Parameters (journal)

• 1. Introduction

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  Parameters is the United States Army War College's senior professional journal, and it has been shaping how the American military thinks about war, strategy, and national security since 1971. Over the decades, it has published more than a thousand papers across hundreds of issues. What makes a journal like this matter? What kind of questions does it ask, and who is asking them? The answers lie inside an institution built not for fighting wars, but for thinking about them.

• 2. A Journal Born From the War College

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  The United States Army War College, located in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, is the Army's senior educational institution for senior officers and national security professionals. Parameters emerged from that environment in 1971, positioned from the outset as an outlet for serious academic work rather than operational bulletins or public affairs material. Its full formal title is The US Army War College Quarterly - Parameters, and that "quarterly" designation signals a deliberate pace. Four issues per year, each grounded in research, each aimed at a readership of professionals and scholars who want analysis rather than headlines. The journal is published by the USAWC Press, which gives it an institutional home inside the Army's own educational apparatus.

• 3. What Parameters Covers

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  Strategy, land power, national security, and geostrategic issues are the core subjects that Parameters returns to across every volume. The word "geostrategic" is worth pausing on. It refers to the relationship between geography and military or political power, the question of how terrain, borders, resources, and location shape what nations can and cannot do. For a journal tied to the Army War College, that focus makes sense. The institution trains officers who will advise on campaigns and policy at the highest levels, and Parameters is designed to support that kind of thinking. Papers in the journal range from historical analysis to forward-looking assessments of how land forces might operate in future conflicts. Since 1971, the journal has accumulated more than 1,073 papers across 907 publications, a body of work that spans many decades of American strategic thought.

• 4. Access and Reach

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  Parameters is available through its own dedicated home page, and it is also indexed through ProQuest and UMI, two major academic database services that make the journal searchable and accessible to researchers, students, and professionals far beyond the Army's own institutional networks. That accessibility matters for a journal of this kind. If the goal is to influence how people across government, academia, and the military think about strategy and security, getting the papers in front of those readers requires broad distribution. The current editor in chief is Antulio J. Echevarria II, whose name carries weight in military theory circles. His editorial stewardship continues a tradition of serious academic leadership at a journal that has never drifted toward popular audiences.