When There Is No 'We'
The Fragmentation of the Public World
Theme archive
Musings on Geopolitics and Power
Power shifts, conflict, empire, sovereignty, national interests, and the institutions that organise global affairs.
The Instrument and The Cage
What Language Does When No One is Watching
Radius of Trust
How a Threat With No Rivals Still Produces Enemies
Beyond the Imperial Monoculture
Why Humanity Needs More Than One Story
Eighty Years Since the Quiet
I was born in 1945, into a world that had just finished screaming and had gone, for a while, quiet.
Believing the Right Villain
Propaganda in a Comforting Voice
The Order That Never Arrived
When Institutions Obey a Rule Nobody Wrote
The Knowledge That Disqualifies
On the fate of those who cannot let go
What We Owe The Dead
A woman in Rafah wraps her daughter’s body in a curtain because there are no more shrouds.
The Architecture of Certainty
At the Strait of Hormuz this week, commercial vessels are still queuing for passage — more than a dozen a day, according to shipping trackers — even as strikes resume somewhere over Iran and a ceasefire that was...
The Weight a Beach Cannot Hold
On the evening of 14 December 2025, an Islamic State–inspired gunman opened fire on roughly a thousand people gathered at Bondi Beach to light candles for Hanukkah.
Architecture of Enmity
A coach in a gymnasium in Lima tells a squad of eleven-year-old girls, minutes before a regional match, that the team on the other side of the net are their enemies for the next ninety minutes.
The Forest Does Not Fall At Once
The woman who grills chicken over charcoal at the mouth of my soi has raised her prices twice since the second week of July.
A Cartography of Ghosts
Navigating the Regimes of Industrial Economism
When Leadership Confronts Reality
The Collapse of Consent
When the Grey Zone Becomes the Main Theatre
War, intelligence, and the slow unravelling of the public realm
Climate Change Policies
Deploying Eco-pragmatism to Frame Action
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Long-form essays and reflections on the future of everything. Read and support on SubstackPatreon / Published daily