Small Wars Journal

One year ago today, on Veterans Day 2024, we relaunched Small Wars Journal under Arizona State University’s Future Security Initiative. The timing was deliberate. We choose this day to honor service, sacrifice, and the enduring commitment to understand the character of conflicts. In the past year, our authors, readers, and partners have rebuilt SWJ into a thriving forum for professional discourse, with half a million monthly page views, tens of thousands of active readers, and a growing community that continues to challenge assumptions and advance ideas. 🔱 To our veterans, thank you for your service, and for continuing the fight to think critically and write honestly. 🔱 To our contributors and readers, thank you for keeping the small wars conversation alive and relevant. Here’s to the next year with sharp minds, open hearts, strong voices, and the pursuit of a powerful discourse in complex times. Sincerely, The Small Wars Journal Team PS. Stay tuned all Veteran's Month long, as we will be showcasing our rich history and what Small Wars Journal means to us. What does #SmallWarsJournal mean to you? Have a favorite piece? Something you'd like to share with us? We would love to hear from you. 📽️: Ishaan Reyna of Malibu West and Small Wars Journal

🔱 ASU News: @USArmy enlists @ASU to help modernize military learning ㅤ 👤 Story by: Marshall Terrill ㅤ "The Army partnership also reflects ASU’s broader public mission as a national service institution, applying its scale, digital expertise and innovation infrastructure to address complex public challenges. In this case, the challenge is ensuring that one of the world’s largest military forces can adapt as quickly as the environment it operates in.” ㅤ Read more about this transformative partnership. smallwarsjournal.com/2026/03/19/us-…

#SWJEvent Alert! 🚨 Join Arizona State University(@asu)'s Future Security Initiative (@future_of_war) and @NewAmerica for an impactful discussion: “Souls Without Graves, We Will Cry for You for a Thousand Years”: Exhuming the Massacre Sites of South Korea’s Politicide, a webinar with Dr. Grace M. Cho. 📅When: Mar. 26, 2026, 10:00 am – 11:00 am AZ time 🛜 Where: Online via zoom Dr. Cho is Professor of Sociology at the College of Staten Island, CUNY. She is the author of "Tastes Like War: A Memoir, writing a book examining the Korean War through the lens of her family’s experience. She is also a 2026 ASU Future Security Fellow at New America. This event is co-sponsored with the Center for Law and Global Affairs at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. smallwarsjournal.com/2026/03/19/web…

“Be in the right place, at the right time, with the right partner and capability.” That is the model EURO-SOF delivers. smallwarsjournal.com/2026/03/18/the… #SWJEssay @USASOCNews #SpecialOperations @NATO @US_SOCEUR

🇷🇺Russia is shaping the battlefield through sabotage, cyberattacks, and active measures that aim to set conditions before escalation. EURO-SOF and USSOF must continue to build resilience, so deterrence fails the mechanisms for resistance and deep strike are already in place.

🧵"The Value of EURO-SOF" 🇺🇸🇪🇺 by Col. Ned Marsh (@NATO_SOF) Europe is not a secondary theater. Even as US strategy shifts focus, the Russian threat remains active, persistent, and tied to a wider network of adversaries operating simultaneously.

In a recent episode of The Last Line of Defense, General David H. Petraeus, retired U.S. Army general and former director of the CIA, joined @CSISDefense President @SethGJones to discuss the global risks of the Iran conflict. Listen here: csis.org/podcasts/last-…

Russia, Iran, and China have been treating narrative control as a main effort in their #PoliticalWarfare campaigns, shaping how events are understood before responses are even formed. The U.S. and NATO must now race to adapt and restore their cognitive warfare capabilities. smallwarsjournal.com/2026/03/18/nar… #SWJEssay @THINKJSOU @DSD_Kings

The result is a contested cognitive space where perception shapes action. Decision-making slows. and consensus weakens... and all the while policy forms under pressure from narratives that adversaries helped construct. This is the terrain modern competition unfolds on.

🧵"Narrative as a weapon" by John Wirges (@Civil_Affairs) Let's explore more of Wirges' assessment on how Russia, Iran, and China approach cognitive warfare to "exploit the information environment to modify human behavior." 🧠⚔️

In modern war, speed wins attention. Credibility wins trust. But neither is sufficient on its own. In #Gaza, writes Ashraf Aldmour, #Israel and #Hamas leveraged both, but rarely at the same time. The result was a shifting of influence across audiences, platforms, and time. “In future high-visibility conflicts, the advantage will go to actors that plan influence alongside operations, move quickly without outrunning the facts, and keep messaging aligned with what audiences can observe.” 📃Read “Credibility vs. Speed: Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Information War” for a breakdown of how modern information warfare actually works. #SWJEssay #Informationwarfare smallwarsjournal.com/2026/03/19/cre…

“Collapsing diverse influence activities into a single warfare-based frame risks obscuring the distinct mechanisms through which perception, attention, and judgment are disrupted.” Cognitive warfare is not one thing. Defending against it, therefore, requires conceptual precision. Only then can we match our specific vulnerabilities with specific defenses– and reduce the damage it can cause. Read Dr. Alessia Dorigoni’s #SWJPerspectivepiece “Beyond Cognitive Warfare: Differentiating Cognitive Battles for Cognitive Security” here. #Cognitivewarfare smallwarsjournal.com/2026/03/19/bey…

What JSOC built in Iraq and Afghanistan is now reshaping modern conflict. Dr. Anne I. Harrington and Brig. Gen. (ret) Brenda Cartier write that restricted operating zone (ROZ) warfare lets SOF open a column of battlespace anytime, anyplace, collapsing distance, time, and coordination into a single moment of action. 📃Read “Anytime, Anyplace: Special Operations Forces and the Invention of ROZ Warfare" #SWJPerspectivepiece @USSOCOM @SOF #SOF smallwarsjournal.com/2026/03/19/any…