Small Wars Journal Leverages Web 2.0 Trends
Oct 21, 2007 16:13 UTC“The characteristics of Small Wars have evolved since the Banana Wars and Gunboat Diplomacy. War is never purely military, but today’s Small Wars are even less pure with the greater inter-connectedness of the 21st century. Their conduct typically involves the projection and employment of the full spectrum of national and coalition power by a broad community of practitioners. The military is still generally the biggest part of the pack, but there a lot of other wolves. The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.” — Small Wars Journal
Firms like Proctor & Gamble, Bank of America, and Boeing are leveraging the Web 2.0 trends described by business gurus like Don Tapscott [PPT format w. speaking notes] to improve information flow in their organizations. So is the General in charge of the USA’s nuclear deterrent. Armed Forces Journal praises the Small Wars Journal as another example that takes articles from field practitioners, and works to build an international body of counterinsurgency knowledge as fast or faster than civilization’s enemies can use the same technologies to build their movements. AFJ writes:
“The SWJ is one of the finest resources on the Internet for the student of counterinsurgency, and has attracted… a who’s who of the debate on counterinsurgency theory, including Kilcullen, Nagl, Frank Hoffman, Malcom Nance, Bing West and Lt. Col. Paul Yingling. The addition of SWJ contributors in recent months is especially impressive. For example, following his controversial May 2007 Armed Forces Journal essay, “A failure in general¬ship,” Yingling joined the SWJ blog as a contributor to address some of the response his article had received… The site also offers the digital SWJ Magazine, which principally pub¬lishes articles by the captains and majors who are fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and provides another excellent venue for expanding and enhancing the debate on the war. After so many articles about how the milblogging phenomenon has threatened chains of command, engendered violations of soldiers’ civil liberties and fueled a digital propaganda war, it is refreshing to note that the [digital medium] can also serve as a virtual graduate seminar for the practitioners of war.”