I was recommended this book by @mark4harrison.bsky.social and I am on my fourth time reading it Its a magestrial explanation of the creation of the Soviet Warfare State Do not agree with everything the connection with the American Civil War seems contrived but it is hudely challenging in its breadth

ICYMI: in my latest for @wpr.bsky.social, I discuss how an embrace and even enthusiasm for using violence abroad inevitably links back to violence at home.

Russia seems to be testing the willingness of Poland’s NATO allies to react collectively to a vivid provocation. How will the West respond?

⚡️ Poland asks NATO to activate Article 4 over Russian drone incursion. Article 4 of the NATO treaty allows member states to request consultations with the allies if they believe their security has been threatened, without triggering a military response.

A few quick impressions from @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu's State of the Union address: ec.europa.eu/commission/p... /

New high of Americans saying immigration is good for the US

Enter a parallel universe where Lucy Connolly is a Bradford-based Muslim man called Usman Farooq who has tweeted that people should "set fire to all the f*cking churches full of the bastards", and the Telegraph would call him a terrorist who should be locked up immediately.

Farage is content with allowing people to be murdered and tortured. I'm not on that side and never will be.

What does the story of India reveal about the big questions of world history? I got to talk about this at the British Academy. What an honour! Recording out now. This was at the book launch of B. Gupta's "Economic History of India", hosted by the always-inspiring @cagewarwick.bsky.social. 1/3

Gonna need some foreign help with those midterms, I guess.

My understanding is that the list of people whose clearances have been revoked by Gabbard includes a career civil servant who was until recently the most senior Russia analyst in the CIA & remains senior there. (NYT previously reported it included a snr CIA analyst: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/u...)

Remarkable open letter from Bill Burns. "If intelligence analysts at the CIA saw our rivals engage in this kind of great-power suicide, we would break out the bourbon. Instead, the sound we hear is of champagne glasses clinking in the Kremlin and Zhongnanhai." theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

1/2. The phrase "land swap" is being used to mean "Ukraine concedes land illegally occupied by Russia and also concedes territory that is not even occupied." That is not a swap.

🧵 In a recent IZA Discussion Paper, @stepanmikula.bsky.social, @tommasoreggiani.bsky.social, and I study how civic culture can persist—or even emerge—under authoritarian rule. In the IZA World of Labor commentary linked below, you can also find a short non-technical summary. #EconSky 1/3

"Growth is the number one priority" but the government needs money so let's stick a 6% tariff on one of our own more successful export industries

Take it from a historian: it is worthwhile to keep an eye on Russia's agricultural performance

Why does sovereign recognition matter? Because it is foundational to the current international system. 🧵

France, the U.K. and Canada are all prepared to recognize the state of Palestine. What does that actually mean in international relations? @profpaulpoast.bsky.social explains:

Alright then, before this totally runs out of steam/becomes too tedious even for me: 1 like = one opinion about the Second World War

In which Pyotr Kurzin and I have a pleasant chat on a gloomy subject -- sanctions, economic warfare, and Russia's war on Ukraine www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfjX... @warwickecon.bsky.social @cagewarwick.bsky.social @britishacademy.bsky.social @cepr.org

Lionel Shriver tells those of us who live here what our country looks like if you leave it + rely on the media ecosystem of the very online right as a proxy for reality

Good stuff: Paul Krugman's general theory of enshittification even includes a little dynamic programming model.

Were they shopping or just browsing?

Not doing the one like/one opinion thing. But here are some opinions for free. 1. Life is too short and your time too precious to persistent with books/TV/films you are not enjoying. Just stop and read/watch something else.

The @thebulletin.org's Nobel Assembly on the Prevention of Nuclear War ended last week with the below Declaration. Fully support the initiative. But I'm going to have my Intro to International Relations students dissect the statement...and explain why it won't work. nobelassembly.org/declaration/

Difficult to conceive of a more ill-judged decision then the one the Home Office took here. It is an affront to free speech of a kind which is really indistinguishable from what you'd see in a police state.

In this week’s @economist.com I review three new books about intelligence—one on Russian illegals, one on Vasili Mitrokhin, the KGB archivist who defected, and another on the post-9/11 history of CIA—and what they teach us about the culture of each agency. www.economist.com/culture/2025...

OTD in 1945, having just liberated Lithuania from Nazis, Soviet mass deportations resumed, liberating 1000 Lithuanians from Lithuania to provide slave labor for USSR. Within 2 years over half were dead. imagine mass deportations taking place today.

I'm always kind of amazed at how influential The Soldier and the State has been, given that the analysis is built on a fundamental category error of taking a process and an ideology you suppose (but cannot prove) the process produces and equating them by calling both 'professionalism.'

Today marks one month until the release of "Wheat at War" w/ @rosellacappella.bsky.social! While the book is not yet out, my webpage with a description and replication materials is now up! Link here: www.paulpoast.com/wheat-at-war

I love everything about @andrewroberts.bsky.social’s review of four recent books on the postcommunist transition. We know a LOT about the 90s that goes beyond facile references to “neoliberalism” or the “Washington Consensus.” Anyone tempted to work on the period would do well to start with this 👇.

Fantastic cover for a fantastic book. Out in November.

Sitting here bleary after another poor night's sleep, disinclined to engage in a day of cognitive effort, this chart from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com really strikes home on.ft.com/4eFZG4l

Consistently good value ⬇️

It was a pleasure to chat yesterday with Sebastian Siebt of @france24.com for this piece about American backsliding on arms for Ukraine and sanctions on Russia @cagewarwick.bsky.social @warwickecon.bsky.social

The list of talks at this year's THETS conference is available, looks awesome! And I hope that other Warwick people who are interested in the topic -- like @hyoyoonkang.bsky.social , @yuvalmillo.bsky.social , and Matthew Watson -- will be there as well thets.org.uk/2025-annual-...

Excited that *Economic Warfare and Sanctions since 1688*, edited by Steve Broadberry and me, and forthcoming in November, is already up on the @universitypress.cambridge.org website www.cambridge.org/gb/universit... with a terrific cover page

My chart on the history of three infectious diseases — smallpox, polio, and measles — before and after a vaccine was available.

🧵 There's an answer to getting aid to Palestinians and disempowering Hamas, and it's not this:

Dozens of pro-Indy accounts go dark after Israeli strikes

Tomorrow is the 75th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War -- a conflict that deserves more commemoration than it gets www.facebook.com/share/p/16rG... @warwickecon.bsky.social @cagewarwick.bsky.social

🫣 open.substack.com/pub/davidaar...

My trolls: "Russia is just defending itself in Ukraine" Prez:

How Russia peacefully became the world's largest country: -Invade -Occupy -Deport -Replace

I (almost) entirely agree with this. A lot, but not all of the narrative around AI is hype. Caveat: I’m not an AI specialist but like a lot of cyber experts I get annoyed with AI hype distracting people from fixing long-standing problems with the tech we already have. Anyway. A few thoughts: 🧵 1/

⚡️Dutch parliament recognizes Soviet 1944 deportation of Crimean Tatars as genocide. In the adopted text, Dutch lawmakers declared that the Soviet-led deportation of Crimean Tatars, which took place between May 18 and 21, 1944, constitutes genocide by contemporary legal and historical definitions.

So Russia says regime change in Iran is unacceptable but they have been trying to do just that in Ukraine since Feb 2022.

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

Some burns are better than others.