Journal

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Despite ISIS releasing a map identifying areas where the Caliphate will be established in Asia, its ability to do so is substantially limited.

This paper was developed through the TRADOC G-2 Mad Scientist E-Intern Pilot in 2016.

Proxy selection in Syria will have a profound impact on the post-war political order: who wins, who loses, and how they govern.

If countering VNSAs such as ISIL will be a long-term campaign, we will need long-term goals and objectives.

The differences in how Mao, Guevara, and Al Qaeda tailored their approaches to suit the unique needs of the rebellions they led and the strategic environments in which they fought.

The phrase “best and brightest” is frequently used but ambiguously defined. SecDef’s Force of the Future aims to recruit and retain this group, but fails to define who they are.

It is time to unleash US irregular warfare capabilities. All the controversy over today’s “gray zone” challenges leads one to believe that the US is an amateur player in this game.

The mass use of inghamasi/inghamasiyinis an innovation on previously understood jihadi tactics seen in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This article analyses the growing range of threats posed to military organizations by violent jihadists within the West.

An update on week 7 of Stanford University’s Hacking for Defense course.

An inside look at the Defense Attachés assigned to the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince and how they served on a diplomatic frontline alongside DoS diplomats and USAID colleagues.

At the national security and policy level of the United States government there is a gap in the theoretical underpinnings of special operations.

An update on week 6 of Stanford University’s Hacking for Defense course.

Small Wars Journal interview with Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad.

Did the addition of former Warsaw Pact states, and in particular Poland, as members to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization make NATO a stronger or weaker alliance?

Colombia will likely remain on the negative side of the security spectrum unless a comprehensive series of preventative measures are put in place to restrict the proliferation of violence.

A rebuttal to Gary Anderson’s ‘Time to Bring Counterinsurgency to Molenbeek’.

Three ghosts haunt the halls of the Pentagon and the central military administrations of most developed nations - three ghosts who drive policy in costly, counterproductive directions.

Political dissent smacks of religious transgression.  For these and other reasons, Iran should not be expected to survive in the long term in its current theocratic–run political system.

No matter how hard we think about the future, nor how many different versions of the future we posit, the future in reality will be different than we prognosticate.

This essay is an attempt to encapsulate lessons from the Long War beyond the timeframe operative in the NDU book Lessons Encountered: Learning from the Long War.

An update on week 5 of Stanford University’s Hacking for Defense course.

It wasn’t the trial of the century, but the strain of the pending verdict was apparent on the defendant’s face, a young, weary corporal.

According to Andrew Bacevich the central question to be investigated is how and where did we get our grand strategy for the Middle East wrong?

The Syrian Civil War is notable because communications and social technology have pervaded almost every aspect of this conflict.

A Redeye Man Portable Air Defense System seized was in the possession of armed personnel belonging to La Linea.

An update on week 4 of Stanford University’s Hacking for Defense course.

What we see in Belgium and Paris are first stage insurgencies that can still be handled by police and good intelligence efforts.

The time to put Libya back together is now; any delays will only further fragment the country and exacerbate the spread of ISIS.