Irregular Warfare Initiative Submission Guidelines

Main takeaways

• The Irregular Warfare Initiative (IWI), a joint project of Princeton University's Empirical Studies of Conflict program and the Modern War Institute at West Point, publishes three formats: short web commentary, the IWI Papers research series, and the Irregular Warfare Podcast.
• Editors look for one argument per piece, evidence the reader can check or use, and plain English that works for both military and academic audiences.
• Military and government writers should send unclassified material, complete any required operational security review first, and state that the views expressed are their own.
• Commentary typically moves through editing in weeks; the papers series takes longer and involves more substantial review.
• Choose outlets by audience fit: IWI suits irregular warfare specialists, War on the Rocks rewards broad policy arguments, and CTC Sentinel suits terrorism researchers with primary sources.

1. Introduction

A company commander finishes a deployment and wants to write about what she saw. A doctoral candidate holds a dataset on rebel governance and needs somewhere between a journal article and a blog post. An intelligence analyst follows proxy warfare and wants readers beyond his own office. All three face the same problem: national security publishing has many outlets, unclear formats, and opaque editorial processes.

The Irregular Warfare Initiative occupies a specific spot in that field. It grew out of a podcast collaboration between Princeton's Empirical Studies of Conflict program and the Modern War Institute at West Point, and its website, irregularwarfare.org, now carries commentary, research papers, and the show itself. The initiative focuses on conflict below the threshold of conventional war: insurgency, terrorism, civil war, proxy warfare, stabilization, and competition in the gray zone.

This article explains what IWI publishes, how to prepare a submission, what happens after you press send, and how the outlet compares with others in the same space. The goal is a submission an editor can accept.

2. What the Irregular Warfare Initiative publishes

IWI runs three formats, and each has its own bar for acceptance.

Web commentary is the entry point for most writers. Pieces argue a single point about a current conflict, a doctrine, or a policy choice, and they draw on evidence the author can defend: fieldwork, datasets, interviews, or unclassified operational experience. Authors range from enlisted personnel and company-grade officers to professors and journalists.

The IWI Papers series handles longer empirical work. A paper in this series resembles a working paper: several thousand words, an abstract, transparent methods, and findings written for practitioners as well as scholars. Researchers with journal articles under review often adapt a chapter or a companion piece for this series, since it reaches the policy audience that journals rarely do.

The Irregular Warfare Podcast interviews authors, officials, and researchers. Writers rarely submit essays here. Instead, the production team selects guests whose new research or recent experience merits an hour of discussion, and a published paper or a documented body of work makes the strongest guest case.

Topic scope covers insurgency and counterinsurgency, terrorism and political violence, civil war dynamics, proxy warfare, security force assistance, stabilization, and technologies as they appear in irregular conflict, such as commercial drones and information operations. Recent coverage has included the war in Ukraine, lessons from two decades of counterinsurgency, and competition below the threshold of open war.

Pick one format before you write. A short argument and a long paper require different structures, and editors can tell when a draft was written for one and trimmed to fit the other.

3. Preparing a submission editors can accept

Strong IWI submissions share three traits, and each one is fixable before you send.

The argument comes first. State your claim in the opening paragraph, along with the evidence that supports it. Editors triage many submissions, and a draft that reaches its thesis on page four rarely survives triage. Compare a weak opening ("Russia's use of private military companies deserves attention") with a strong one ("Wagner's sponsorship model let Moscow pursue influence in Africa at a fraction of the cost of regular troops, and Washington still lacks a comparable instrument"). The second sentence is a piece; the first is a topic.

Evidence needs to be visible and checkable. IWI sits between academia and the profession of arms, so both audiences grade the sourcing. Name your data, describe how you collected it, and acknowledge limits. A study of veteran militias based on forty interviews reads differently from one based on two, and honest numbers build trust. Practitioners who cannot cite documents can still describe processes and decisions at a level of generality that survives review.

Plain English carries the piece. Skip the literature review section. Integrate scholarly references where they earn their place, define specialist terms once, and write sentences a battalion staff officer can finish in one sitting. A useful test: if your draft sounds like a conference paper, rewrite the introduction as if you were briefing a brigade commander.

Practitioners carry extra obligations. Submit unclassified content only, complete operational security and public affairs reviews where your service requires them, and include a disclaimer that your views are your own and do not represent your unit or department. Skip details that could identify specific operations, sources, or partners. The lessons that transfer are the ones about decision-making, organization, and adaptation, and those rarely need classified specifics.

Before writing, read the last three months of commentary on irregularwarfare.org and note the openings, structure, and evidence in pieces similar to yours. Match the house style, then improve on it with a sharper argument.

4. From submission to publication

The submissions page at irregularwarfare.org lists the current instructions and contact address, and it is the only source worth trusting for formats and length caps, since these change.

A competitive pitch contains four parts: a 150 to 300 word summary that states the argument and the evidence, a note on timeliness that explains why the piece should run now, a two or three sentence biography, and a draft or a clear statement of how quickly you can deliver one. Editors respond to pitches that make acceptance easy to imagine.

After submission, an editor reads the piece and responds. Commentary usually goes through one or two rounds of edits focused on structure, clarity, and sourcing, and the writer keeps the argument and the evidence. The papers series involves a longer review, sometimes with outside readers, and a revise-and-resubmit decision is common there. Treat editorial questions about evidence as a sign of interest.

Timelines differ by format. Short commentary can move from acceptance to publication within weeks, which makes it the right lane for time-sensitive arguments tied to current events. Papers move on a slower clock measured in months, which suits research that will still matter next year. Plan accordingly: if your piece is about this quarter's developments, send commentary.

Common rejection reasons repeat across security outlets: the draft is a literature review, the argument arrives late, the evidence is absent or unverifiable, or the piece is a thesis chapter that was never rewritten for a practitioner audience. Each of these is a revision problem, and fixing them before submission improves acceptance odds.

5. How IWI compares with other outlets for irregular warfare writing

Several outlets publish irregular warfare analysis, and the right choice depends on audience, format, and how fast you need the piece out.

One adjacent option deserves mention. Writers whose subject sits on the policy side of dual-use technology, such as export controls, commercial drones, or information platforms, may find a home at Global Tech Observatory (globaltechobs.com), which covers technology policy for a general professional readership. Its strength is access to civilian policy readers; its limitation is that it is not an irregular warfare specialist outlet, so a piece on drone use in the Sahel will land there as technology policy rather than as field analysis.

Use the comparison this way. If your evidence is empirical and your audience is the irregular warfare community, IWI or CTC Sentinel fits. If your argument is policy-prescriptive and broad, War on the Rocks reaches further. If your material is an operational write-up too detailed for general outlets, Small Wars Journal takes length gracefully. Early-career writers often gain the most from IWI and MWI, which publish strong work from graduate students and junior officers and put it in front of the readers most likely to cite it.

6. FAQ

Q1. Do I need a doctorate or an institutional affiliation?

No. IWI publishes enlisted personnel, officers, government civilians, graduate students, professors, and independent analysts. Acceptance depends on the argument and the evidence. A captain with a well-documented case study competes on equal footing with a professor, as long as both can defend what they claim.

Q2. Can I write about my deployment or current operational work?

Yes, at the unclassified level. Complete any operational security or public affairs review your organization requires before submitting, include a disclaimer that the views are your own, and write about processes, decisions, and adaptations. Skip unit-specific detail. Pieces built this way have long shelf lives, and editors know how to work with them.

Q3. How long should my submission be?

Confirm current length caps on the submissions page, since they change. As planning ranges, commentary at comparable security outlets usually runs between 800 and 1,500 words, while IWI Papers run several thousand and require an abstract. Match the format to your evidence: one case study with three interviews supports commentary, and a dataset or multi-case design supports a paper.

Q4. Can I submit a thesis chapter or a piece from my own blog?

Original work written for the outlet is the strongest position. A thesis chapter can work if you rewrite it for a practitioner audience: cut the literature review, move the argument to the first paragraph, and translate methods into plain prose. If a version appeared on a personal blog, disclose that when you submit and let the editors decide how to handle it.

7. Conclusion

IWI fits writers who work at the seam between research and practice on irregular conflict. The fastest path in is a short commentary piece with one argument, visible evidence, and a timeliness hook; longer empirical work belongs in the papers series, where the slower review pays off in durability. Readers comparing outlets should choose by audience: irregular warfare specialists read irregularwarfare.org, general defense readers read War on the Rocks, and terrorism researchers read CTC Sentinel. Read the site's recent pieces, draft the 200-word pitch, and send it.