Irregular Warfare Initiative

The prospect of cyberwarfare continues to haunt defense planners, policymakers, and the public. Earlier visions of cyberwar, in which opponents hurled cyber weapons and logic bombs at each other at...

During an exercise in the California desert in October 2021 a special operations forces team hit the jackpot. Beneath the team’s observation post were almost a hundred enemy vehicles rolling through...

Right now, the unmanned aerial system is the IED of the next ten to twenty years.  — General James McConville, Chief Staff of the Army, July 31, 2021, on the Irregular Warfare Podcast America’s...

Since the 2017 US National Security Strategy reoriented the US military to strategic competition, many scholars and practitioners have argued that the future of special operations forces (SOF)...

Amid the chaos of the recent US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the world received a stark reminder that terrorist and insurgent groups may compete with one another, even when they nominally fight on...

Why do suicide bombers sign up for their deadly missions? Beyond promises of paradise, there seems to be little in it for those who die carrying out attacks, while the organization that sent them...

As US competition with China intensifies, conflicts in developing nations may again constitute a battleground for influence. Some observers have argued that the United States and China...

On November 9, 2021, a panel of scholars and practitioners brought together by the Irregular Warfare Initiative and the West Point Department of Social Sciences International Affairs Forum sought to...

In February 2020, the United States and the Afghan Taliban negotiated a seven-day reduction in violence levels. As part of the deal, the two sides agreed to a series of rules and exceptions that...

Over the past two decades, the United States has increasingly turned to security assistance as a solution to a wide range of problems in weak and conflict-affected states. It has provided security...

The Irregular Warfare Initiative’s inaugural conference was conducted on September 10, 2021, and brought together almost nine hundred participants. This conference builds on the mission of IWI—to...

Over the course of two decades and at a price tag of over $88 billion, the United States and its NATO partners built a modern and well-equipped Afghan military—one that, like a Fabergé egg, boasted...

President Joe Biden’s speech in the wake of the US withdrawal from Kabul was intended to put a seal on a painful chapter in the nation’s history. “I was not going to extend this forever war,” Biden...

The appeal of terrorist groups remains strong. For at least the past two decades, the United States and its allies have pursued terrorist organizations across the globe, disrupting their networks,...

Russian private military companies (PMCs) are on the march. In 2012, Russian PMCs were present in only two countries. Today, that number has risen to twenty-seven. Russia’s most infamous “corporate...

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the world watched as the United States began a punitive expedition to Afghanistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, oust the Taliban, and prevent the use...

In the fall of 2001, just over a month after the first US troops arrived in the country, the United States and its allies seized control of Afghanistan, driving the Taliban from Kabul and out of...

Editor’s Note: This piece draws heavily upon the author’s book, Avoiding the Terrorist Trap: Why Respect for Human Rights is the Key to Defeating Terrorism. In 2003 I was a special adviser in the...

In May 2003, President George W. Bush declared victory in Iraq after a month of major combat operations. Yet, instead of an end, this milestone marked only the beginning of a protracted campaign as...

In December 1992, as an infantry platoon commander, I was among the first Marines to land in Mogadishu at the onset of Operation Restore Hope. It was a mission that made sense to me and my fellow...

The jihadist insurgency in the Sahel, despite years of Western-backed efforts to counter it, is nonetheless expanding. Threats that were primarily concentrated in states such as Mali are now...

The grounding of the container ship Ever Given in the Suez Canal in March 2021 caused a complete blockage of the maritime passageway for more than six days delaying an estimated $9.6 billion in...

Meddling in foreign countries is a risky business. This is especially true when the meddling is overt. If a covert operation goes wrong, plausible deniability can protect leaders from the most...

In June, reports emerged that the leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, killed himself via a suicide bomb when confronted by members of another jihadist group, the Islamic State’s West Africa...

As the Taliban consolidates control in Kabul, the stunning fall of the Afghan government has prompted a torrent of questions about what went wrong. So far, much of this discussion has focused on the...

The swift collapse of the Afghan National Security Forces—despite receiving more than $83 billion in weapons, equipment, and training from the United States over the better part of two decades—has...

Gray zone warfare can take the form of something as uneventful as building infrastructure. Since 2015, China has built three new villages in an area it claims is in Tibet, but is actually in Bhutan....

Warning: Some links in this article lead to websites affiliated with US-designated terrorist groups. One of the improvised bombs blocks the middle of the screen, but the video is remarkable. An...

On February 13, 2003, US Southern Command contractors were flying a routine counternarcotics aerial surveillance mission over the Colombian jungle when the single engine on their Cessna Grand...

When the political officer of the US embassy in Islamabad met with top Taliban official Jalaluddin Haqqani in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi in May 1999, neither the US government nor Haqqani knew...

Ever since the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the watchword for the US military has been competition. “Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism,” the NDS declares, “is now the primary...

Twenty years of costly counterinsurgency (COIN) efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan have left many national security experts—and the American public—ready to move on. However, while the United States...

It is easier these days for journalists in Afghanistan to embed with the Taliban than with the US military. While the media and the military have long had a conflicted relationship, the effort to...

 “When can my unit receive more training from the Americans? I was taught in the ‘80s by American Special Forces about infantry tactics. I’ve taught [FM] 7-8 to my soldiers from platoon to regiment...