Australia is undergoing the most fundamental strategic realignment since the Second World War, toward a focus on threats closer to home without reliance on the United States. In that context, what role does irregular warfare play in Australian national security strategy? What lessons does the Australian experience hold for the United States as they both transition from the post-9/11 wars to great power competition? Will Australia’s legacy in conducting irregular warfare enable it now to make this shift and take on the snakes—and one large dragon—in its own backyard?

Our two guests argue that effective US interagency coordination, bipartisan congressional support, and a focus on building institutions and stabilizing the security situation were key ingredients to success in Colombia’s efforts against the insurgency. But more important than anything was that the Colombian government and population owned the commitment to resolve the conflict.

Establishing long-term infrastructure around the study of influence operations and misinformation is more crucial than ever.

At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many feared that the disease would hit the world’s poorest countries the hardest—that cases would overwhelm hospitals, health-care workers would run out of equipment and supplies, and the death toll would be devastating.

From tales of allegedly dwindling food stockpiles in Singapore to Indonesian land supposedly being traded to China for precious supplies of vaccine, false narratives about COVID-19 have swirled around the Southeast Asian internet for months. 

Information in its many forms has become a significant component of national power—the primary medium of competition between the United States and its adversaries.

Over the past decade, the international community has increasingly focused on leveraging private investment to support growth and achieve the…

Research on influence operations requires effective collaboration across industry and academia. Social media platforms are on the front lines of combating influence operations and possess a wealth of unique data and insights. Academics have rigorous training in research methods and relevant theories, and their independence lends credibility to their findings. The skills and knowledge of both groups are critical to answering important questions about influence operations and ultimately finding more effective ways to counter them.

This paper investigates the impact of climate shocks on violence between herders and farmers by using geolocalized data on conflict events for all African countries over the 1997-2014 period.

What role do information and intelligence play in counterinsurgency? How can artificial intelligence assist in tracking and identifying insurgent or terrorist activity? What are some of the opportunities and challenges of using AI in irregular warfare contexts?

Where does irregular warfare fit within the framework of national security policy? Does the recently released Irregular Warfare (IW) Annex attenuate focus, or relegate IW to a policy afterthought? How can IW concepts become enduring elements of a comprehensive effort toward competition and conflict with US adversaries?

What role do private military companies (PMCs) such as Russia’s Wagner Group play on the modern battlefield? How should US policymakers and US and allied troops in conflict zones manage threats from armed groups when Russia denies their existence? Is war by private armies a rising trend in modern conflict?

When, why, and under what circumstances does security force assistance (SFA) work? Episode 14 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast focuses on best practices of SFA, along with challenges, realistic expectations, and the role it will play for the United States in an era of great power competition with guests Dr. Mara Karlin and Brig. Gen. Scott Jackson. 

The plunging homicide rate in El Salvador has sparked debate about the role of the new president’s hardline policies. Much of it transpires on Twitter, where his champions and critics engage in rows that could pre-empt reasoned discussion of how to keep tamping down violence.

Among the many sobering projections of harm to be caused by climate change is this eye-popping statistic: on average, according to economists, a rise in local temperature of half a degree Celsius is associated with a ten to 20 percent increase in the risk of deadly conflict.

What’s new? Zimbabwe has seen a surge of attacks by gangs associated with the burgeoning artisanal mining sector, taking hundreds of miners’ lives. The police operation to counter this violence led to the arrest of thousands, including perpetrators of violence, but also many who were simply mining without a licence.

Why does it matter? Instability in the gold sector, driven by Zimbabwe’s patronage economy, has eroded the gold export revenue that President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government urgently needs to keep the country’s struggling economy afloat.

What should be done? Mnangagwa’s government should give artisanal mining cooperatives legal standing, pay gold producers at world prices and strengthen mining dispute resolution. Mining companies should cooperate with artisanal miners, whose representative bodies should professionalise. Multilateral organisations and South Africa should include metrics on mining when assessing Zimbabwe’s reform.

Since COVID-19 spread to South Asia, there has been no need for government officials, news anchors, or private individuals spreading misinformation about the pandemic to reinvent the wheel. They’ve simply exacerbated the same tensions that have long existed between the major religious groups in the region.

As news media across the United States generally urged calm and patience as votes were counted in last week’s presidential election, the Russian government-funded RT, a multi-platform media organization which claims to be the most popular news network on YouTube, instead amplified voices of chaos.

The Irregular Warfare Podcast is a collaboration between the Modern War Institute and Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project. You can listen to the full episode below, and you can find it and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, TuneIn, or your favorite podcast app. And be sure to follow the podcast on Twitter!

The problem of “conflict minerals” has received widespread attention from the public and researchers alike. Studies highlight that countries with high-value resources such as diamonds are more likely to experience civil war. The “conflict minerals” narrative is generally understood as the use of funds from minerals to support and perpetuate violence by non-state armed groups. Although armed groups may extort industrial mining companies, artisanal miners are thought to be particularly vulnerable to predation, and therefore involuntarily prolonging this cycle of violence. But this isn’t quite what’s happening...