the professional and doctrinal categories most meaningful to practitioners, scholars, and policy professionals.
Each topic page surfaces the full archive of relevant SWJ content, including republished material from the Irregular Warfare Initiative and partner institutions.