MWI's Top 20 Articles of 2020 - Modern War Institute

A few years ago, at the end of MWI’s first full year of regularly publishing commentary and analysis articles, we released a list of “the top sixteen of 2016“—the most read articles of the year. We’ve continued to do so each year, and so to carry on this annual tradition, below is the list of the top twenty articles MWI published in 2020.

There’s a notable degree of consistency with earlier years’ lists. Articles focusing on professional development made the list, as they have previously. For the fifth year in a row, commentary about physical fitness has reached a wide audience and appears on this list. And urban warfare features once again as it remains a key area of focus for MWI.

But this year’s list also features articles that were exceptionally timely, reflecting the year and the context in which they were written. In 2020, the Army launched a new way of selecting battalion commanders, and two articles about that program appear on the list. Broader issues not exclusive to the military also shaped the topics that authors wrote about and readers sought out. Against the backdrop of a global pandemic, one article examines problems in the US military that were revealed by COVID-19 and the response to it. And as society grappled with issues related to race, the military was not excepted from these public conversations, nor should it have been; two articles on the list focus on race and the Army.

If you haven’t read any of these articles, now is a great chance to catch up—and if you have, many of them are well worth reading again. It’s a privilege for the team at MWI to be able to work with each and every individual who puts pen to paper, submits their ideas to our audience, and helps MWI engage in important discussions related to modern war. We look forward to working with all of our contributors, including new ones, to continue these discussions in 2021.