Wong's equations and the small $x$ effective action in QCD

Effective field theory techniques are used to study the physics of small $x$ modes in QCD. We propose a form of the small $x$ effective action that is consistent with Wong's equations for colored charges in non--Abelian background fields. This form of the effective action also efficiently reproduces the BFKL equation. Differences with an alternative effective action will appear at next to leading order.