Reynolds, Philip. "Security Conditionality: Evidence and Effectiveness." Journal of Strategic Security 18, no. 1 (2025) : 89-116.
“Conditionality, the practice of attaching conditions to aid, loans, or grant assistance, has become a ubiquitous feature of security assistance. Conditionality is predicted on its deterrent or motivational effects with the ultimate goal being to incentivize and influence the behavior of recipient countries to align with the strategic interests and values of the provider country. Using case studies from Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, this paper argues that security conditionality in the emerging multiplex system will have no influence on recipient behavior.”
Reynolds, Phil W. "Past Failures and Future Problems: The Psychology of Irregular War." Small Wars & Insurgencies 26, no. 3 (2015): 446-458.
“Cultural variation, fundamental attribution error, causal attribution, and durability bias create obstacles to Western understanding of irregular war and have created a significant institutional bias in how the US military perceives its enemies- a perception only somewhat softened after a decade of irregular war.”
Reynolds, Phil W. "What Comes Next?." Military Review. 92, no. 5 (2012): 35-41.
“Are we winning the war on terrorism? The answer: Murky, irregular conflicts will increase while state-versus-state wars decrease. Since World War II, there have been 44 interstate wars and 372 asymmetric conflicts.”
Reynolds, Phil W. Ouroboros: Understanding the War Machine of Liberalism. Rowman & Littlefield Books, 2019.
“Looking at partisan groups such as the FLN, the Vietcong, and the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan, Ouroboros: Understanding the War Machine of Liberalism assesses how they convert their knowledge of self into tactical and strategic advantages that nullify the Clausewitzian advantages in the distribution of military power.”
Reynolds, Phil W. "Persistent Conflict and Special Operations Forces." Military Review. (2014).
“The art of war was always to start with…adapting [forces] to the requirements of the particular case…. Carl von Clausewitz, On War”
Reynolds, Phil W. "Ontopower: War, Powers, and the State of Perception." Parameters. 46, no. 3 (2016): 125-127.
“Brian Massumi’s latest addition to our understanding of power may be the most important addition to strategy since On War. To Massumi, an ontopower is power that is able to alter perception about a chain of effects, altering the future of the original…”
Reynolds, Phil W. "What Happens if North Korea Collapses?" The Diplomat. 3 (2016).
“If Kim Jong-un’s regime collapses, how will China, the U.S., and South Korea react?”
Reynolds, Phil W. "Clausewitz and the Partisan: Accounting for Unlimited Enmity in the Twenty-first Century.” Journal of Military Studies. 10, no. 1 (2021): 130–138.
“Using social psychology to explain the relationship of the partisan to the group, this research shows how partisans harness unlimited enmity to engage in existential wars. Furthering Clausewitzian philosophy, a new analogy, the singularity, is created to describe this power. Implications and conclusions drawn are at the end of the paper.”
Reynolds, Phil W. "The Durability of Ethnicity: Intra-state and Non-state Violence." Small Wars Journal. (2016).
“In the past two hundred years, states have gone from winning some eighty percent of internal conflicts to less than half that by the end of the twentieth century. Ties of ethnic identity primarily drive these conflicts. Still ethnic conflict lacks proper study in most military institutions because they cannot be replicated under controlled conditions, unlike the massive, digital wargames and field maneuvers conducted by countries like the U.S. and policy makers can rarely provide preventive policies as in normative international relations.”
Reynolds, Phil W. "Long Wars: Demonstrating the Corrosive Effects of Irregular Wars on Dominant States." Social Sciences 7, no. 1 (2018): 43-54.
“Great powers overextend their security apparatus attempting to maintain an international system from which they benefit. Costly expenditures of internally mobilized hard power in irregular wars increases the the decline of relative power while externally mobilized power in the form of partisans may delay or defeat power transition.”
Reynolds, Phil W. "A Theory of the Drone." Parameters. 46, no. 1 (2016): 136.
“Grégoire Chamayou’s A Theory of the Drone delves into the ethical and moral effects raised by the United States’ position as a dominant state, its hyperbolic capabilities, the use of drones, and the increasing commonality of signature strikes.”
Reynolds, Phil W. "Containing History: How Cold War History Explains US-Russia Relations by Stephen P. Friot." Marine Corps History. 10, no. 1 (2024): 116-117.
“Stephen Friot is a master storyteller with an archivist’s grip on Cold War history. In a meticulously researched narrative that spans 1945 to 1991, the author touches on nearly every facet of the intricate statecraft practiced by both the West and the Soviet bloc. Along the way, Friot provides an interesting interpretation, an angle of view if you will, to the complex problems of Cold War history.”
Reynolds, Phil W. "Modeling Conflict Between China and the United States: A Game Theoretical Approach for Irregular War and Diplomacy." (2013)
“A key question is what will future conflict look like and how much resources should be committed to large conventional forces. To effectively analyze the desired size and characteristics of tomorrow’s military, we must take a hard look at feasible, real-world contingencies, one of which could be conflict with China.”
Reynolds, Phil W. and Doowan Lee "The Strategic Offensive Against the CCP.” The Cipher Brief. (2021).
“The War God’s face has become indistinct’. That line is from a 1999 China defense paper that delineates the Chinese Communist Party (CPP)’s understanding of today’s global battlefield…”
Reynolds, Phil W. "Right and Wronged in International Relations: Evolutionary Ethics, Moral Revolutions, and the Nature of Power Politics by Brian C. Rathbun." Journal of Advanced Military Studies. 15, no. 1 (2024): 227-229.
“The study of ethics is good for you, like granola, but can be awful in the way granola always is.”
Reynolds, Phil W. “Coercing North Korea.” Foreign Policy News. (2017).
“What remains to be seen is what view prevails across the international community: The argument that concessions will bring stability, or whether restrictions will choke off the turbulent threats of violence that have heretofore gained North Korea everything it has desired.”
Reynolds, Phil W. “NATO Forgets All Politics Are Local.” Real Clear Defense. (2018).
“All politics are local, even for the leader of the world’s superpower. NATO angst over Donald Trump… is only feeding the perception in his domestic audience that the United States is unappreciated.”
Reynolds, Phil W. “A Return to Foreign Aid Realpolitik: The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation.” Foreign Policy News. (2019).
“China is winning the influence war in Asia, and to understand its strategy, one only has to peer into the superpowers’ machinations in the tiny country of Cambodia…”
Reynolds, Phil W. “BCT Staff Integration during Disaster Response.” Small Wars Journal. (2013).
“The fast pace of unfolding disasters and the requirement for the response to be swift will require battle staffs to prepare early.”
Reynolds, Phil W. "Building Partner Capacity Is Great Power Competition: The Future of 333 Funds.” Small Wars Journal. (2021).
“Can the U.S. Department of Defense do two things at once: Operate in the gray zone and excel in great power competition? “
Reynolds, Phil W. “Remote Warfare and the Problem With the Suleimani Hit.” Real Clear Defense. (2020).
“The killing of Qassem Suleimani, however justified, will carry costs for the United States…”
Reynolds, Phil. “Is China Winning in the South China Sea?” The Diplomat. (2016).
“What if the U.S. is playing right into China’s hands with military maneuvering in the South China Sea?”