by Joey Middleton | Apr 13, 2026 | SOF and Strategic Competition, SOF Operations
By Dr. Joseph Long “Every intervention begins as a story of liberation. Without adaptation, it ends as a story of occupation.” Why do militarily superior forces consistently win the fight—but lose the peace? This is not a new question. It is the defining paradox of...
by Joey Middleton | Apr 13, 2026 | SOF and Strategic Competition
By Andrew Rolander Intro The convergence of rapid technological proliferation, economic globalization, and liquidity in democratic institutions has disaggregated key coercive capabilities of the state to subnational political agents and non-state actors. These...
by Joey Middleton | Apr 13, 2026 | SOF and Strategic Competition
By Ron MacCammon Rapoport’s Waves and the Question of Agency In 2004, terrorism scholar David C. Rapoport introduced his influential “Four Waves of Modern Terrorism” framework. He argued that modern political violence unfolds in roughly forty-year cycles, each...
by Joey Middleton | Apr 6, 2026 | SOF and Strategic Competition
By Elizabeth Boyett Counter-narratives are strategic stories that reframe meaning—and thus behavior—against an adversary’s frame. They work only when the audience is matched, credibly carried, and enacted in deeds. Used as messaging alone, they backfire by amplifying...
by Joey Middleton | Apr 6, 2026 | SOF and Strategic Competition
By Dr. Joseph Long In the preceding analysis—the first installment of what has become a three-part series—I introduced the Guerrilla Leader Theory (GLT), a framework that provides a static taxonomy of leadership for the human domain. It posits that a leader’s...
by Joey Middleton | Apr 6, 2026 | SOF and Strategic Competition
By SWJ Staff Check out this latest article from The Modern War Institute! Jeremy Mushtare argues in “The Sisyphean Struggle for Influence Campaigning in Competition” that U.S. influence efforts fail because they lack prioritization, integration, and alignment with...
