What should someone new to the study of war, strategy, and intelligence be reading? (Part I)

There are plenty of great defense, strategy, and intelligence blogs written by professionals and well-known academics. As someone new to the field, I created this blog to help fellow novices wade into the world of war studies. And like any field of study, becoming familiar with the existing literature and ideas is vital to forming your own.

Part I of the Reading List for Newbies covers Blogs & Online News Sources. You can download all these feeds as an OPML file here, which can be imported into your favorite RSS reader. Click “subscribe” next to each category to get the feeds as a Google Reader bundle. The forthcoming Part II of the Reading List will cover books and periodicals.

(UPDATED 8/22/11: Added links to individual websites, plus links to a few sites I missed. h/t to Frances Arias and MilNews.ca for their suggestions.)

Essential Blogs & Online News Sources

Strategy (subscribe)

• The Long War Journal
• Abu Muqawama
• Ink Spots
• Kings of War
• The Offshore Balancer
• Think Defence
• Thinking Strategically
• Clausewitz (Economist)
• Atlantic Review
• On War and Words
• Rethinking Security
• The Best Defense
• Small Wars Journal

Intelligence (subscribe)

• Dirk’s Weblog
• Secrecy News
• National Security Archive (GWU)
• Sources and Methods
• Analysis Intelligence
• “Intelligence Community” feed (Google News)

Military Blogs + News (subscribe)

• Stars and Stripes
• Marine Corps Times
• Army Times
• DoD Buzz
• DefenseNews
• Danger Room (Wired)
• Rafairman’s Blog
• War is Boring
• Michael Yon
• Ares
• At War (NY Times)
• Military History Blog

Naval + Maritime (subscribe)

• Information Dissemination
• Navy Times
• Lloyd’s List – News
• NOSI Naval Intelligence Feed
• US Naval Institute blog

Regional (subscribe)

• Arabist
• Registan
• CHUP! (Changing Up Pakistan)
• Marc Lynch (FP)
• The AfPak Channel (FP)
• Waq al-Waq (Big Think)
• Wings Over Iraq
• Views From the Occident
• Latin America News Dispatch
• Security Scholar
• Ghosts of Alexander

Commentary (subscribe)

• Gunpowder and Lead
• Thomas Rid
• Shadow Government (FP)
• Dart-Throwing Chimp
• Informed Comment
• Passport (FP)
• Daniel W. Drezner (FP)
• The Future Forum
• @laurenist
• Foreign Policy Fight Club
• The Becker-Posner Blog
• On Violence
• Zenpundit

Resources (subscribe)

• The Oil and the Glory (FP)
• The Will and the Wallet

Terrorism (subscribe)

• Wanted Dead or Alive (as I said, fuzzy categorization)
• COMOPS Journal
• Jihadica
• Terrorism Monitor (Jamestown Foundation)
• All Things Counter-Terrorism

Miscellaneous (subscribe)

• War is Schlep – an entertaining comic blog by a freshly-commissioned Army Lieutenant
• Afghanistan Tour 2010 – not updated anymore, but it’s worth checking out the old posts

Other Useful Resources

• Afghanistan Analyst

Am I missing something? Sound off in the comments or email me about a blog or RSS feed I should be including.