This article introduces a dataset on the covert use of social media to influence politics by promoting propaganda, advocating controversial…

Explanations for the well-established relationship between mining and conflict interpret violence near resource extraction sites as part of…

News reports of political violence are systematically compiled into large global conflict-event datasets used by academics, governments, and…

Yemen is a country of about 30 million people. It occupies the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula and borders Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the shipping lanes of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

Climate fragility afflicts more and more countries in the world today. Flood and drought, as well as changes in multi-year and seasonal variability, have become major risk factors.

Yemen is caught up in overlapping emergencies that have defied mediation. In the north, bloody battles rage for control of Marib governorate between the internationally recognised government of Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and the Huthi rebels who ousted him in 2015. Hadi’s government prevents fuel from entering the Huthi-held port of Hodeida, and a tug of war over the riyal, Yemen’s currency, has led to its collapse in nominally government-controlled cities. 

As Nicolás Maduro forces dissidents to flee Venezuela, exiles have come to play important roles influencing both the opposition’s political strategy and international policy toward Caracas. Analysis of social media suggests that exile can lead opposition members to use strident rhetoric and advocate aggressive ideas more often than domestic counterparts.

Africa is especially vulnerable to climate change, as millions are already experiencing record heat, extreme precipitation and rising sea levels. Increasingly, the security implications of changing weather patterns are visible in deadly land resource disputes between farmers and herders across the continent – including in the continent’s most populous country, Nigeria.

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.

In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined by retired Brig. Gen. Yom Tov Tamir. He served a long career in the Israel Defense Forces as an armor officer holding positions from tank commander to division commander. During the Yom Kippur War in 1973, he commanded the 9th Armor Battalion, 14th Armored Brigade.

When information can travel globally at the tap of a finger, irregular warfare professionals must contend with an ever-changing environment. How does strategic messaging tie into operations on the battlefield? How can we build a more information-savvy force? And how can information act as both weapon and warfighting space?

How does China operate in the space between war and peace to gain strategic advantage in Asia and globally? What do these gray zone activities look like, and how do they facilitate China’s influence in the region? What are the consequences of inconsistent US policy and posture in the Pacific in countering China’s rise?

The United States and other nations have spent billions of dollars and invested untold effort, not to mention lives, in a global campaign against Islamist terrorism—and yet the threat landscape is arguably worse now than it was on 9/11.

The US military and its allies are faced with the challenges of shifting focus toward great power competition while still maintaining the ability to counter threats on the fringes. Where does irregular warfare fit in this new strategic landscape?

Combating influence operations is a critical concern for civil society, governments, and social media platforms around the world. Empirical research on how influence operations can affect people and societies—by, for example, altering beliefs, changing voting behavior, or inspiring political violence—is limited.

Widespread acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines is crucial for achieving sufficient immunization coverage to end the global pandemic, yet few studies have investigated COVID-19 vaccination attitudes in lower-income countries, where large-scale vaccination is just beginning. We analyze COVID-19 vaccine acceptance across 15 survey samples covering 10 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Asia, Africa and South America, Russia (an upper-middle-income country) and the United States, including a total of 44,260 individuals. We find considerably higher willingness to take a COVID-19 vaccine in our LMIC samples (mean 80.3%; median 78%; range 30.1 percentage points) compared with the United States (mean 64.6%) and Russia (mean 30.4%). Vaccine acceptance in LMICs is primarily explained by an interest in personal protection against COVID-19, while concern about side effects is the most common reason for hesitancy. Health workers are the most trusted sources of guidance about COVID-19 vaccines. Evidence from this sample of LMICs suggests that prioritizing vaccine distribution to the Global South should yield high returns in advancing global immunization coverage. Vaccination campaigns should focus on translating the high levels of stated acceptance into actual uptake. Messages highlighting vaccine efficacy and safety, delivered by healthcare workers, could be effective for addressing any remaining hesitancy in the analyzed LMICs.

This document is a compilation of relevant links and resources; last updated January 13, 2021

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Executive Summary

The post-election to inauguration period—the 11 weeks from Wednesday November 4, 2020 to Wednesday…