250 Years After America’s First Irregular War

America turns 250 today. From 18th century irregular warfare to Alexis de Tocqueville, we pause to acknowledge IWI's roots, mission, and the civic duty that powers it. 

We cannot help ourselves. Two hundred and fifty years after the founding of the United States, what kind of irregular warfare scholars and practitioners would we be if we didn't point out that America itself came into being through a remarkably successful irregular warfare campaign?

For some, that observation conjures images of Mel Gibson's Benjamin Martin in The Patriot, a fictionalized composite inspired in part by Francis Marion, the "Swamp Fox," whose guerrilla tactics demonstrated how an unconventional force could challenge a conventionally superior adversary. For others, it evokes more recent images (or even personal memories) of the United States confronting insurgencies in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Regardless of the era or perspective, irregular warfare and American history are inseparable. To fully understand one is to better understand the other.

That is why it remains important to revisit the classics. They allow us to see America through the eyes of those who witnessed its transformation from an insurgent underdog into one of the world's most consequential rising powers.

In recognition of the 250th anniversary of America's founding, Alexis de Tocqueville’s writings do an excellent job at surveying the unique attributes of democracy in America that help to explain its power. What surprised us, however, upon our recent revisit of de Tocqueville’s text, was just how much IWI's makeup and structure reflect the very tendencies de Tocqueville described.

Specifically, de Tocqueville found that in American democracy, there is a distinct calling to organize:

“Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations. 

They have not only commercial and manufacturing companies, in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive. The Americans make associations to give entertainments, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they found hospitals, prisons, and schools. If it is proposed to inculcate some truth or to foster some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form a society. 

…Thus the most democratic country on the face of the earth is that in which men have, in our time, carried to the highest perfection the art of pursuing in common the object of their common desires and have applied this new science to the greatest number of purposes. Is this the result of accident, or is there in reality any necessary connection between the principle of association and that of equality?”

This reverence for the freedom to association has a special place in the authors’ hearts because the Irregular Warfare Initiative is a volunteer association in the oldest American sense of the term. Our writers, editors, hosts, volunteers, and fellows weren’t ordered here; they do it purely for the pursuit of knowledge and community. And our supporters happily choose to fund this association because it is seeking to solve a problem an institutional system could not. Our contributors are doing the exact thing de Tocqueville said keeps a country free, and they’ve joined it voluntarily. Better yet, these contributors span the globe to bridge the gap between IW scholars and practitioners to advance the understanding of irregular warfare.

So at 250, in the spirit of Tocqueville, join our Initiative. Write for us, fund the work, bring one more sharp person into this network who has something to say or learn. The origin of American democracy started with self-appointed volunteers who took the initiative. Two and a half centuries later that hasn't changed, and a strong democracy still depends on whether you decide to participate. 

Happy Independence Day, America!