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...
Theme archive
Musings on Empire and War
Imperial power, war, security, militarisation, violence, and the narratives that justify conflict.
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
Sophisticated State Failure
How the West learned to Decay Without Falling
Most Hated Nation
Nation-state legitimacy and the exhaustion of political imagination
The Pause That Passes For Peace
Why Military Force is Never Sufficient
How We Learn to Love the Fire
Acceptance of War in a Fracturing World
Redacted!
Freedom of Information or the Manufacture of Ignorance?
The End of the Opposition
A New Working Grammar for Government
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The Hames Report
Long-form essays and reflections on the future of everything. Read and support on SubstackPatreon / Published daily