Articles
Our articles cut through the noise on irregular warfare to connect strategic theory to operational reality and translate complexity into insight for practitioners and policymakers. No time to read? Check out our podcast, "Insider: Short of War," which transforms our articles into concise, engaging audio pieces you can listen to anywhere. Available directly in most of our articles and on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major platforms.
People as a Weapons System: Moscow and Minsk’s Continued Attempts to Weaponize Migration
Weaponized migration, the orchestration or threatened orchestration of a sudden influx of refugees by a hostile government into another country for coercive purposes, continues to make appearances as the latest preferred instrument in the modern autocrat’s toolkit. Using what was once a favorite strategy of leaders such as Cuba’
A Guide for Measuring Resiliency
A portion of this article was previously published in Small Wars and Insurgencies journal. The question of state resiliency remains essential to the three biggest U.S. foreign policy questions of today. Why did Afghanistan fall so rapidly to the Taliban in 2021? Why, in contrast, has Ukraine stood firm
Israel’s Pyrrhic Victory in the Gaza Strip: Implications of Waging War in the Age of Social Media
By now, it is clear that Israel is dominating the battlefield in the Gaza Strip. However, what is not certain or within the control of the Israelis is the global perception of this offensive in light of the humanitarian disaster in Gaza. There are reasons to conclude that the modern
Learning from Failure: Afghanistan as a Microcosm for Strategic Competition
Why should the U.S. military and political leadership care about Afghanistan? Isn’t Afghanistan a story about sunk costs whose lessons only apply to counter terrorism or counter insurgency? Absolutely not. Rather, the U.S. military must understand its failures in Afghanistan to succeed in strategic competition. Failure to
How Hamas Built an Army
On October 7, 2023, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and its allies entered Israeli territory to commit atrocities against civilian communities near the Israel-Gaza border. With about 1,200 dead, including children and the elderly slaughtered in their beds or burned to death, and at least 239 abducted to
Theories of Victory: Israel, Hamas, and the Meaning of Success in Irregular Warfare
Two months in, what does the war between Israel and Hamas tell us about victory and defeat in irregular warfare? There is no difficulty in identifying those who have lost the most through this conflict: the civilian victims, caught up in a hellish devastation not of their making. In contrast,
Maritime Maneuvers: Navigating Irregular Warfare in Yemen’s Civil War
Before the 2018 National Defense Strategy recognized Irregular Warfare (IW) as a key competency for the Joint Force, a unique cell of Navy Surface Warfare and intelligence officers, an Army Civil Affairs Team (CAT), and Royal Navy (UK) personnel initiated a maritime irregular warfare campaign in the early stages of
Not Just ‘Mowing the Grass:’ Unconventional Warfare in Somalia
By Colin Robinson In June 2022, US Army captain Sean O’Brien wrote that “mowing the grass” — continual degradation of Al-Shabaab leaders, effectively via airstrikes and small swift raids (in military doctrinal terms, direct action, or DA) — was the most useful option to avoid threats to US interests in
Empowering Chinese Diaspora Messaging
In January 2023, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published a report of multiple wargames focused on a People’s Republic of China (PRC) invasion of Taiwan. In the more pessimistic scenarios, the US and Japan lost 645 combat aircraft, 28 vessels, and tens of thousands of service
IWI Responds: The Israel-Hamas War
When Hamas launched its attack across the Gaza border on Oct. 7, the Irregular Warfare Initiative sprang into action, publishing industry-leading articles and podcasts analyzing the conflict and its ramifications. On the two-month anniversary of the beginning of the latest hostilities, we take stock of our work so
Bridging the gap between irregular warfare scholars, practitioners, and policymakers.