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...

Late in May, an …

The Irregular Warfare Podcast is a collaboration between the …

Scholars of the resource curse argue that reliance on primary commodities destabilizes governments: price fluctuations generate windfalls or…

Of the roughly 28.6 million cases of COVID-19 logged by the World Health Organization, only 1.1 million are in Africa, 4 percent of the global total. The relatively low number of cases, along with a similarly low figure for coronavirus deaths, has researchers stumped. But despite the coronavirus’s relatively light touch so far, the continent faces a problem familiar throughout the world: pandemic misinformation.

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!

Are the U.S. Marines better at counterinsurgency (COIN) than the U.S. Army? How about the British Army? If so, why, and if not then what else…

In Episode 8 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast, hosts Nick Lopez and Shawna Sinnott have a conversation with best-selling authors August…

If some sources in the Middle East and North Africa are to be believed, China has declared …

Despite the abundance of evidence that peacekeeping works, we know little about what actually makes peacekeepers effective. Recent work suggesting…