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[Cross-Post] Reconstructing the Ladder: Towards a More Considered Model of Escalation
Jonah here. For long-time readers of the blog, you might have been aware that models of conflict and strategic escalation, specifically escalation ladders, have long been a fascination of mine. My first piece on them in 2020 tried to explore how the spectre of grey zone warfare confounded traditional deterrence theory and demanded the use…
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Option Z: How Russia spent leverage in February 2022
A strategic analysis of Russian predicaments, decisions and mistakes that led to the 2022 Russian Invasion.
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Spooky Reflections: Three Intelligence Questions from February 2022
Three reflections on intelligence, and how we should understand and evaluate its community, objectives, practitioners and practices
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Third Pole: How Settler Colonialism locks conflict and undermines Empire
How settler colonisation tends to build the settler caste up as a “third pole”, in competition with both the indigenous population and the imperial core, ensuring the enduring stability of a horrific state of war and struggle.
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Interrogating intentionality in Autocracy Promotion
In discussing the spread of autocratic or otherwise anti-democratic forces, there is a tendency to frame such trends through the broad umbrella term of “autocracy promotion”. It is a seductive term, one that conjures images of secret operations conducted by supervillain spymasters seeking to bring about a dangerous new world order for the sake of…
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Thought Salad: The Case of Meng Wanzhou and Two Michaels from the perspective of Strategic Theory
Thought Salad is a raw, slightly messy, short-form medley of ideas to accompany the main content of the blog. Today’s Main: Functions of Arms and Interstate Violence: An Expanded Framework Deterrence consists of threats of force designed to persuade a target to refrain from taking a particular action. Compellence, by contrast, utilizes force — or…
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Kishore’s Qatar Kerfuffle: Reviewing the 2017 “Small States” Controversy
In 2017, Kishore Mahbubani used the Qatar-GCC conflict to argue that small states should act as small states to ensure their prosperity and survival. Four years later, we’ll revisit the debate that occurred around that article, with newly available hindsight on the Qatar-GCC conflict.
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Said and Unsaid: An Interpretation of PM Lee’s International Relations
This essay will make an interpretation of how Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong views International Relations through his August 2021 Aspen Security Forum speech and subsequent Q&A.
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Functions of Arms and Interstate Violence: An Expanded Framework
This piece shall strive to act as a reminder and interpretation of as well as an update to Schelling’s classic work of strategic studies. Assisted by original diagrams that map out Schelling’s strategic theory, the first half shall seek to adapt Schelling’s Cold War US-centric theory for a more general model of conflict that broadly…
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Castles of Scar Tissue: Trauma Praetorianism in Interwar Poland and Contemporary Burma
Interwar Poland and present-day Burma share many similarities, particularly in their regime-type governance, which is categorized by the hegemonic if not total domination by an almost aristocratic military caste-institution, similar to the Praetorian Guard of the old Roman Empire. Through examining the similarities and differences between these two case studies, this essay will identify “Trauma…
UnderStated
Exploring the intersection of geopolitics, history and strategy that makes our world the way it is.
UnderStated 