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40 Armed Forces & Soc'y 3 (2014)

handle is hein.journals/amdfcsad40 and id is 1 raw text is: Forum: Revisiting Small Wars Armed Forces & Society 2014, Vol 40(1) 3-I6 Smal p pŠ The Author(s) 2013 W aging Sm all W ars Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav in the New M illennium : DOI: 10.1177/0095327X13490929 afs.sagepub.com Chameleonic Missions @SAGE and Virtual Aggression-An Introduction Ong Weichong' and Alan Chong' Abstract Small wars have returned to the international political agenda in the early twentieth century with almost a vengeance. Leaving aside the factors of social media and satellite television today, the nature of small wars has adhered to its politicized, xenophobic, and asymmetrical characteristics. The latter were predicted by British and American military manuals produced in the early to middle twentieth century. This special issue aims to revisit the nature of small wars in the era of great power interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya in the 2000s. It will be apparent that two further characteristics need to be appended to small wars: chameleonic missions and virtual aggression. Keywords small wars, insurgency, virtual war, civil affairs, interventions, stabilization opera- tions, civilization and war Small wars have historically defied definition by blurring the front lines of combat and military protocol. This special section aims to account for two additional characteristics: ' S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Corresponding Author: Alan Chong, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Blk S4, Level B4, Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798. Email: iscschong@ntu.edu.sg