We now live in the United States of Disassociation. And I fear for what this means for our future.

I keep coming back to the basic thesis of prospect theory: those in the domain of losses — which Trump and his minions currently are — become increasingly risk-seeking

A racial/racist civilizational narrative; territorial expansion and spheres of influence; the embrace of struggle, suffering and violence as redemptive societal forces; the use of Douhet's terrorizing model of air war. Trump II is quite clearly pursuing a fascist foreign policy. 🧵

This is the season where some celebrate that Christ is risen while others lament that the bread didn’t have time to.

They elected this man twice. Twice.

He's going to try to grab the uranium now, isn't he.

Someone forgot to tell Southampton they've got no business winning this match.

It would be useful if the NYT explicitly stated that the pilot, if captured, would be a POW, that there are laws governing how POWs can be treated, that respect for international law on war shapes how the enemy approaches it, and this is why the US conduct of this illegal war has been so dangerous.

Every time a bunch of new people follow my feed after seeing a smart-ass throwaway post that makes the rounds, I think of all the in-the-weeds IR and forpol content they've unwittingly signed up for. And vice versa. Throw in all the asides on jazz, and basically I feel guilty every time I hit Post.

The art of being unable to make a deal.

Useful 🧵 on how making a deal to end the Iran War will be extremely difficult because the Iranians have no reason to believe we will keep our word and no outside force can make us.

There's a bigger story here, too, that I don't think I've seen explicitly articulated. The US has never really been in a position where it has to make significant concessions from a position of weakness, rather than exhaustion, to secure a peace treaty. That creates two interrelated problems. 1/x

Great article by Ali Vaez. Gift link. In essence, Trump is now in the same position as Putin: able to cause massive damage, but unable to make the enemy give in. He will have to make a deal, and the bitter irony is that, for all his origin story, Trump is incapable of really making a deal.

Two really good points here.

It was the US that decided to limit the North Atlantic treaty to *defensive* obligations in *Europe and North America* because we didn't want to be drawn into imperial wars! The reasoning below could just as well be Anthony Eden shouting at Eisenhower in 1956.

It's gender!

Combine those conflicts with those in the Gulf between the US, Israel, Iran and the GCC. Combine those with Ukraine, Russia, Iran. Combine those with instability in Iraq. Add in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- and India. There is an arc of crisis from Libya's border with Tunisia to India

I think the biggest crisis right now that most people are unaware of is the complex interlocking conflicts in the Horn of Africa (and Libya), and how they are fueled by the Gulf states projecting their rivalries into an important but broadly destabilized strategic arena.

I share the same hope. Don’t get me wrong, I hate that we’re having to go through what we’re going through right now. But the truth is Trump 2.0 is doing basically everything the political/cultural right has wanted to do in America for 100 years. Now, everyone can see how it *actually* works out 🤬

I understand the dismay and despair, which is justified. I also think it is in the nature of human and international relations to find stable and optimized equilibria, and we now have a model of a more stable and more optimized equilibrium. It will take time and effort but we'll get through this.

I’ve been around the army for 53 years. Never been more pessimistic about the health of the institution — it’s likely to get much worse over the next 34 months. Rebuilding the norms and ethics of the profession is going to take a generation+.

The most dangerous Trump corruption of US institutions is the military, and fixing the cultural rot—seen most recently in blocking promotions for Black and female officers and firing white male generals who disagreed, though there’s a lot beyond that too—will be a major challenge of reconstruction.

Ibrahim Traoré is no liberator.

People say that anyone could end up joining a cult, but honestly I don't believe it of myself really. This kinda thing just seems utterly psychologically alien to me, I simply wouldn't be willing to do this for any Dear Leader.

I remember during the great COIN debates of the late 2000s and early 2010s, when people would say that COIN was meaningless because it wasn't being practiced and wouldn't work if it were. And my response was that, despite being bad social science, FM 3-24 was actually a really important document. 🧵

A key part of having military officers nominated by one president and having overlapping terms into the next presidency is so that the military is not seen as partisan. By replacing generals & admirals to get more "suitable" ones, Hegseth and Trump are destroying American civil-military relations 1

Hegseth's hostility to the institutional norms of the US military and his desire to humiliate the flag officers is what made me think of the Cultural Revolution when his nomination was announced. He's the Red Guard cadre disciplining and purging the party honchos.

Most of the MAGA women wind up as window dressing. Elise Stefanik went from a promising rising star and the youngest Republican woman elected to having her nomination yanked. Marjorie Taylor Greene was publicly embarrassed. Kristi Noem was fired. And Nancy Mace… well, who knows?

New from me: The Trump administration’s “kinetic warrior” posture in Latin America is off to a poor start: blowing up civilians on motorboats, torturing people on farms, directly participating in hostilities, and doubling down on long-discredited “drug war” tactics.

Lmfaooo your whole slogan was “America First” you stupid stupid man www.nbcnews.com/politics/don...

Great piece on what really drives the loss of manufacturing jobs, and why the fixation on reversing it is misguided.

This is so essential for Europeans to understand: "Russia is not a threat to us in the short term." Europe has time to urgently and rapidly build a common defence without America. If we... 🧵

Interesting new article about the "illicit diamond buyer" in c19th South Africa by @imperialminerals.bsky.social. A lot to learn in it. I've seen this map of claims before without fully noticing it is decorated with caricatures of African miners being chased by police. muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

That line was such an affirmation of MAGA's racist worldview "We'll bring them back to the Stone Age...where they belong." MAGA is using violence in an attempt to *make* the world conform to its racialized hierarchy at home and abroad If reality doesn't conform, just bomb it until it does

Not to be confused with the Brexit Doom Loop [raise trade barriers, make nation poorer, lower tax revenue available for public services, fuel populist resentment and blame on imperfect Brexit, further trade barrier raising, and so on]

Direct empirical confirmation of my theory of the "immigration doom loop" in UK politics.... ☹️

Quite the numbers… “In the first 16 days, the US, together with coalition forces, burned through more than 11,200 munitions, according to RUSI. Among these were more than 1,200 RTX Patriot missile-defence systems, hundreds of its long-range Tomahawk missiles and more than 300 Thaad interceptors.”

I got some pushback to this in replies wrt *how* the rest of the world will stop Iran from exercising control over the strait. I offered some ideas, which I'll link to below. But I wanted to emphasize the importance of legitimacy here. Simply put, Iran has no legitimate claim over the strait. 🧵

I do think it's somewhat underemphasized that a head of state saying we'll bomb them back to the stone age is essentially a societal threat

When Trump says, "We'll bring them back to the Stone Age," he's really saying he'll bring the US back to the Stone Age, because destroying a society, as opposed to destroying its ability and will to fight, is no longer a legitimate goal of warfare. It's also a mischaracterization of the Stone Age.

The Glonzo Corollary is that if Trump declares he got Glonzo, the NYT will say he is challenging the elite consensus about the animal world.

Trump's speech tonight won't matter because: 1. Whatever he says about what has happened will be a lie. 2. Whatever he says about what will happen will be unreliable. 3. Whatever he says in the prepared remarks will be contradicted by extemporaneous asides. Watch what he does, not what he says.

Evening soundtrack. I can't really discern lineages outside my instruments, but listening to this tonight I thought that Kenny Drew, another big favorite of mine, must have spent time studying Sonny Clark's playing. Art Farmer delivers true class and Jackie McClean adds an edge to a great session.

Russia desperately trying to sell its latest claim to some sort of victory, most probably to an audience of one— the White House. Not only are these claims often false but they are pathetic deflection from the fact that Ru is very far from achieving its goal of conquering all of Ukraine.

Sorry but in what world has Trump been "intently focused on making sure Iran never had the nuclear fuel in hand to build a nuclear weapon," let alone for the last decade? He withdrew from the JCPOA to spite Obama, and because it was what every Republican wanted him to do.

Your humble servant has a written a book about the social science of poverty in Cold War Latin America and the contexts that shaped its creation, from international sources like the Ford Foundation to dictatorships across the region. The book is in production and will be ready at the end of 2026

this argument is always such a tell that the speaker conceptualizes the US as an extension of Europe, rather than as part of the Americas

I think people are overstating what it means in practical terms both that the US is "losing" the war and that Iran is "winning" it. I also think that, to the extent Iran does win the war, it will very likely lose the peace. That matters wrt maintaining reasonable expectations for the outcome. 🧵

Can't help but think of the pandemic and the Iran War as dress rehearsals for how not to do the green transition.

I was just thinking this morning that these guys (especially Miller) all sound like people who came across the Melian Dialogue in the first chapter of an IR 101 textbook, and didn't bother finding out how the story ends.