Consent Without Consequences
A World Learning to Ask New Questions
Theme archive
Musings on Geopolitics and Power
Power shifts, conflict, empire, sovereignty, national interests, and the institutions that organise global affairs.
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
The Moment Power Chose Itself
America's Moment of Undisputed Leadership
Certainty’s Standing Ovation
A thousand people rose to their feet in Sydney on 22 August 2026.
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.
A Correction Before It Arrives
A curator in a regional art gallery is completing the wall text for a group show.
The Beginning of Our Collective Maturity
Collapsing Towards An Empathic Civilisation
Something Behind the Eyes
In the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the horror was never the alien.
The Collapse of the Story
There was a time when power didn’t need to explain itself.
When There Is No 'We'
The Fragmentation of the Public World
The Instrument and The Cage
What Language Does When No One is Watching
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.
Believing the Right Villain
Propaganda in a Comforting Voice
The Order That Never Arrived
When Institutions Obey a Rule Nobody Wrote
The Knowledge That Disqualifies
On the fate of those who cannot let go
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