A Small Wars Journal Retrospective: Twenty Years of Crowd-Sourcing Irregular Warfare Studies
Introduction
It was twenty years ago this month that the late Dave Dilegge established Small War Journal (SWJ). His vision at the time was to create a modern virtual town square to allow for the timely exchange of ideas for everything related to “Small Wars” or what we call irregular warfare today. He found his inspiration in the Marine Corps’ Small Wars Manual first published in 1940 which to this day is arguably the most comprehensive manual for addressing all facets of warfare outside the traditional realm. Recall that this was before the explosion of social media platforms.
I met Dave Dilegge virtually in 2005 while I was serving in Korea after I had finished my final professional military education at the National War College the year before. We were in the midst of the Global War on Terrorism and I turned one of my war college essays into an article for the inaugural issue of Small Wars Magazine which was the first publication of Small Wars Journal titled “How do we Fight a War of Ideas.” It was an honor to be among the other plank holders: T.X. Hammes, Russell Glenn, Andrew Harvey, Steve Kluth, Ian Sullivan, Stephen Arata, Thomas Greco, and Adam Strickland. A number of us would contribute to Small Wars Journal and later other like-minded publications for the next two decades. Small Wars Journal provided us and so many others with the platform to express our ideas about small wars, irregular warfare, U.S. national security and the threats we face.
The Megaphone for Truth to Power
SWJ provided the megaphone for authors to speak truth to power especially about the most complex security problem the U.S. faced at the time: insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. The very name that Dave Dilegge chose was in response to the desire by Secretary Rumsfeld to not describe the wars as “organized guerrilla warfare,” and insurgencies and align with his view that stability operations were not a core mission of the Department of Defense. Small Wars of course encompasses everything that happened in Iraq and Afghanistan including insurgency, guerrilla warfare, unconventional warfare, resistance, low intensity conflict, terrorism, and stability operations to name a few of the many doctrinal and non-doctrinal terms. By 2006 he was acknowledging that terrorism was a war of ideas. Some of us long before believed that the war on terrorism was a counterinsurgency on a global scale. Others such as Robert Jones argued that the “Al Qaeda network [was used to] wage a regional unconventional warfare campaign to leverage many nationalist insurgent movements.”
These and many discussions and varied ideas and viewpoints helped to bring public understanding to the strategic dilemmas the U.S and the free world faced from the myriad threats at the beginning of the 21st Century. Additionally, many practitioners who were actually conducting operations were able to provide lessons learned and operational concepts in articles at SWJ that others could learn from and adapt for their own operations. SWJ served as the first platform for crowdsourcing ideas for addressing complex irregular warfare challenges.
Counterinsurgency Pro and Con
One of the most significant debates that took place in the first decade of Small Wars Journal was between the so-called “COINDINSTAS” and “COINTRAS” who argued the pros and cons of counterinsurgency, respectively. The leading figures who represented these positions were John Nagl and Gian Gentile who each provided compelling research in their books, Learning to Seat Soup with a Knife and Wrong Turn: America’s Deadly Embrace of Counterinsurgency. Both provided dozens of articles to Small Wars Journal and later other publications as the intellectual “COIN space” grew. They also debated the merits of COIN in the comments sections and offered thought provoking and expert analysis based on their combat experiences.
The debates and discussions between John and Gian were powerful and surely influenced all who were struggling to understand the small wars and irregular warfare we faced in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world. Despite the absolutely contrary positions they held, they conducted the most gentlemanly discussions culminating in a debate at the National War College in 2010 that I was fortunate to host. Members in the audience described it as the most enlightening debate on COIN anyone had heard. Their professionalism should be emulated.
Village Stability Operations, Special Forces Doctrine, and One Tribe at A Time
Another concept that was shaped and influenced by Small Wars Journal essays and discussions were Village Stability Operations and the associated concepts of Village Stability Platforms and Afghan Local Police. The most influential work was by Jim Gant in his 45 page essay, “One Tribe at A Time” in which he advocated tribal engagement as the fundamental method for conducting counterinsurgency. Although these concepts were being developed organically by many Special Forces personnel applying traditional Special Forces Doctrine (in particular the concept of Remote Area Operations), they were often stymied by leaders who had no experience in such work and did not have the patience that was required to achieve long term effects. They wanted Special Forces to focus exclusively on counterterrorism operations to capture and kill high value targets that would demonstrate immediate effects. In fact, Special Forces were actually applying this doctrine in the spring of 2002 as the logical continuation of the unconventional warfare campaign begun in 2001. Hy Rothstein noted this in his seminal work on Special Forces in Afghanistan: Afghanistan and the Troubled Future of Unconventional Warfare. However, with the introduction of JTF 180 in the summer of 2002, these Special Forces operations were halted as the main effort shifted to stability operations and counterinsurgency conducted by conventional forces. Despite the best efforts of those on the ground, it was Gant’s essay that influenced senior leaders to adopt a more traditional Special Forces approach of through with, and by and tribal and population based approaches. In fact, when the Commander of USSOCOM read the essay, he changed Gant’s orders from Iraq to Afghanistan. He advocated among the senior leaders at CENTCOM and in Afghanistan to adopt these traditional Special Forces concepts. However, as it turned out it was too little and much too late.
Legacy and Expansion
Many other concepts were debated and discussed on Small Wars Journal. These influenced the “rediscovery” of irregular warfare in 2008 and the new concept of Security Forces Assistance Operations which has now been enshrined in the U.S. Army’s Security Force Assistance Brigade. This can find a direct link to John Nagl’s advocacy for an advisor corps in 2007, “It’s Time for an Army Advisor Corps.” However, by the second decade the discussions on SWJ expanded to include almost anything related to national security. While notable contributors have always provided important articles Small Wars Journal also provided a platform for many first time authors through the military and the rest of the U.S. government, from allies around the world, and from academia with many undergraduate and graduates students joining the academic debates.
Continuity and Future
In April 2020, Dave Dilegge suddenly passed away. He had long before established a Board of Directors with himself, Bill Nagle, Dan Kelly, and me. However, it was Dave who single handedly envisioned, developed, and kept SWJ publishing on a daily basis up until his death. The Board decided that SWJ should continue; however, none of us could dedicate the time and effort to match Dave’s work. Therefore, we worked to keep it functioning while we searched for a way to sustain SWJ permanently. I took over the publishing duties, but we could not keep up. I began publishing my daily National Security and Korea News and Commentary (which I have being doing since1996 in various forms) to continue to provide a service to readers and published as many articles as we could. We approached a number of different organizations: government, think tanks, and universities. One think tank described SWJ as a “distressed property” that had no future. None could commit to the two requirements: honor Dave Dilegge’s legacy and continue his philosophy of providing a platform to rapidly publish authentic voices to contribute to the intellectual debates surrounding small wars and national security.
In addition to Small Wars Journal Dave partnered with John Sullivan and Robert Bunker to create SWJ El Centro, or “downtown” in Spanish to focus on Small Wars in the Southern Hemisphere with a great team of fellows and authors. They have sustained their efforts without interruption. Theirs is a story worthy of a separate article altogether.
Finally in 2024, it was only the visionary Arizona State University (ASU) and its Future Security Initiative that recognized the value of Small Wars Journal. Led by Ryan Shaw and Jan (Ken) Gleiman the SWJ Board began the process of transferring the enterprise to ASU. Ken Gleiman worked with IT professionals to completely re-design and update the site and create the Small Wars Journal “2.0” we can now all use with ease.
Personally, SWJ has allowed me to write, publish, and most importantly learn from so many fellow thinkers and practitioners about all the subjects I am passionate about: irregular, unconventional, and political warfare, influence operations, national security strategy, East Asian and Korean security, and the future of Special Forces. I am grateful for the opportunity Dave Dilegge gave to me and so many others.
Today Ken Gleiman leads the work of SWJ as the editor-in-chief with Amos Fox as its managing editor. They have built an incredible editorial, communication, and production team at ASU. I am privileged to continue to support the enterprise as an editor-at-large and to honor Dave Dilegge while SWJ lives up to its new motto to provide “discourse at the speed of relevance.”
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