Recruiting for SWC members because....

[gute]

Maybe some of our council discussions, opinions of the majority (or not) should make its way into SWJ as editorials. Maybe SWC Calls for Papers done through the forums and edited by the SWJ for publication on the website - dumb idea?

Just tryin to think outside the box.

[jmm99]

Admittedly, we at SWC are "Part of the Small Wars Journal Empire" ; but the "Empire" is neither the Rand Corp. nor the Brookings Inst. - its editorial staff is limited and SWJ articles receive no or minor editing. SWJ articles are very much a "roll your own" proposition.

The rules for submitting content to SWJ and its Blog are here, Submit Content. Those same rules provide a framework for creating full fledged articles within the confines of SWC.

First, write up the article in any word processor. I'd use .rtf format and then print the file to .pdf (I use doPDF; link). The .pdf file is then attached to an SWC post in the relevant thread (new or old); limit of 4 .pdf files per post, with 195KB per file.

To check file sizes, I selected the text from two recent SWJ articles: Back to the Basics: Chess, Poker & the Future of Warfare; and Thinking and Writing About COIN. DoPDF creates .pdf files of 65KB and 80KB respectively.

So, I think your idea is basically sound and a good one, but the SWC poster who aspires to article publication will have to do the heavy lifting.

----------------
Bill, Steve et al.

While I think post-Vietnam is material history, we shouldn't forget that reform of the Army and Marines was the end result - albeit with more than a little trauma. Surely, there will be a lot to talk about - e.g, how to provide effective low-, medium- and high-intensity forces on a limited budget.

I'd say take a knee and watch what happens over the coming year; and see what 2014 will bring.

Regards

Mike

[slapout9]

We did really lousy at the fund raiser this year to.

[Bob's World]

I suspect that the SWC was built on several pillars, such as frustration, interest and hope.

Hope came with innocence, and a belief that we could "fix" these problems, or "win" these conflicts on our terms.

That innocence is lost, hope is forlorn, and interest is waning. This is human nature.

Perhaps the members, like the services, are gathering up their lessons learned from this experience and leaning forward for the next, hopefully "better" conflict.

One of the big tactical ideas born of the past decade was that of "population-centric approaches." The idea being that because people are so important in these types of conflicts that we must focus our efforts on understanding each valley, village and person, and then focus our engagement on "fixing" or "winning" them to what it is we hoped to accomplish. That is a very tactical view of populations and their role in these populace-based conflicts.

Applying a strategic lens to this sound concept reveals the reality that one cannot simply bribe, develop or secure a populace to what some illegitimate foreign system of governance wants for them; instead those illegitimate foreign systems must take their understanding of these local populations where they believe their foreign interests to be at stake and ask "how do I tailor my own actions and goals in a manner to be consistent with the fundamental needs of these people my actions will impact, and how do I best pursue those interests in a manner consistent with their culture(s).

It is about changing us, not them. It is about fixing our approach to governance, not theirs. Someday we will learn this, but at the institutional level it is an insight that escapes us.

So long as we continue to cast strategic problems in tactical terms, and recognize, select and promote strategic leaders for tactical prowess in the face of strategic failure this will likely continue to remain beyond our grasp.