Empty vessel and strategic disruptor?
I have been trying to make sense out of the shifts in US foreign policy under Trump 2.0. I understand his admiration for authoritarians and supination to Putin (which I believe is because Putin has...
View ArticleThinking about life in a nuclear armed crowd.
The title of this post comes from Albert Wohlstetter’s 1976 seminal essay Moving Towards Life in a Nuclear Armed Crowd. In that essay he contemplated a world in which several nations had nuclear...
View ArticleA Return to a US Gilded Age?
I have been trying to figure out the logic of Trump’s tariff policies and apparent desire for a global trade war. Although he does not appear to comprehend that tariffs are a tax on consumers in the...
View ArticleSignalling Deliberate Reckless Disregard (updated with a NZ angle).
Some thoughts on the Signal Houthi Principal’s Committee chat group conversation reported by Jeff Goldberg at The Atlantic. It is obviously a major security breach. But there are several dimensions to...
View ArticleThe Comparative Notebook on Trump’s Tariffs.
The ever brilliant Kate Nicholls has kindly agreed to allow me to re-publish her substack offering some under-examined backdrop to Trump’s tariff madness. The essay is not meant to be a full scholarly...
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