Category: State Analysis
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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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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…
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Long-Leashed Attack Dogs: How Formal Autonomy facilitated Extraordinary Repression in Roman Judea, Chechnya and Hong Kong
Through tracing a throughline from King Herod’s Judea to Ramzan Kadyrov’s Chechnya and Carrie Lam’s Hong Kong, this essay shall seek understand the why, how and broader implications of zones and systems of “autonomous oppression/ imperial enforcement”.
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Feeding the Dogs of War: Dynamics, Utility and Risks of Sponsored Insurgency in Border Competition
A security-studies approach to analysing sponsoring insurgency as a tool in the power projection toolbox, explaining why it is used in border competition specifically and the associated risks.
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Too Angry for Empire: How a Han-centric, hypersensitive nationalism undermines Chinese imperial expansion
Why China’s specific strain of nationalism, as constructed by Beijing, hurts the exercise of Chinese power, no matter that power’s degree.
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We’re gonna need a bigger boat: Singapore and the Aircraft Carrier
Would an aircraft carrier make sense in the Singapore navy? Through answering this question, this essay hopes to also shed some light on Singapore’s maritime needs and the role of aircraft carriers and the thought process involved in defence acquisitions and strategy. What unique purposes do aircraft carriers serve? In essence, aircraft carriers serve the…
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Evaluating Allies: What makes a good partner
With the Trump-Brexit and coronavirus-accelerated reshuffling of global order, recent reexaminations and reimaginings of global alliance have been rife. Questions of new sets of alliances, alignments and understandings are now common, whether it be Macron’s suggestions of a new European-Russian reset or renewed talks around whether the Quad could actually be a functional China-containment coalition.…
UnderStated 