Dilemma of the Scriptwriters
Synopsis: Iran’s president spent some of his scarcest hours in New York with the analysts and journalists who draft Washington’s options, rather than with the officials who choose between them.
Theme archive
Musings on Geopolitics and Power
Power shifts, conflict, empire, sovereignty, national interests, and the institutions that organise global affairs.
The Man Who Brings The Future
I have spent twenty years watching a certain kind of man arrive in this part of the world, and I have never once managed to like him.
Coffee Port
Before it was ever a front line, Mokha was just an aroma.
The Little Blue Book
And the fiction we nostalgically call the international order
Elasticity Has Its Limits
It might sound implausible, but a Patriot interceptor missile takes longer to build than a war takes to fight.
Misreading Xi
An Alternative Argument for Australia's Public Inquiry into AUKUS to Consider
Consent Without Consequences
A World Learning to Ask New Questions
The Crown and the Machine
A man in his late seventies stands before the British Parliament wearing several centuries of borrowed authority — crown, ermine, a phalanx of guards whose uniforms date from wars nobody living can possibly remember —...
The Invisible Architecture of Control
Cryptocurrencies and the Future of Human Agency
The Moment Power Chose Itself
America's Moment of Undisputed Leadership
Certainty’s Standing Ovation
A thousand people rose to their feet in Sydney on 22 August 2026.
Force Without a Mission
When a power keeps its strength but loses moral purpose
Everything Except Their Names
The accusation arrives early in the Bishkek Declaration, and it arrives with full force: strikes on Iranian territory violated the UN Charter, damaged international law, and put regional peace and stability at risk.
A Correction Before It Arrives
A curator in a regional art gallery is completing the wall text for a group show.
The Beginning of Our Collective Maturity
Collapsing Towards An Empathic Civilisation
Something Behind the Eyes
In the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the horror was never the alien.
The Collapse of the Story
There was a time when power didn’t need to explain itself.
When There Is No 'We'
The Fragmentation of the Public World
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The Hames Report
Long-form essays and reflections on the future of everything. Read and support on SubstackPatreon / Published daily