In the past twenty years, during the US-led post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a million members of the National Guard have deployed to those two combat zones. Throughout that period, soldiers and airmen from the Army and Air National Guard have also played a vital role in responding to a remarkably wide range of emergencies at home, from wildfires and hurricanes to the COVID-19 pandemic. Those dual missions—serving both as a key source of combat capability for the joint force and as a resource in times of need in American communities—set the National Guard apart as a military force. But that isn’t the Guard’s only fundamentally unique quality.

Special operations forces have been a favorite national security tool in the post-9/11 era; wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have consumed their attention and kept the special operations community focused on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency missions. However, the release of the 2017 National Security Strategy pivoted the United States’ strategic focus from terrorism to near-peer competitors China and Russia. What will be the role of special operations forces (SOF) in this era of great power competition? Where is SOF falling short in the shift to meet this new focus area?

In episode 26 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast, we discuss US counterinsurgency efforts in Anbar province, Iraq from the 2006 surge through the rise of the Islamic State in 2013–2014 with two guests who both experienced the US COIN fight firsthand—one as the operational commander of Marine Corps forces in the province and the other as a civilian advisor to Marine leadership on Anbari culture and tribal dynamics.

In this episode of the Irregular Warfare Podcast, Shawna Sinnott and Kyle Atwell discuss the history and context of proxy and partner warfare in the Middle East with Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Dr. Eli Berman. This is the second installment of a two-part discussion on fighting irregular warfare through proxy forces.

The Irregular Warfare Podcast is a joint venture between ESOC and the Modern War Institute.

In episode 5, Kyle Atwell and Nick…

We are pleased to share the Woodrow Wilson School’s new press release concerning findings from our recently completed study,…

This Report presents evidence on the relationship between violent conflict and the industrial organization of firms and entrepreneurial decision-…

The way wars are fought has changed starkly over the past sixty years. International military campaigns used to play out between large armies at…

As of 2011, 73 percent of active component soldiers in the U.S. Army had deployed…

Foundations of the Islamic State: Management, Money, and Terror in Iraq, 2005–2010 draws from more than 140 recently declassified documents to…

Scholars of civil war and insurgency have long posited that insurgent organizations and their state enemies incur costs for the collateral damage…

The unemployed are often inculpated in the production of violence during conflict. A simple yet common argument describes these individuals as…

Shortly after toppling the Baathist regime, the U.S. military contracted with a local Iraqi firm to run a major public opinion survey in Baghdad.…

Research on insurgency has been invigorated this past decade by better data, improved methods, and the urgency of understanding active engagements…

In a recent New York Times opinion piece, “Where Terrorism Research Goes Wrong,” social psychologist Anthony Biglan argues that, given the…

Does improved communication provided by modern cellphone technology affect the rise or fall of violence during insurgencies? A priori predictions…

But almost entirely unnoticed is how the Iraqi government has responded. Central to the battle for the hearts and minds of Iraq’s Sunnis is the…

Eleven years ago this coming month, a coalition of armed forces led by the United States moved decisively against Saddam Hussein’s forces,…

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is now in complete or partial control of more than a dozen Iraqi cities in Sunni-dominated areas of…

When the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria poured out from the eastern deserts of Syria into Iraq’s second-largest city last month, it was an image…