OPFOR Journal at One Year
One Year Anniversary of the Launch of OPFOR Journal
This week is going to be another break from the routine of churning out Weekly Significant Activity Reports, in part because it is a unique anniversary. Today marks one year since OPFOR Journal launched.
There are now quite a few more people subscribed to this page than when I started (1,332 to be exact), so I wanted to step back and give a quick recap of who I am and what this is all about.
Who I am:
My name is Dan White. Over the past two decades I have worked across a variety of roles in the military, foreign and public policy, the Washington DC think tank community, and now higher education. I hold master’s degrees from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), the Naval Postgraduate School, and the University of Washington, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Central Florida. I am a former officer in the United States Army and a veteran of the War in Afghanistan.
Most of all I am a writer with a life-long calling to serve in the US national security enterprise.
Why I Started OPFOR Journal:
As I have previously discussed, the idea for OPFOR Journal came to me shortly after losing my position at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in the midst of mass federal layoffs in April 2025. My goal in starting this page was to continue writing and doing research on the topic I had been pursuing at the time as part of The Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, namely tracing Russia’s strategic partnerships with China, Iran, and North Korea and assessing the consequences for US national security. Out of that came a broader idea: to cover them not simply as partners with Russia, but as individual actors with their own unique geopolitical interests, and as part of a broader “opposing force” (OPFOR) united by a shared overarching interest in overturning the US and US-led international order.
72 posts and 181,997 words later, the project has taken on life of its own. In no small part because significant geopolitical events over the past year have reinforced the project’s core thesis that contending with the rise of this opposing force of great powers will be the defining American national security challenge of our time.
A Labor of Love Made Possible By Generous Support:
OPFOR Journal has also become a significant part of my life. On average I have spent about 10 hours each week researching, writing, and editing each post, whether Weekly Significant Activity Reports covering a range of weekly events, Situation Reports on a specific topic, or monthly Homeland Security Briefs. That has meant a lot of late nights hunched over a laptop and more than a few days’ plans disrupted by my impulse to write. I am grateful to my wife Elin for always encouraging me to keep going. OPFOR Journal would simply not exist without her support.
I have tried to treat this journal as a labor of love, and have done my best to tease out the significance of events as much as possible, connect them with historical trends and the broader international context. Some weeks I have done that better than others, but I am always learning and improving over time. I am lucky that I have had so many people who continue to reach out with kind words of encouragement. I will continue to do my best to produce something worthy of your belief in me each week.
I am also incredibly grateful to everyone that has supported OPFOR Journal financially. My goal is to keep this content open to all, and everyone that has gone out of their way to voluntarily upgrade to a paid subscription, has helped me both cover the costs of running the page (domain name, email, etc.) and further professionalize the work (such as by buying a subscription to Canva to improve branding and graphics).
Looking Back:
While I look ahead to another year of growth, I also want to look back and highlight a few posts that are worth revisiting:
Favorite Post:
This is my favorite post because it captures, in one place, both the breadth and depth of Russia’s newest strategic arms programs and the broader context in which they were developed. It describes a moment in which Russia feels increasingly insecure about its position as a great power and its uncertainty as to how to approach a future of unrestrained competition with the US.
Most Viewed Post:
This post saw an unexpectedly large audience, in part because the events described were simultaneously highly significant in Southeast Asia and under covered in Western media.
Most Underrated Post:
This was a very early post, but its analysis of why US efforts to broker a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine were going nowhere last May is nevertheless as relevant as ever now.
Looking Forward:
Over the next year I hope to continue building on what I have learned so far, as well as experimenting with new ideas for formatting and content. I am looking forward to hearing from you all along the way.