When, why, and under what circumstances does security force assistance (SFA) work? Episode 14 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast focuses on best practices of SFA, along with challenges, realistic...
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Irregular Warfare Initiative
Strengthening America’s Competitive Advantage: A Security Sector Assistance Case Study
In the renewed environment of great power competition, the United States has a distinct competitive advantage: its alliance and partner network. Strengthening those alliances and partnerships...
Ally, Bad Guy, or Both? Thoughts on Reconciling American Values and Questionable Partners, Two Years after the Death of Abdul Raziq
Two years ago, a bodyguard for the provincial governor of Kandahar stormed into a meeting between the governor and several top NATO and Afghan security officials, including Gen. Scott Miller,...
Fighting the CENTCOM OIF Campaign Plan: Lessons for the Future Battlefield
The expected conditions under which the US military will campaign in the twenty-first century differ markedly from those it has experienced during most of the years of America’s post-9/11 wars. That...
David Petraeus on Irregular Warfare and Countering Violent Extremism
How should the United States address threats from violent extremist organizations nearly two decades after the 9/11 attacks? Retired Gen. David Petraeus joins this episode of the Irregular Warfare...
Achieving Information Dominance: What We Can Learn from “SOF Effects Cells”
“We are in a war of ideas.” This is how Murray Dyer, in 1959, described the standoff between the United States and its allies and their Soviet-led adversaries. While some of those adversaries have...
The Costs and Benefits of Unconventional Warfare and Subversion
What are unconventional warfare and foreign subversion? Will they be important in an era of great power competition? What are some of the second- and third-order effects when states use subversion...
Nobody Puts IW in an Annex: It’s Time to Embrace Irregular Warfare as a Strategic Priority
Two years after the release of the National Defense Strategy, the Pentagon has issued a declassified summary of its Irregular Warfare Annex. The seven-page text details how the Department of Defense...
MWI Podcast: The Conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh is Giving Us a Glimpse into the Future of War
In this episode of the MWI Podcast, John Amble is joined by Dr. Jack Watling. He is Research Fellow for Land Warfare at the Royal United Services Institute and has been monitoring the conflict...
Counterinsurgency in the Philippines: An Inside Look at Partner Warfare
Episode 11 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast is a deep dive into insurgency and counterinsurgency in the Philippines, presented through the perspectives of both a Republic of the Philippines armed...
Taking “De Oppresso Liber” to the Streets: Why the US Army’s Special Forces Qualification Course Needs to Become More Urban
There are two thousand years of experience to tell us that the only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old idea out.— B. H. Liddell Hart The old military maxim,...
The Defense Department Just Published a Summary of the National Defense Strategy’s Irregular Warfare Annex. Here’s Why It’s so Significant.
This week, the Defense Department released an unclassified summary of the Irregular Warfare (IW) Annex to the National Defense Strategy. It declares that, with respect to IW, the department will...
The Pentagon Bureaucracy and the Human Domain of War
What is the human domain of warfare, and will it be more or less relevant in great power competition? Who should own it? What does it take to change how the Department of Defense thinks about war?...
Are Some Militaries Better at Counterinsurgency than Others?
Are the US Marines better at counterinsurgency than the US Army? How about the British Army? If so, why, and if not then what else might explain success and failure in different COIN campaigns over...
The Missing, Irregular Half of Great Power Competition
The US military has embraced great power competition as its organizing principle, but cannot seem to agree on what the term actually means. While the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) has driven...
The Future of Irregular Warfare
In Episode 8 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast, hosts Nick Lopez and Shawna Sinnott have a conversation with best-selling authors August Cole and P.W. Singer to discuss how they see the future...
Big Data at War: Special Operations Forces, Project Maven, and Twenty-First-Century Warfare
During the Iraq war America’s special operations forces (SOF) demonstrated a remarkable capacity to innovate to accomplish a mission for which they were not prepared—finding and dismantling al-Qaeda...
Proxy Wars, Part 2: Opportunity and Risk in the Middle East
In this episode of the Irregular Warfare Podcast, Shawna Sinnott and Kyle Atwell discuss the history and context of proxy and partner warfare in the Middle East with Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Dr....
MWI Podcast: The Other Foreign Fighters
In this episode of the MWI Podcast, John Amble talks to Joseph Young and Jason Fritz. Together, they have researched an intriguing phenomenon: American citizens who traveled independently to Iraq...
Proxy Wars, Part 1: War Through Local Agents in Africa
In this episode of the Irregular Warfare Podcast, Kyle Atwell and Shawna Sinnott discuss proxy and partner warfare in Africa with retired Maj. Gen. Marcus Hicks and Dr. Eli Berman. This is the first...
Blessed Are the Peacemakers: What Afghanistan Can (Re)Teach Military Planners about Conflict Termination
Despite plenty of recent experience in peacekeeping, Western militaries have largely forgotten how difficult it is to end hostilities in a conflict where they are a belligerent. Military officers...
MWI Podcast: Competition, Conflict, and the Future of Irregular Warfare
In this episode of the Modern War Institute Podcast, John Amble is joined by Dave Stephenson, the director of the Joint Staff’s Office of Irregular Warfare and Competition. The conversation dives...
Inside Insurgency: Nonstate Armed Groups in Syria and Iraq
In this episode of the Irregular Warfare Podcast, Kyle Atwell and Nick Lopez discuss the inner workings of nonstate armed groups in Syria and Iraq with Dr. Vera Mironova of Harvard University and...
MWI Podcast: Security Force Assistance in an Era of Great-Power Competition
In this episode of the MWI Podcast, we're joined by Col. Curt Taylor, commander of the 5th Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB). The SFAB he commands is the final of five such units that the...
Irregular Warfare Oversight in DC
What are the mechanics and politics that determine how the US government approaches irregular conflicts? Hosts Nick Lopez and Kyle Atwell discuss irregular warfare policy formation and management...
Does Building Partner Military Capacity Work?
This episode of the Irregular Warfare Podcast tackles the topic of capacity building. Hosts Shawna Sinnott and Kyle Atwell welcome Dr. Stephen Biddle and Mr. Matt Cancian to discuss the...
Leadership Targeting and Drones: An Effective Counterterrorism Strategy?
The second episode of the Irregular Warfare Podcast, a collaboration between the Modern War Institute and Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, focuses on...
Introducing the Irregular Warfare Podcast – Episode One: “What are Small Wars?”
This is the inaugural episode of a brand-new podcast the Modern War Institute is launching in collaboration with Princeton University's Empirical Studies of Conflict Project. It's called...