The Little Blue Book
And the fiction we nostalgically call the international order
Theme archive
Musings on Global Power Shifts
Changing world order, multipolarity, sovereignty, alliances, and the redistribution of global influence.
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
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
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.
The Beginning of Our Collective Maturity
Collapsing Towards An Empathic Civilisation
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.
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
Sophisticated State Failure
How the West learned to Decay Without Falling
Source networks
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The Hames Report
Long-form essays and reflections on the future of everything. Read and support on SubstackPatreon / Published daily