zenpundit.com » small wars journal

Archive for the ‘small wars journal’ Category

New Small Wars Journal Book – China’s Securing, Shaping and Exploiting of Strategic Spaces

Tuesday, December 31st, 2019

[Mark Safranski / zen]

Our friend, Dr. Robert Bunker at Small Wars Journal has a new natsec publication:

CHINA’s Securing, Shaping, and Exploitation of Strategic Spaces: Gray Zone Response and Counter-Shi Strategies: A Small Wars Journal Pocket Book  

Originally, this study was funded by USAWC SSI originally as a ERAP project. The work provides an analysis of the CCP regime’s use of gray zone activities to further its strategic imperatives as well as suggested US response.

Bunker writes in the introduction…

“….The ‘Gray Zone’ and Mary Kaldor’s ‘new wars’ construct – with success measured by those most able to avoid battle and control population – fit well with China’s desire to asymmetrically challenge the United States and not oppose it in traditional (and conventional) force on force engagement. This is not an unreasonable approach given the ‘Power Transition’ and ‘Thucydides Trap’ perspectives that exist, most specifically the dangers in inherent in an ascendant power (China) prematurely challenging an established great power (United States). The Chinese grand strategic initiative can thus be thought of as Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace writ large….

The book’s format is based on the following case studies:

1: South China Sea—Artificial Islands
2: Great Fire Wall of China—Golden Shield
3: Social Credit System—Population Control
4: Taiwan—Territorial and Ideological Unification
5: Uighur Muslims—Cultural Ethnocide & Han Colonization
6: Confucius Institutes—Ideological Subversion
7: Direct Foreign Investments—Resources, Trade, and Influence

You can find this timely addition to the strategic debate on China here.

New Book from SWJ! The Plutocratic Insurgency Reader

Friday, July 26th, 2019

[Mark Safranski / zen]

Plutocratic Insurgency Reader edited by Robert J. Bunker and Pamela Ligouri-Bunker

The newest book published by Small Wars Journal contains 376 pages of essays by 15 contributors, a foreword by Nils Gilman and conclusion by longtime criminal insurgency analyst John SullivanWhat is a “plutocratic insurgency” you ask?

According to Robert Bunker:

The plutocratic insurgency concept dates back to 2011 and has been influenced by earlier work done by John Robb (Onward to a Hollow State, 2008) and Nils Gilman (Deviant Globalization, 2010). As a theoretical construct, it was further inspired by the global street protests and demonstrations of the Occupy movement taking place during that period. Research on this topical area for its U.S. national security threat potentials has been conducted related to U.S. Department of Defense and Army programs, with a number of works produced or derivative of these efforts; Op-Ed: Not Your Grandfather’s Insurgency (2014), Global Criminal and Sovereign Free Economies and the Demise of the Western Democracies (2014), and Old and New Insurgency Forms (2016). Of these works, the “Foreword: The twin insurgency—facing plutocrats and criminals” written by Nils Gilman for the derivative 2014 edited book project—and reprinted online as The Twin Insurgency in The American Interest—is by far the best known and eloquent of these writings:

The defining feature of the plutocratic insurgency is its goal: to defund or de-provision public goods in order to defang a state that its adherents see as a threat to their prerogatives. (Note that, conceptually, plutocratic insurgencies differ from kleptocracies; the latter use the institutions of state to loot the population, whereas the former wish to neutralize those institutions in order to facilitate private-sector looting. In practice, these may overlap or co-mingle.) Practically speaking, plutocratic insurgency takes the form of efforts to lower taxes, which necessitates cutting spending on public goods; reducing regulations that restrict corporate action or protect workers; and defunding or privatizing public institutions such as schools, health care, infrastructure, and social space.

Newly Published! SWJ / El Centro ebook on Templarios cartel

Sunday, April 14th, 2019

[ by Charles Cameron — fresh off the interwebs! ]
.

Los Caballeros Templarios de Michoacán: Imagery, Symbolism, and Narratives

About the context for El Centro / SWJ, our publishers:

The elephant in the hemispheric room is clearly the epidemic criminal, cartel and gang threat, fueled by a drug and migration economy, rising to the level of local and national criminal insurgencies and a significant U.S. national security risk.

My chapter, Templarios: Echoes of the Templars and Parallels Elsewhere, begins on p 102..

Enjoy!

From the Bunker

Sunday, February 17th, 2019

[Mark Safranski / “zen“]
1

Friend of ZP,  Dr. Robert Bunker had a few new publications lately with other Friend of ZP co-authors and I thought I would begin my return to semi-regular (or at least occasional) blogging by giving them a nod here. The first was run a few weeks ago at Small Wars Journal: 

Third Generation Gangs Strategic Note No. 13: Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) Command and Control (C2) Geographic Variations

by Robert Bunker and John Sullivan

Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) is a well-known and extremely violent street, and in Central America, prison gang with an estimated transnational membership of 50,000 to 70,000 individuals.[1] Essentially a transnational gang network, MS-13 maintains a relatively robust media presence due to its ongoing criminal activities within the United States, many of which have resulted in homicides and even torture killings, as the gang continues to expand into new communities in Texas and the East Coast of the United States. The gang is organized on a networked, i.e. biological (and/or software program) based model with open architecture ‘plug ins’ that utilize a cellular synapse/and open coding-like strategy that facilitates network linkages and alliances, i.e., interfaces with violent non-state actors (VNSAs). Such network interfaces and organizational schemes go by a number of terms including netwar (John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt) and open-source warfare (John Robb).[2] This note specifically looks at the C2 geographic variations of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) network in the United States, Mexico, and Central America (primarily El Salvador) and MS-13s interface with more powerful violent non-state actors (VNSAs) which result in localized hierarchical organizational expressions.

Read the rest here.

The second is a monograph at The Strategic Studies Institute:

Contemporary Chemical Weapons ... Cover Image

Contemporary Chemical Weapons Use in Syria and Iraq by the Assad Regime and the Islamic State 

This monograph focuses on an understudied, but yet a critically important and timely component of land warfare, related to the battlefield use of chemical weapons by contemporary threat forces. It will do so by focusing on two case studies related to chemical weapons use in Syria and Iraq by the Assad regime and the Islamic State. Initially, the monograph provides an overview of the chemical warfare capabilities of these two entities; discusses selected incidents of chemical weapons use each has perpetrated; provides analysis and lessons learned concerning these chemical weapons incidents, their programs, and the capabilities of the Assad regime and the Islamic State; and then presents U.S. Army policy and planning considerations on this topical areas of focus. Ultimately, such considerations must be considered vis-à-vis U.S. Army support of Joint Force implementation of National Command Authority guidance.

And finally, heading back to SWJ, a book – with Dave Dilegge, John Sullivan and Alma Keshavarz  :

1

Blood and Concrete: 21st Century Conflict in Urban Centers and Megacities

Blood and Concrete: 21st Century Conflict in Urban Centers and Megacities provides a foundation for understanding urban operations and sustaining urban warfare research. This Small Wars Journal (SWJ) Anthology documents over a decade of writings on urban conflict. In addition to essays originally published at SWJ it adds new content including an introduction by the editors, a preface on “Blood and Concrete” by David Kilcullen, a foreword “Urban Warfare Studies” by John Spencer, a postscript “Cities in the Crossfire: The Rise of Urban Violence” by Margarita Konaev, and an afterword “Urban Operations: Meeting Challenges, Seizing Opportunities, Improving the Approach” by Russell W. Glenn. These essays frame the discussion found in the collection’s remaining 49 chapters. Blood and Concrete continues the legacy of Small Was Journal’s coverage of urban operations, conflict and combat.

Probably not this kind of megacity…..

See the source image

 

5,000 words on Los Templarios narco-cartel at Small Wars Journal

Sunday, January 6th, 2019

[ Charles Cameron — my latest for your reading pleasure ]
.

Some of you may be interested in my latest — 5,000 words on the Knights Templar crusaders & their various modern variants (Freemasons, proto-Nazis, Anders Breivik &c) as precursors to the Templarios cartel in Michoacán — now up at Small Wars Journal.

Opening paras:

It seems appropriate to begin this overview of the appropriation of Templar symbolism from the original, medieval Knights Templar religious order by the contemporary Caballeros Templarios cartel by noting that the borrowing of ancient religious and military symbolism by more recent and questionable groupings is not uncommon.

In contemporary Pagan-revival Odinism / Asatru, for instance, a re-appropriation of Nordic mythology by far-right groups is not uncommon.

Of Vinland productions historical reenactments, Simon Coulu reports in Vice:

[T]heir Viking imagery often resembles that used by neo-fascist groups. Its president, as well as at least one actor from the historical re-enactment company, are also involved in the activities of the ultra-nationalist group Atalante Québec and the skinhead band Légitime Violence.

More precisely to our point, the Knights Templar of history were founded as a military order of monks with a rule devised by the Cistercian St Bernard of Clairvaux at the Council of Troyes (1128/9). St. Bernard was also the author of a spectacular defense of Templar chivalric warfare against the Saracens, In Praise of the New Knighthood (Liber ad milites Templi: De laude novae militae,1129). Their function was the protect both the holy places of Jerusalem and pilgrims traveling to visit them.

Since then, the Templars have featured in medieval Grail legends, in Masonic rites beginning with a Templar branch founded by Baron Gotthelf von Hund in 1755, and notably in one proto-Nazi cult. Anders Breivik, the perpetrator of the Utoya massacre, claimed to be a Templar, as do various alt-right groups..

In 1907, Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels, some-time Cistercian monk, Ariosophist (among the precursors of Nazi racial doctrines), and author of the fabulously-named 1905 publication, Theo-Zoology or the Lore of the Sodom-Apelings and the Electron of the Gods, founded the Order of the New Templars (ONT)—borrowing name and symbolism from the original Templars for his own Aryan race cult. Lanz’ membership of the Cistercian order would account for some of his interest in the original Templars, founded by the Cistercian St. Bernard of Clairvaux. The ONT was finally closed down by the Gestapo in 1942.

Read on:

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/templarios-echoes-templars-and-parallels-elsewhere


Switch to our mobile site