Putin’s radiating cloud of unknowing (disinformation) serves another purpose. Not only is he seeking to serially mislead the long-suffering peoples of his nation, he is aspiring to ever more closely bind their subjective self-identities to the political fate of his ideological position. If the identities and corollary systems of belief of the people of a […]
It is not always immediately obvious but it remains as something of an irreducible fact that the variously self-branded dictators, imperialists and draconian autocrats of this world are really quite unintelligent. Yes, they may have many thousands of very clever individuals, organisations and institutions working on their behalf but the essence of their message and […]
I always find it so disheartening that the constructive differences by and through which psychological self (and cultural or national) identity emerge from the form and flow of human experience are so easily warped, twisted and co-opted for vacuous political purposes. The totalitarian turn, perhaps more of an oscillating historical cycle, is a haunting atavism […]
Context: Geopolitics is for losers It is always worth considering the extent to which the longer frequency waves as oscillating ebb and tide of history are also those of the communications systems, of the languages and self-validating dialects of ideologically-inflected political narrative. The kinds of ideological and political system that tend to emerge as convergent […]
Putin has mastered a political game of Machiavellian command and control, of surveillance and power but he remains quite clearly overwhelmed by the unmanageable complexities of the war he has invoked and inflicted as much upon his own people as upon the peoples of Ukraine and, through them, of the free world. The danger of […]
The horror of war is only ever equivocable to its absurdity. As much as we must negotiate and navigate such catastrophes where and when they occur, I am uncertain that our collaborative historical analyses provide much more than a resonant disincentive to engage with and enter into the wars that appear to be as inevitable […]
The borders and boundaries as definitions and shared narratives which define us become even more valuable and important when they are perceived as under threat. The totalitarian political playbook begins (and ends) with the fabrication and cultivation of profoundly insecure borders, boundaries and differences that allow them to masquerade as strength and certainty, to play […]
Context: US strategic policy in Taiwan needs to change as China shows it has capacity to take the island by force Interesting article but I have to wonder about the nature of the psychological factors and essentially pathological dependence of totalitarian ideologues upon the narratives and endless preparation for confrontation. More important than the actual […]
Context: Psychology and Deterrence “(…)deterrence strategies often backfire by aggravating a nation’s sense of insecurity, thereby calling forth the very behavior they seek to prevent.” This kind of feedback loop is really quite foundational in the analysis of complex systems, of which strategic standoffs are a salient (and topical) instance. Something which I haven’t (yet) […]
Putin’s relationship with NATO possesses the essential characteristics of a pathological psychosis. He is so profoundly shaped by a narrative of fear and insecurity that he can not imagine (or influence) a world without it. He has in effect done everything in his power to ensure the continuity of the “threat” as reflexive self-validation for […]
I remember a phrase from Marcus Aurelius in which he asserted that the worst thing a person could do is to make themselves and their lives a kind of blemish upon the world. I have been thinking about this in terms of Vladimir Putin. He is certainly inflicting great savagery and brutal abhorrence upon the […]
There is no place in this world for Vladimir Putin and all tyrants like him in all nations, everywhere. He belongs to another time, an era of indiscriminate bloodshed and rapine brutality between warring tribes that is hardly even the greater part of history but returns as though a metastatic cancer and tragedy that haunts […]
Daedelus Kite 