The Challenge of Next-Gen Insurgency By Steven Metz

Insurgency remains a challenge to global security but much thinking by both scholars and security practitioners remains mired in the past, treating mid 20th century insurgency as paradigmatic. Conceptualizing insurgency as a form of strategy rather than a variant of warfare or a type of organization can allow security experts to transcend this analytical ossification. Reflecting broader trends in the security environment, the most challenging of tomorrow's insurgencies will be dramatically different than those of the past and test the ability of states and suprastate security systems to contain or defeat them.

 

 

Steven Metz is an author and analyst of national security, strategy, war studies, and foreign policy. He is currently a Visiting Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. From 2020 to 2024 he served as Professor of National Security and Strategy, Director of the Warfighting Culture Project, Academic Director of the flagship National Security Seminar, and a contributing editor for Parameters at the U.S. Army War College. From 1993 to 2020 he was with the U.S. Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute serving as Senior Research Professor; Research Professor; Director of Research; Henry L. Stimson Professor of Military Studies; Chairman of the Regional Strategy Department; Research Director for the Joint Strategic Landpower Task Force; Director of the Army G3/5/7 Future of American Strategy Project; Project Director for the Army Iraq Stabilization Strategic Assessment; Director of the Strategic Studies Institute and Defense Threat Reduction Agency's Future Landpower Environment Project; and Co-Organizer (along with former Deputy Secretary of Defense John White and former Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch) of the Harvard-U.S. Army War College Symposia on Security Transformation. 

 

Dr. Metz also served on the faculty of the Air War College, the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and several universities. He participated in the Blue Ribbon Advisory Panel for the Secretary of Defense's Strategic Portfolio Review for Close Combat Capabilities; the RAND Insurgency Board; the Board of Advisors for the U.S. Army History of Operation Iraqi Freedom Project; the Senior Advisory Panel on Special Forces/Conventional Forces Interdependence; the Atlantic Council's Defense Austerity Task Force; the Central Intelligence Agency's External Advisory Panel for the Iraq Working Group; the Board of Advisers for the American Enterprise Institute's Defense Review; the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Defense Reform For a New Era Task Force; and the Lexington Institute's Grading Government Performance on Homeland Security Task Force. He has been a Nonresident Fellow at the Quincy Institute For Responsible Statecraft and an Adjunct Scholar at the U.S. Military Academy's Modern War Institute. He has testified in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. 

 

Dr. Metz is the author of Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy and more than four hundred other publications on insurgency and counterinsurgency, future war, the emerging security environment, military strategy, defense policy, international relations and world politics. From 2012 to 2019 he wrote a weekly column on defense and security for World Politics Review. In addition to many monographs and reports published by the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute he has written for journals such as World Affairs, Defense One, Washington Quarterly, Parameters, Military Review, Defence Studies, Political Science Quarterly, Diplomatic History, Joint Force Quarterly, Current History, American Conservative, The New Republic, and The National Interest, and contributed to many edited books. He is currently writing a book on the future of insurgency. 

 

Dr. Metz holds a B.A. in philosophy and M.A. in international studies from the University of South Carolina, and a Ph.D. in political science from the Johns Hopkins University.