Irregular Warfare Podcast
The Irregular Warfare Podcast explores an important component of war throughout history. Small wars, drone strikes, special operations forces, counterterrorism, proxies—this podcast covers the full range of topics related to irregular war and features in-depth conversations with guests from the military, academia, and the policy community. The podcast is a collaboration between the Modern War Institute at West Point and Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project.
Episodes
Episode 164 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast grapples with the hidden costs of precision warfare, looking at how drone strikes affect civilian populations well beyond their immediate lethal footprint. Anchored in a study using twelve billion geocoded cell phone records from Yemen, the conversation explores how drone strikes trigger sharp spikes in civilian mobility and communication—disruptions on a scale comparable to major ...
This episode of the Irregular Warfare Podcast concludes our four-part Future of War series, pairing author and futurist August Cole with senior special operations leaders to explore how tomorrow’s conflicts may unfold.
Today’s episode centers on Operation Lightning, a near-future story by P.W. Singer and August Cole that imagines Army Rangers operating across a truly global battlefield. Set du...
Today’s episode examines how Russian agents and local militants exploited ambiguity, weak state capacity, and fragmented local authority to transform unrest in the Donbas into an armed insurgency in 2014. At its core, it is a story about how a small group of armed actors can seize a city—and how local institutions, political legitimacy, and civil society can stop them. Dr. Celeste Wallander and Dr. Serhiy K...
Ahead of the fifth anniversary of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan this August, Dr. Colin Jackson and Colonel (Ret.) E.J. Degen join us to discuss initial insights from the Afghanistan War Commission’s work. The Afghanistan War Commission is an independent body established by the U.S. Congress to examine the key strategic, diplomatic, and operational decisions that pertain to the war in Afghanistan from J...
Description
Episode 160 examines the origins of Britain’s World War II commandos and the enduring role of special operations forces from Churchill’s era to today.
Summary
This episode explores the creation of Britain’s legendary commando force following the military disasters of 1940. Author Monty Halls and retired Lieutenant General Scott Howell trace how a remote house in the Scottish Highlands became the labora...
Description
Episode 159 examines the relationship between alliances, military access, and U.S. global power projection.
Summary
This episode explores an often overlooked benefit of alliances: wartime access. Dr. Rachel Metz and Ambassador Douglas Lute explain why public debates about allies often focus narrowly on defense spending, while missing the basing, overflight, logistics, intelligence, and political permissions that m...
Nuclear weapons may make direct war between major powers less likely, but they do not end competition. Instead, they push states toward indirect forms of conflict: proxy warfare, security force assistance, covert action, and cyber operations.
The guests discuss why indirect conflict is so attractive in an era of nuclear risk, how this logic applies to Ukraine and Taiwan, and what it means for US-China comp...
This episode examines why the United States has failed at irregular warfare and what it would take to reverse that trajectory—not merely to deter, but to actually win.
Summary
While irregular warfare is on the rise around the globe today, the United States has largely failed at irregular warfare over the past 75 years. Key issues our ...
Description
Episode 156 examines what the U.S.-Iran War and Russia-Ukraine War reveal about how weaker states and irregular actors contest navies, maritime commerce, and global energy flows.
Summary
This conversation examines naval irregular warfare in an era of drones, shadow fleets, contested chokepoints, and attacks on commercial shipping. The guests explore why the maritime domain is attractive to weaker states and irregular ac...
This week’s episode of the Irregular Warfare Podcast examines how Taiwan could deter—or potentially defeat—a Chinese invasion by transforming the Taiwan Strait into an “unmanned hellscape.” Anchored in the recent CNAS report Hellscape for Taiwan: Rethinking Asymmetric Defense, the conversation explores how drones, autonomous systems, and mobile defenses are reshaping warfare in the Indo-...
Episode 154 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast examines a core puzzle in intrastate conflict: how a small number of foreign fighters can exert outsized influence on insurgencies. Anchored in Professor Tricia Bacon’s The Counterinsurgency Dilemma, this episode explores when foreign fighters strengthen insurgent groups—and when they undermine them.
While foreign fighters are often associated with higher levels ...
Description
Episode 153 examines the role of unconventional warfare and special operations forces in conventional major war.
Summary
This conversation explores how unconventional warfare can support, shape, and sometimes substitute for conventional military operations in large-scale combat. Our guests examine what unconventional warfare is, why it matters beyond the special operations community, and how support to resistance forces...
Episode 152 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast grapples with the many definitions of irregular warfare used across the community of interest.
In this episode, our guests discuss why the concept of irregular warfare has resisted a stable definition across decades of changing doctrine, and what that persistent confusion has cost operationally and strategically. We walk through three competing definitional approaches— the maximal,...
Episode 151 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast explores how the United States wields power not only through military force, but through dollars, sanctions, export controls, and supply chains. Anchored in Eddie Fishman’s book Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare, this episode examines the rise of economic statecraft as a central feature of great power competition.
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Space is no longer a silent backdrop to conflict—it is a contested domain that enables, shapes, and increasingly defines how wars are fought. In this episode, Ben Jebb and Charlie McGillis sit down with Dr. James Kiras and General Stephen Whiting to examine the strategic importance of space in both great power competition and irregular warfare. The discussion explores how modern military operation...
Episode 150 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast examines the historical and strategic forces that shaped modern Iran and explores how the Islamic Republic uses irregular warfare to advance its interests in the Middle East.
Our guests begin by examining the political foundations of modern Iranian politics, tracing the country’s trajectory from the rule of the Shah and the ...
Episode 148 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast explores why militant groups form alliances, and what the content of those alliances can tell us about their organizational capacity. Drawing on an article Professor Chris Blair co-authored with Phillip Potter, The Strategic Logic of Large Militant Alliance Networks, this episode offers a new framework for understanding militant cooperation. Reflective of the comparative advantage model,...
Episode 147 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast examines the past, present, and future of America’s defense industrial base—and why its strength may determine the outcome of the next era of great power competition. Drawing on historical experience and contemporary reforms, the episode argues that American military advantage has long depended on close collaboration between government and industry. From Roosevelt&r...
Description:
Episode 146 examines the impact of external military assistance on civil wars.
Summary
This conversation delves into the complexities of competitive intervention in civil wars, exploring the types of military aid provided, how external support influences conflict dynamics, and implications for practitioners and policymakers. The discussion highlights the prevalence of external interventions, the escalation dynami...
Episode 145 examines the role of foreign fighters in war.
Our guests begin by highlighting the long history of foreign fighters in conflict, from the early United States and the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s to contemporary cases such as the International Legion in Ukraine and the role of foreign fighters in ISIS. The conversation then turns to why individuals risk their lives for others in far away lands, with motivations r...
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