Matthew Toy

Thoughts, reflections and experiences

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Haitians set up impromtu tent cities through the capital after an earthquake measuring 7 plus on the Richter scale rocked Port au Prince Haiti just before 5 pm yesterday, January 12, 2010.

Decentralising lifelines: a humanitarian strategy for Haiti

By

On August 17, 2025

In Strategy

Haiti’s latest state of emergency (declared 9 August 2025) formalises what residents have endured for months, a capital city largely under the rule of armed groups and an aid pipeline that can be strangled at will.¹ When the Varreux fuel terminal or the main port area is seized or besieged, clinics shut, cold chains fail, and food assistance stalls.² The pattern is now familiar enough to count as design rather than accident: the humanitarian system has been lashed to a single node, and that node is very brittle.

The reason behind this is a long history of colonial abuse. In 1825, France compelled Haiti, under warship threat, to pay 150 million francs to “compensate” former enslavers, later renegotiated to 90 million. The early payments alone exceeded the young state’s annual revenues, pushing officials into predatory lending from French banks; the last remittances were still being serviced in the mid-twentieth century.³ The effect was a century of state under-investment, with forests felled and budgets diverted to Paris instead of roads, schools or provincial health posts. In the twentieth century the United States’ occupation (1915–34) compounded the structural flaw by re-engineering administration and movement so that “all roads” flowed to Port-au-Prince.⁴ That choice made governance efficient for the occupier and perilous for everyone else. The 2010 earthquake then demonstrated what a “single point of failure” looks like in a state: ministries collapsed, large fractions of the civil service were killed, and the centre’s physical destruction erased what little capacity remained.⁵ The UN’s cholera debacle that followed turned a legitimacy deficit into a vacuum.⁶ Gang coalitions have converted choke-point control into revenue, coercion and de facto sovereignty.

Given this, then the immediate humanitarian question is not “how to retake the capital” but “how to stop the capital’s capture from collapsing national relief”. That reframing leads to a decentralisation imperative. A strategy of polycentric lifelines would deliberately reduce Port-au-Prince’s monopoly over aid entry, customs, warehousing, power and information. In practice that means shifting a meaningful share of humanitarian flow through Cap-Haïtien, St-Marc and Lafito, scaling auxiliary airfields for medical evacuation and vaccine cold-chain hops, and standing up duplicate customs and treasury rails in safer jurisdictions so that revenue can be collected and salaries paid even when the capital is contested. Cap-Haïtien already functions as the second port; UN logistics assessments list significant quays and back-area for staging; Varreux itself is a 50-million-gallon tank farm that repeatedly becomes a political hostage.⁷ The aim is not to bypass the state but to multiply the state’s points of presence so a strike on one cannot fell the whole.

There is a theory to support this. Elinor Ostrom’s work on polycentric governance shows that, when authority and capability are distributed across partially autonomous centres, systems learn faster, adapt under stress, and avoid the brittleness of single-hierarchy rule.⁸ We need to avoid romantic localism. The design needs to respond to the complexity where central command is weak, contested or both. The applied governance literature adds an empirical note: when resources and discretion move closer to people’s lived needs, investment patterns tend to tilt toward human development. In Bolivia, for example, post-1994 decentralisation reversed the flow of “devolved funds” from an 86:14 split favouring three big cities to 27:73 in favour of the other 308 municipalities, with the composition of spending shifting from transport and hydrocarbons to education, urban development, and water and sanitation (79 percent of municipal investment).⁹ That is exactly the pattern a humanitarian would hope to see in Haiti’s provinces: more cash and capacity where people are, not only where the state once was.

A polycentric humanitarian strategy for Haiti would rest on four moves. First, diversify ports of entry and replicate life-critical functions. That means pre-positioning fuel, medical commodities and emergency telecommunications at Cap-Haïtien and St-Marc, and contracting surge lighterage so bulk cargo can be worked offshore if quays are compromised. Reuters has already documented how a month-long blockade of Varreux can stall most economic and aid flows; the obvious lesson is not to gamble everything on reopening a single gate.² Second, duplicate fiscal chokepoints. Haiti’s tax take is only 6.3 percent of GDP, and customs is the largest reliable instrument left. When armed groups choke access to Port-au-Prince, the revenue base collapses. Creating secure, audited customs clearance capacity in the North and Centre (paired with ring-fenced, digitally traceable salary lines for provincial health and WASH workers) keeps essential services alive.¹⁰ Third, crowd in diasporic and private logistics where security permits, under humanitarian carve-outs. Remittances account for around one-fifth of GDP in recent years; calibrating corridors that safely convert private remittance inflows into local procurement for clinics and food actors would reduce exposure to the Port-au-Prince choke-point without “NGO-ising” the economy.¹¹ Finally, align the security mission to protect these lifelines rather than only to “retake” the capital. With fewer than half the planned MSS personnel on the ground by June 2025 and limited progress reported, tying deployments to humanitarian corridors and revenue sites may yield more lives saved per officer.¹²

The US/France history matters here only insofar as it explains why Port-au-Prince became a perilous funnel. The indemnity extracted by France bled the countryside of investment; the US line-of-communication doctrine then routed power into a single hub. The result is a capital that offers maximal leverage to whoever seizes it. A humane strategy treats that as a structural problem to be corrected. It is not an argument to abandon Port-au-Prince. It is an argument to make it matter less when it is held hostage.

There are however, very legitimate concerns to such an approach. Decentralisation can simply replicate capture at smaller scales; Bolivia’s improvements in responsiveness coexisted with uneven quality and local elite bargains.⁹ Indonesia’s “big-bang” decentralisation improved proximity and spending shares for frontline services but struggled on standards and equity across districts, especially in health.¹³ The Haitian risk is obvious – provincial customs houses, warehouses and councils could become new rackets. That argues for sequencing and safeguards, such as independent audits, civil-society monitoring, and transparent, rules-based transfers, rather than for clinging to a dangerous central monoculture.

A final point concerns legitimacy. I have written previously UN’s “legitimacy gap” in Haiti: focused on over-promising, bypassing the state, then failing at basic accountability. A polycentric design would not cure that, but it would reduce the damage that follows inevitably when the centre falters. Relief and basic administration would continue even as politics grind, and the “price” of impasse would be measured in lost time rather than preventable deaths. In that sense decentralisation is not a technocratic tweak. It is an ethical choice to never again leave the survival of a nation’s poorest tied to a single, easily captured valve.

Photo: United Nations Development Programme, Haiti Earthquake, 13 January 2010. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

References

  1. Al Jazeera, “Haiti Declares Three-Month State of Emergency as Gang Violence Spikes,” 9 August 2025, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/9/haiti-declares-three-month-state-of-emergency-as-gang-violence-spikes. Al Jazeera
  2. Dave Sherwood and Harold Isaac, “UN Warns Haiti’s Capital Blockaded, No Aid for Malnourished Children,” Reuters, 22 April 2024; and “Haiti Fuel Terminal Operations Halted as Gangs Seize Trucks,” Reuters, 22 April 2024. Reuters+1
  3. Mitu Gulati, Ugo Panizza, Kim Oosterlinck, and W. Mark C. Weidemaier, “A Debt of Dishonor,” Boston University Law Review 102 (2022): 1247–1310; New York Times, “The Root of Haiti’s Misery: Reparations to Enslavers,” 20 May 2022. See also Bibliothèque nationale de France, “Haiti’s Independence Debt,” n.d. Boston UniversityWikipediaheritage.bnf.fr
  4. Hans Schmidt, The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915–1934 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995); Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Haiti: State Against Nation (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990). Internet ArchiveMonthly Review
  5. Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), “2010 Haiti Earthquake: Facts and Figures,” 2010; R. DesRoches et al., “Overview of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake,” 2011, USGS. DECescweb.wr.usgs.gov
  6. Matthew Toy, Reflection – The UN’s Legitimacy Gap: A Haiti Case Study, 2025, https://matthewtoy.com/strategy/reflection-the-uns-legitimacy-gap-a-haiti-case-study/
  7. Logistics Cluster, “Haiti: Port of Cap-Haïtien,” 2024; “Haiti: Terminal Varreux,” 2024. Logistics Cluster Accountability+1
  8. Elinor Ostrom, “Polycentric Systems for Coping with Collective Action and Global Environmental Change,” Global Environmental Change 20, no. 4 (2010): 550–57; Elinor Ostrom, “Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems,” American Economic Review 100, no. 3 (2010): 641–72. ScienceDirectPSU | Portland State University
  9. Jean-Paul Faguet, “Does Decentralization Increase Responsiveness to Local Needs? Evidence from Bolivia,” Journal of Public Economics 88, nos. 3–4 (2004): 867–93; World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 2516 (2001), fig. 2 (86:14 to 27:73; 79 percent municipal investment in education/urban/water). LSE Research OnlineWorld Bank
  10. World Bank, Haiti: Strengthening Customs Administration in an Insecure Environment (2024), noting tax revenue at 6.3 percent of GDP in FY23 and customs as the single most viable instrument in crisis. World BankOpen Knowledge Repository
  11. World Bank Data, “Personal Remittances, Received (% of GDP) – Haiti,” accessed August 2025. World Bank Open Data
  12. Security Council Report, “Haiti: Closed Consultations,” 27 June 2025; Reuters, “A Year In, Haiti Mission Leader Warns of Shortfalls,” 26 June 2025. Security Council ReportReuters

The Misallocation of Moral Attention in International Relations

By

On August 5, 2025

In Strategy

This essay contends that the discipline and practice of International Relations systematically privilege symbolically potent crises over far deadlier but diffuse harms, thereby distorting both public debate and policy priorities. It argues for a recalibration of attention and resources based on preventable mortality rather than ideological resonance.

The contrast is stark. In Britain, the Office for National Statistics records 117,527 preventable or treatable deaths annually – 21% of all mortality – largely from cardiovascular disease, smoking, alcohol, and treatable cancers.¹ These losses draw little sustained public mobilisation. Elsewhere, Sudan’s protracted civil conflict has tipped more than 30 million people into acute food insecurity,² yet the crisis struggles to hold headlines or prompt sustained diplomatic engagement. By any measure of scale, both dwarf many of the events dominating international discourse.

Scale Versus Salience

Hypertension alone accounts for 10.8 million deaths each year worldwide (95 % CI 9.6–12.0),³ equivalent to over five medium-sized nation-states annually. Household air pollution from solid fuels adds another 3.2 million deaths, many among women and children.⁴ These combined tolls exceed those of all active armed conflicts in a typical year. Yet they rarely breach the news agenda except on awareness days, and they intrude into parliamentary debate even less often.

Certain crises, by contrast, fulfil criteria that make them highly “protestable.” They offer moral clarity: identifiable perpetrators, discrete victims, and harm perceived as deliberate. They provide compelling visual evidence that can be shared and amplified through mass and social media. And they align with pre‑existing identity narratives, allowing publics and policymakers to position themselves visibly on questions of justice, resistance, or defence.

By comparison, preventable deaths from hypertension, unsafe water, or indoor smoke lack these narrative hooks. Victims are geographically and socially dispersed; causal chains are complex; and responsibility is shared across markets, states, and individual behaviours. Even Sudan’s famine, clearly political in origin, lacks a single antagonist familiar to Western publics, limiting its capacity to sustain attention.

The Political Economy of Attention

Media logic amplifies this imbalance. Event‑driven coverage favours sudden, dramatic violence over slow attrition. Politicians, in turn, find conspicuous moral stands on visible, high‑profile issues to be electorally safer than committing resources to long‑term structural prevention. The result is a moral economy in which visibility, not mortality, determines priority.

In IR scholarship, this reflects the Cold War‑era distinction between “high politics” (war, diplomacy, security) and “low politics” (health, welfare, environment). That hierarchy persists even though so‑called low‑politics issues now account for far greater loss of life. Security, on any coherent definition, should be measured not only by the absence of armed invasion but by aggregate survival and human flourishing.

Toward Evidence‑Based Empathy

The corrective is not to diminish the importance of high‑profile conflicts but to broaden the moral lens. An evidence‑based empathy approach would allocate attention and resources in proportion to preventable harm, regardless of whether an issue fits prevailing ideological narratives. For policymakers, this means directing funding and diplomatic capital toward the largest, most tractable sources of mortality. For activists, it implies expanding advocacy portfolios beyond the most visible theatres. For scholars, it demands integrating public‑health and development indicators into security analysis, recognising that neglect of chronic, large‑scale mortality is itself a political act.

There are precedents. India’s Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana programme has distributed more than 80 million clean‑fuel connections,⁵ sharply reducing household air‑pollution exposure. Anti‑hypertension campaigns in Canada and Finland have driven measurable declines in stroke and heart‑disease mortality. Such initiatives may lack the drama of conflict diplomacy, but they yield far larger dividends in human life.

The call to action is therefore two‑fold: maintain engagement with acute crises, but insist with equal vigour on confronting the routine, silent killers of preventable disease and deprivation. Only by aligning moral attention with empirical harm can International Relations begin to match its normative claims with the arithmetic of human survival.

References

  1. Office for National Statistics, Avoidable Mortality in England and Wales: 2023 (Statistical Bulletin, 28 April 2025), table 2, https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/bulletins/avoidablemortalityinenglandandwales/2023.
  2. Norwegian Refugee Council, “Sudan: Two Years of War, Starvation & Global Failure, the World Must Act Now,” press release, 10 April 2025, https://www.nrc.no/news/2025/april/joint-statement—two-years-of-war-starvation-and-global-failure-the-world-must-act-now-for-sudan.
  3. World Health Organization, World Health Statistics 2024: Monitoring Health for the SDGs, Sustainable Development Goals (Geneva: WHO, 2024), 73.
  4. World Health Organization, “Household Air Pollution and Health,” Fact Sheet, 16 October 2024, https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/household-air-pollution-and-health.
  5. Government of India, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) Progress Report 2024, https://www.pmuy.gov.in.
Photo by Suliman Sallehi: https://www.pexels.com/photo/gray-concrete-building-on-top-of-hill-1484776/

What Failed State Building in Afghanistan Can Teach Us: Beyond the ‘Capability Trap’

By

On July 26, 2025

In Strategy

Western policy elites still parse Afghanistan as a jigsaw of “not enough troops,” faulty intelligence or premature withdrawal. My earlier essay, “Avoiding the Capability Trap,” argued the causal chain runs the other way: abundant matériel deepens failure when it substitutes for locally grounded legitimacy.¹ Kabul’s implosion confirms that verdict while exposing the structural biases that reproduce Western misadventures. Reading Afghanistan through Barry Buzan’s taxonomy of nation-state linkages, and turning Mohammed Ayoob’s “security problematic” inside-out, suggests that non-intervention can be the hardest-nosed strategic choice.

1 – Afghanistan and the myth of the state-nation shortcut

Buzan sketches four ways coercive “states” and imagined “nations” intersect.² NATO tried to leap from a plural social terrain to a state-nation, manufacturing the nation from the top down. Such feats, Buzan warns, demand decades of standardised schooling, fiscal extraction and symbolic homogeny.³ The 2001 Bonn Agreement allowed barely eighteen months before nationwide elections; NATO’s calendar, not Afghan social realities, set the tempo.

Afghanistan, meanwhile, was no tabula rasa. Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek identities drew authority from kin networks, shrine endowments and cross-border trade; “Afghan” was a diplomatic label, not a lived community.⁴ Warlords converted donor cash into what Antonio Giustozzi calls emporia of mud: polities legitimated by personal loyalty and local revenue, not Kabul’s ministries.⁵ By 2018 those ministries relied on foreign funds for over 75 percent of their budget,⁶ turning the state into a vessel of structural extraversion rather than a nucleus of solidarity.

2 – The capability trap, revisited

Lant Pritchett’s “capability trap” captures the dynamic whereby lavish resources mask institutional hollowness.⁷ In Afghanistan, US airpower and payrolls produced countable outputs (flights logged, teachers hired) while corruption and predation eroded the outputs citizens actually valued. Sarah Chayes shows how elite rackets taxed every aid dollar several times over;⁸ Carter Malkasian records that, when American air support vanished in August 2021, Afghan troops often cut local deals rather than fight for an abstraction they never owned.⁹ External capability therefore both props up a weak state and delegitimises it by advertising dependency. The more Washington spent, the more Kabul looked foreign – boosting the Taliban’s claim to embody a rooted, Islamic nation.

3 – Ayoob’s mirror: why the European template misleads

Ayoob argues that post-colonial polities face the same nation-state forging tasks that once convulsed Europe, only faster and under tighter scrutiny.¹⁰ The Afghan debacle undercuts that analogy. Europe’s pathway was path-dependent, not path-determining: mercantilist war, colonial plunder and the absence of outside tutors bankrolled its state projects. Early-modern rulers could bleed and tax their populations because no hegemon demanded quarterly reports on “good governance.”

Transposed into today’s legally dense, media-saturated arena, the blueprint backfires. Pressure to display Weberian credentials, typified by monopoly over legitimate violence inside fixed borders, creates Potemkin ministries and finances clientelist bargains that replace, rather than integrate, vernacular authority. In trying to “finish Europe’s journey,” donors help reproduce the insecurity they hope to cure.

4 – Post-Westphalian prudence

Buzan’s matrix makes plain that Afghanistan never offered a plausible route to a unitary state-nation; NATO’s insistence on conjuring one exposed Kabul’s dependency instead. Prudence therefore begins with political triage.

  • Contain, don’t transform. Keep a light regional footprint, such as over-the-horizon strike tools, intelligence liaison, calibrated sanctions, to blunt trans-national threats without social engineering.¹¹
  • Scaffold plural bargains. In 2011 UNAMA quietly brokered a Helmand River water-sharing accord between rival tribes and Iran, reducing clashes at a fraction of ISAF’s stabilisation budget.¹² Such micro-compacts, extended to customs corridors or pasture routes, secure order by meshing with existing authority rather than overruling it.
  • Respect political tempo. Replace annual disbursement cycles with decade-long trust funds that release money only after mutually verified benchmarks, insulating local actors from the rent-seeking churn that sustains capability traps.¹³

This is not intended to be capital-letter ‘Isolationism’. Rather it should be seen as an exercise humility: an admission that legitimacy sediments slowly, and that neither drones nor curricula can manufacture a nation from the outside.

Footnotes

  1. Matthew Toy, “Avoiding the Capability Trap: A Framework,” matthewtoy.com, 20 July 2025. https://matthewtoy.com/strategy/avoiding-the-capability-trap-a-framework/
  2. Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security in the Post-Cold War Era, 2nd ed. (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1991), 42–54.
  3. Ibid., 48–50.
  4. Thomas Barfield, Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 271–75.
  5. Antonio Giustozzi, Empires of Mud: Wars and Warlords in Afghanistan (London: Hurst, 2009), 103–15.
  6. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, Why the Afghan Government Collapsed, Report 23-05-IP (Arlington, VA: SIGAR, 2022), 1–3.
  7. Matt Andrews, Lant Pritchett and Michael Woolcock, “Escaping Capability Traps through Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA),” CID Working Paper 240 (Harvard Kennedy School, June 2012), 2–7.
  8. Sarah Chayes, Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security (New York: W. W. Norton, 2015), 67–72.
  9. Carter Malkasian, The American War in Afghanistan: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 443–50.
  10. Mohammed Ayoob, “The Security Problematic of the Third World,” World Politics 43, no. 2 (1991): 257–83.
  11. Barry R. Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), 69–100.
  12. Helene von Bismarck, “Water Sharing in Helmand: UNAMA’s Quiet Diplomacy,” Journal of Peacebuilding 12, no. 1 (2016): 41–55.
  13. Andrews, Pritchett and Woolcock, “Escaping Capability Traps,” 5.

Photo by Suliman Sallehi: https://www.pexels.com/photo/gray-concrete-building-on-top-of-hill-1484776/

Should We or Shouldn't We?

Avoiding the Capability Trap: A Framework

By

On July 20, 2025

In Strategy

Repeated Western military interventions, from Vietnam to Afghanistan, show that technological and financial superiority does not ensure political victory. Such dominance can obscure political realities and even undermine legitimacy. Precision strikes may heighten views of occupation, while excessive funding often breeds corruption (Clemis, 2025; SIGAR, 2023a). This “capability trap” is the mistaken belief that military and economic power guarantees political outcomes. The true test is whether local actors genuinely accept foreign presence, not simply endure it (U.S. Department of the Army, 2014). To address this, interventions should undergo early political-sociological assessment to confirm mission viability before detailed planning and avoid confusing military means with political ends.

The Futility Assessment Framework

The framework proceeds through a sequence of determinative questions. An affirmative flag in any phase indicates a high risk that material advantages will prove strategically irrelevant or even counterproductive.

Phase 1 – Transformation Gate

The initial and most fundamental question is one of intent: Does the mission’s authentic end-state involve remaking the basic institutions or social contract of the target society? This question demands an honest appraisal, looking beyond stated aims to the practical requirements for success. Indicators of a transformational goal include a significant ‘partner-capacity delta’, where host-nation forces are projected to remain reliant on foreign kinetic enablers after a period of five years, or a ‘governance-gap delta’, where routine state functions like revenue extraction or dispute resolution would likely collapse without sustained foreign tutelage (SIGAR, 2023b). If the answer is yes, the mission must be treated as transformational and subjected to further futility screening.

Phase 2 – Elite-Coalition Viability

The next inquiry assesses the local political foundation for change: Is there a cohesive indigenous elite bloc, minimally fragmented, that is willing and able to incur the costs of coercion required to secure the new order after foreign withdrawal? External powers cannot substitute for a legitimate local monopoly on violence. Successful political consolidation requires local actors who see the post-intervention state as their own and are prepared to defend it. The absence of such a bloc, or the presence of deep and intractable divisions, signals a critical vulnerability that foreign support can rarely overcome (Hazelton, 2017). This condition represents a high futility risk and should prompt a reassessment of primary objectives.

Phase 3 – Social-Terrain Depth Test

A critical political-sociological test follows: Must the campaign uproot kinship, religious, or customary systems that have been embedded for generations? When an intervention’s success is conditional upon altering social structures with deep historical roots, such as tribal allegiances, powerful religious hierarchies, or customary law systems, it faces a profound challenge. These systems are often the true sources of social cohesion and legitimacy. Attempting to displace them is not a matter of mere policy implementation but of cultural re-engineering, a task for which military force is singularly ill-suited and which requires decades, if not generations, to achieve (French, 2012). An affirmative answer here strongly indicates a high risk of futility.

Phase 4 – Legitimacy Inversion Screen

Consideration must be given to the paradoxical effect of overwhelming strength: Will the visible preponderance of foreign power itself delegitimise local partners? This ‘legitimacy inversion’ occurs when the very instruments of intervention undermine the goal. Key indicators include when the external force’s firepower comes to dominate the battlefield narrative, when aid flows grossly exceed the local absorptive capacity and breed parasitic rent-seeking, or when the political mythology of the new state requires public deference to its outside patrons (SIGAR, 2016). The presence of any two of these factors suggests that the intervention is likely to empower its opponents by branding its partners as puppets.

Phase 5 – Corruption Elasticity Gauge

A more quantifiable, yet crucial, metric concerns the integrity of resource transfers: What is the estimated share of new funds likely to be diverted through informal or corrupt networks before reaching their intended end-use? When this figure exceeds 30 per cent, corruption ceases to be a mere inefficiency and becomes a self-defeating ‘strategic tax’. Such a leakage rate not only wastes resources but actively finances malign networks, delegitimises the partner government, and creates a powerful constituency with a vested interest in perpetual conflict and instability (SIGAR, 2016).

Phase 6 – Political-Metabolism Mismatch

Finally, the framework assesses temporal feasibility: Are the timelines required for deep socio-political change congruent with the domestic electoral horizons and fiscal patience of the intervening state? Meaningful political transformation operates on a generational timeline, arguably requiring a commitment of fifteen years or more. This is fundamentally misaligned with the two-to-four-year cycles of Western domestic politics and budgetary processes, which create artificial pressures for immediate, demonstrable results (Posen, 2014). A definitive mismatch between the political metabolism of the target society and that of the intervening power represents a high futility risk.

Aggregate Rule and Quantitative Cross-Check

An aggregate rule is simple: if two or more of the above phases are flagged with a ‘HIGH FUTILITY RISK’, the recommendation must be Do Not Proceed with a transformational objective. To provide a more granular assessment, a weighted scorecard can be applied:

IndicatorWeight
Elite-coalition failure3
Deep-rooted social structures must be altered3
Legitimacy inversion2
Corruption elasticity >30%2
Political-metabolism mismatch2

A total score of 5 or higher should trigger an immediate pivot away from transformational objectives towards a menu of more limited, realistic alternative strategies.

Alternative Strategy Menu

When a futility assessment counsels against transformative intervention, decision-makers are not left without options. The challenge is to select strategies that acknowledge political constraints while still addressing core security concerns.

Containment and Offshore Balancing

Instead of attempting internal transformation, the focus shifts to preventing adverse developments from affecting core national interests. This may involve a combination of offshore military presence, robust intelligence capabilities, and diplomatic containment structures (Luttwak, 1999). This approach accepts political realities in the target region while maintaining sufficient influence to shape outcomes at the margins.

Regional Coalition Building

This strategy involves empowering and supporting regional partners who possess greater cultural legitimacy and political sustainability than an external intervention can hope to achieve. It requires accepting that regional solutions may not align perfectly with external preferences, but recognises that an indigenous, or at least proximate, locus of legitimacy is often more durable and effective than an imposed one (Denison, 2020).

Selective Partnership and Conditional Support

This approach entails working with existing power structures rather than attempting to replace them. This requires a pragmatic acceptance of local legitimacy patterns, including those rooted in traditional or religious authority, while using conditional assistance to influence behaviour incrementally over time. It trades ideological satisfaction for practical influence and sustainability.

Intelligence Cooperation and Targeted Disruption

Specific threats can be addressed through deep intelligence partnerships and precise, targeted operations rather than comprehensive political-military projects. This maintains operational flexibility while avoiding the significant legitimacy deficits and resource drains associated with a sustained, visible military presence (Paul et al., 2013).

The fundamental insight remains consistent: when a society’s political and social context renders transformation futile despite an intervener’s material superiority, strategic wisdom lies not in doing nothing, but in pursuing different objectives that work with, rather than against, the grain of local political reality.

Bibliography

Clemis, M.G. (2025). The Enduring Lessons of Vietnam: Implications for US Strategy and Policy. Parameters, 55(2), pp.23–25.

Denison, B. (2020). The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: The Failure of Regime-Change Operations. Policy Analysis 883. Washington, DC: Cato Institute.

French, D. (2012). The British Way in Counter-Insurgency, 1945-1967. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hazelton, J.L. (2017). The ‘Hearts and Minds’ Fallacy: Violence, Coercion, and Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare. International Security, 42(1), pp.80–113.

Luttwak, E.N. (1999). Give War a Chance. Foreign Affairs, 78(4), pp.36–44.

Paul, C., Clarke, C.P., Grill, B. and Dunigan, M. (2013). Paths to Victory: Lessons from Modern Insurgencies. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.

Posen, B.R. (2014). Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). (2016). Corruption in Conflict: Lessons from the United States Experience in Afghanistan. Arlington, VA: SIGAR.

Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). (2023a). Why the Afghan Government Collapsed. Arlington, VA: SIGAR.

Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). (2023b). The Factors Leading to the Collapse of the Afghan Government and Its Security Forces. Arlington, VA: SIGAR.

U.S. Department of the Army. (2014). Insurgencies and Countering Insurgencies (FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5). Washington, DC: Headquarters, Department of the Army.

Russian buildings with reflection on water

Understanding Russia’s Unconventional Narrative of Victory

By

On July 4, 2025

In Strategy

Considering the strategic landscape of early 2025, with staggering Russian tank losses and a tragic civilian death toll in Ukraine, it is essential to look beyond conventional military analysis to understand Moscow’s behaviour (Oryx, 2025; OHCHR, 2025, p. 1). Russia’s actions since the end of the Cold War are not merely a product of its military hardware or official doctrine. Instead, they are profoundly shaped by the lens through which its elites understand what it means to be ‘winning’.

This perspective, in what academics might term an ‘epistemology of victory’, is not fixed. It has evolved from the Soviet focus on decisive battlefield outcomes to a more fluid set of modern priorities: narrative control, perceived dominance in a crisis, and, above all, the security of the regime itself. These priorities are visible in the Kremlin’s budget choices, its use of military force, and the stories it tells itself and the world (Renz, 2018, pp. 46-52). By examining this internal logic, we can better understand why Russia built the military it has and why its performance, particularly in Ukraine, has unfolded in such a costly and often contradictory manner.

The Real Meaning of Victory

For Western observers, victory is often measured in tangible terms: territory gained, enemy forces defeated. However, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent years of perceived humiliation shattered these traditional metrics for Moscow (Giles, 2017, pp. 1-2; Renz, 2018, pp. 46-52). This triggered a deep-seated need among the Russian elite for a renewed sense of national identity and purpose (Tyushka, 2022, p. 117).

In response, the Kremlin has constructed a new definition of victory. This is rooted in the idea of Russia as a unique ‘civilisation-state’ or the inheritor of ‘Historical Russia’ – locked in an existential struggle with a hostile West. In this narrative, victory is less about battlefield gains and more about safeguarding Russia’s civilisational sovereignty and cultural identity (Tyushka, 2022, p. 116). The goal is to achieve what one scholar calls ‘civilisational immunity’ from Western norms and influence (Suslov, 2018, p. 345).

This makes the narrative itself a form of strategic capability. Controlling the story, both at home and abroad, becomes as important as controlling territory. This logic helps explain Russia’s vast investments in information warfare and its constant efforts to frame international events as proof of Western aggression, thereby justifying its own actions as defensive (Renz, 2018, pp. 74-77; Tyushka, 2022, p. 116).

Guarding the Regime

Nowhere is this focus on internal stability clearer than in the national budget. Despite the immense financial pressures of a prolonged, high-intensity war in Ukraine, the Kremlin has consistently protected funding for its National Guard, or Rosgvardia. This powerful internal security force, reporting directly to the presidency, is tasked with crowd control, counter-terrorism, and suppressing internal dissent.

Even as the Ministry of Defence budget has soared to manage the war, funding for Rosgvardia has remained at historically high levels for 2024 and 2025. This refusal to sacrifice internal security capacity, even as the war effort strains the economy, is telling (Cooper, 2025, pp. 3-8). With around a third of all federal spending now classified and hidden from public view, the Kremlin signals its core priority: the survival of the regime against internal threats is co-equal with, if not more important than, success in external conflicts (Cooper, 2025, pp. 3-4, 6). The message is that the narrative of domestic cohesion and elite loyalty must be maintained at all costs.

This logic also explains the development of certain ‘prestige’ weapon systems. Hypersonic missiles like the Kinzhal, for example, have questionable operational utility but serve a powerful performative function. They broadcast a message of technological virtuosity, contesting Western military-technical dominance and reinforcing Russia’s status as a top-tier power, regardless of their effectiveness on the actual battlefield (Dalsjö et al., 2022, pp. 12, 14).

When Myth Meets Reality

The 2022 invasion of Ukraine was the ultimate test of Russia’s military myths. The initial plan, likely based on the swift, perception-driven operations in Georgia (2008) and Crimea (2014), assumed the same playbook would work on a larger scale. It did not. The opening phase of the war exposed a chasm between claimed capability and battlefield performance, marked by logistical chaos, poor coordination, and a failure to achieve air superiority (Dalsjö et al., 2022, pp. 9-10).

The myth of a surgical, modern military quickly evaporated. Russia’s vaunted precision-guided missiles were expended at an unsustainable rate, with over 1,100 fired in the first month alone (U.S. Department of Defense, 2022). Soon, Russian forces were repurposing old S-300 air-defence missiles for inaccurate ground-attack roles, a move that starkly illustrated the collision between an identity built on technological finesse and the grim reality of material constraints (Army Recognition, 2024).

While the invasion is widely seen as a strategic failure by conventional Western standards (Dalsjö et al., 2022, pp. 7-10), it can be interpreted differently through the Kremlin’s lens. The brutal, high-loss assaults seen at places like Avdiivka in late 2023 (Milevski, 2023, pp. 123-125) can be reframed. Moscow has a documented history of using active conflicts as vicious, but effective, training grounds to forge a more experienced military (Giles, 2017, p. 4). This allows for a narrative of ‘losing as winning’, where today’s tactical losses are presented as the necessary price for creating a more lethal and battle-hardened army for tomorrow.

Conclusion

To understand Russian strategy, one must look past the tanks and missiles and focus on the internal narrative that gives them meaning. Moscow’s actions are driven by a definition of victory where controlling the story, ensuring the regime’s stability, and asserting a unique civilisational status are prized as highly as battlefield success. The war in Ukraine has revealed the severe strategic miscalculations that can arise when this performative, identity-driven logic clashes with the realities of conventional warfare (Dalsjö et al., 2022, pp. 8-11; Grisé et al., 2024, p. xi). For the Kremlin, victory may not be something to be won on a map, but a spectacle to be declared and sustained, no matter the cost.

Bibliography

Army Recognition. (2024). “Russia Repurposes S-300 Surface-to-Air Missiles for Ground Attacks Against the City of Kharkiv.” 5 January.

Cooper, J. (2025). Preparing for a Fourth Year of War: Military Spending in Russia’s Budget for 2025. SIPRI Insights on Peace and Security, no. 2025/04. Solna: SIPRI.

Dalsjö, R., Jonsson, M., and Norberg, J. (2022). “A Brutal Examination: Russian Military Capability in Light of the Ukraine War.” Survival 64(3), pp. 7–28.

Giles, K. (2017). Assessing Russia’s Reorganised and Rearmed Military. Task Force White Paper. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Grisé, M. et al. (2024). Russia’s Military After Ukraine. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.

Milevski, L. (2023). ‘The Primitivisation of Major Warfare’. Survival 65(6), pp. 119-36.

Oryx. (2025). “Attack On Europe: Documenting Russian Equipment Losses During The 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine.” Oryx (blog). Accessed May 2025.

Renz, B. (2018). Russia’s Military Revival. Newark: Polity Press.

Suslov, M. (2018). “‘Russian World’ Concept: Post-Soviet Geopolitical Ideology and the Logic of ‘Spheres of Influence’.” Geopolitics 23(2), pp. 330-350.

Treverton, G. F. and Jones, S. G. (2005). Measuring National Power. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.

Tyushka, A. (2022). “Weaponizing Narrative: Russia Contesting Europe’s Liberal Identity, Power and Hegemony.” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 30(1), pp. 115-35.

United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). (2025). Human Rights Three Years into Russia’s Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine: Factsheet. Kyiv: United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, 17 February.

U.S. Department of Defense. (2022). “Senior Defense Official Holds a Background Briefing.” Transcript, 21 March.

Russia/EU chess

Examining Europe’s proposed ‘re-armament surge’

By

On June 17, 2025

In Strategy

Andrew Michta’s Helsinki-Commission briefing, available on YouTube and social media, urges Europe to accelerate the deployment of armour and air-defence to its eastern flank. His logistics are solid, yet the argument remains trapped in a materialist mindset. The Kremlin’s strategic theatre is part gun-count, part morality play; it must perform the role of a besieged civilisation to sustain elite cohesion and domestic consent (Giles, 2021). Moscow therefore magnifies even token NATO deployments, weaving them into a narrative of encirclement. Numbers certainly matter, but myths and interpretations drive policy.

Historically, Western analysis rarely pauses on this critical identity driver. Civilisational framings, or what Marlene Laruelle calls Russia’s “anti-liberal European” self-image (Laruelle, 2016), explain why deterrence sometimes falters when, on balance, an alliance should be the rational option. Michta’s focus on equipment and troop-tallies risks underestimating this discursive asymmetry.

NATO’s dilemma: choreographing presence

The security dilemma cannot just be wished away, but its social meaning can be reframed. NATO now plans to defend forward with rotating brigades rather than permanent garrisons. Visibility is deliberate: forces spend most of their time at home and surge only for exercises, reassuring Baltic publics while limiting imagery that feeds Moscow’s siege myth. Twenty-two Allies already meet the 2 per cent GDP benchmark, up from three a decade ago (NATO, 2024), yet credible posture still requires narrative discipline. Radical transparency, such as publishing force-flow schedules and live-streaming major drills, signals defensive intent and denies the Kremlin the fog in which worst-case fantasies multiply. A minimalist inspection regime, of the kind sketched in recent European Leadership Network workshops, could complement this by addressing Russian ontological insecurity without conceding capability (ELN, 2024).

Lessons from outside Europe

Wargames on a Taiwan contingency reinforce the logic. RAND analysts find that smart sea-mines, road-mobile fires and cheap drones raise the PLA’s operational risk more sharply than prestige carriers (RAND, 2023). Denial assets lower the escalatory temperature while still signalling resolve. Yet capability is not enough: Beijing will test whether the coalition’s political will is socially durable. Expanding informal constructs like AUKUS into routine crisis-response exercises needs to narrate a shared story of status-quo preservation rather than anti-China containment.

South Asia offers a counter-example. The 2025 India-Pakistan crisis, analysed at the Belfer Center, showed deterrence only holding once both sides satisfied domestic identity needs with symbolic strikes before back-channeling de-escalation (Belfer, 2025). Conversely, the Israel–Hezbollah dyad illustrates erosion: CSIS charts a steep rise in rocket exchanges as mutually reinforcing victim narratives demand ever larger demonstrations of “honour” (CSIS, 2024). Deterrence frays when stories that cultures tell themselves are left unmanaged.

Policy implication

Europe’s re-armament is necessary, but insufficient by itself. Credible high-readiness forces must be paired with an information architecture that denies Moscow the dramaturgy it craves. That means choreographed deployments, radical transparency, selective arms-control gestures and a public narrative that casts NATO as guardian of a plural security order, not the shadow of tomorrow’s invasion. Any deterrence strategy that ignores identity politics may well become an expensive repeat of history.

Bibliography

Belfer Center (2025) Escalation Gone Meta: Strategic Lessons from the 2025 India–Pakistan Crisis. Harvard Kennedy School.

CSIS (2024) The Coming Conflict with Hezbollah. Center for Strategic and International Studies.

European Leadership Network (2024) OSCE Workshop Report: Strengthening European Security Architecture.

Giles, K. (2021) What Deters Russia. Chatham House.

Laruelle, M. (2016) ‘Russia as an Anti-liberal European Civilisation’, in The New Russian Nationalism, Edinburgh University Press.

Michta, A. (2024) ‘Why NATO Must Step Up’, testimony to the U.S. Helsinki Commission.

NATO (2024) ‘Defence Expenditures and the 2 Per Cent Guideline’.

RAND Corporation (2023) These Technologies Could Defeat China’s Missile Barrage and Defend Taiwan.

Digital Union Jack / Tank and Drone

Is the Strategic Defence Review an Engineered Response? Rethinking UK Defence in an Age of Bricolage

By

On June 9, 2025

In Strategy

Abstract

Looking at the situation, the United Kingdom’s 2025 Strategic Defence Review (SDR) projects a confident rationality: an “Integrated Force” designed to deter, fight, and win through “constant innovation at wartime pace” (Ministry of Defence, 2025, p. 14). Yet Moscow’s conduct in Ukraine has revealed a profoundly different strategic grammar. Russia behaves, in Ondřej Ditrych’s terms, as a bricoleur – an opportunistic tinkerer that stitches together ad hoc “assemblages” while actively cultivating contradictions to wrong-foot a rule-bound opponent (Ditrych, 2024, p. 2). This article argues that a defence posture optimised for elegant integration may prove brittle when confronted by such an adversary. It posits that Russia’s dialectical approach is designed to exploit the very linear logic that underpins Western military planning. By contrasting the systemic fragility of Russian bricolage, vividly exposed by the Wagner Group’s implosion, with the SDR’s search for institutional longevity, this analysis suggests that effective deterrence now requires the UK to supplement integration with a capacity for institutionalised improvisation. This ‘controlled bricolage’ is presented as a form of adaptive power, essential for reassuring allies and succeeding in an era of disorderly, attritional conflict.

1. A Strategy of Contradiction

To understand the contemporary threat is to look beyond conventional military net assessment and into an opponent’s strategic culture. Ondřej Ditrych (2024, p. 3) characterises the Russian state not as a grand strategist but as a bricoleur, a tinkerer that improvises solutions from a limited repertoire of available parts. This is more than mere opportunism; it is a dialectical method. It is comfortable with, and indeed actively cultivates, the very contradictions that would paralyse a Western staff college. Russia’s strategy often appears to be a pastiche of mutually exclusive signals: complaining of encirclement while expanding its territory, invoking international law while flouting it, and deploying high-tech weaponry alongside crudely adapted civilian technologies. This is not strategic incoherence but a feature designed to create a chaotic information environment, wrong-footing an adversary who seeks clarity and predictability.

The Wagner Group was, perhaps, the ultimate expression of this method. It was a composite entity that simultaneously functioned as a proxy military force, a resource-extraction enterprise, a political influence operation, and a vehicle for plausible deniability (Ditrych, 2024, p. 3). It allowed Moscow to project power into Africa and the Middle East in ways that circumvented the rules of state-on-state competition. Yet this bricolage has a breaking-point. Such ad hoc structures lack institutional resilience. Wagner’s spectacular implosion following Yevgeny Prigozhin’s 2023 mutiny was not the result of external pressure but of the unbearable internal frictions of the system that created it (Ditrych, 2024, p. 4). This reveals the core vulnerability of the bricoleur: a reliance on improvised, personality-driven structures that can shatter under systemic stress, a stark contrast to the West’s enduring, if cumbersome, search for institutional longevity.

2. The Limits of an Engineered Deterrence

The SDR’s answer to this disorderly world is a renewed drive for rational integration. It proposes a force “integrated by design” (Ministry of Defence, 2025, p. 15-16), directed by a new Military Strategic Headquarters and equipped via a streamlined Defence Investment Plan. The document is, in itself, a signal of intent, a blueprint for a logical, legible, and thereby deterring military machine. However, in applying this lens, it arguably misreads the nature of the challenge. As the RAND Corporation’s work on national power suggests, military effectiveness is not simply a function of material capabilities– the ships, tanks, and aircraft a nation possesses. It depends equally on the efficiency of the conversion process that turns those national resources into usable military power (Treverton and Jones, 2005, p. 18). Russian bricolage is, in essence, a high-speed, high-risk conversion strategy. The UK’s SDR, with its focus on creating new bureaucratic structures and processes, risks optimising its inventory of capabilities while neglecting the need for a truly agile conversion mechanism.

This creates a deterrence paradox, which plays out for multiple audiences. The first, and most obvious, is the adversary. As Keir Giles argues, Russia often discounts material symbols of Western strength, focusing instead on a perceived lack of political will and a hesitation to accept risk (Torun, 2024, p. 667, summarising Giles). A bricoleur state, seeking seams to exploit, is unlikely to be deterred by a show of conventional force that it believes will never be used in the ambiguous ‘sub-threshold’ where it prefers to operate. The second, and equally critical, audience is domestic and allied. Effective deterrence requires not only a credible threat but also the reassurance of one’s own public and partners that the nation can withstand and respond to shocks. This requires a resilient defence industrial base capable of surging production. The SDR acknowledges this, noting that a nation’s Armed Forces are only as strong as the industry behind them (Ministry of Defence, 2025, p. 7), but the deep-seated challenge of moving from peacetime efficiency to wartime industrial mass remains a critical constraint on the UK’s own risk appetite and, therefore, its credibility.

3. Towards an Elastic Architecture: Institutionalising Bricolage

If Russia’s strategic advantage lies in its tolerance for disorder, then an effective counter-strategy cannot lie solely in the imposition of a more perfect order. The UK must learn to fight fire with fire, supplementing its integrated blueprint with a capacity for institutionalised improvisation. This means cultivating a form of ‘controlled bricolage’ as a source of adaptive power. Treverton and Jones (2005, p. 11) noted two decades ago how the information technology revolution would inevitably move action away from slow-moving governments and “toward nimbler organisations.” The SDR’s proposal for an “expert Digital Warfighters group” (Ministry of Defence, 2025, p. 47-49) is a promising, if nascent, step in this direction. For this to become a genuine source of advantage, however, it must be treated not as a specialist enclave but as a guiding ethos for the entire force, empowering small teams at the tactical edge to experiment, adapt, and exploit opportunities at a speed the adversary cannot match.

This, in turn, requires a fundamental shift in the Ministry of Defence’s culture of procurement and risk. It necessitates an embrace of “good-enough” solutions that can be fielded rapidly, with iterative upgrades baked into the process, rather than pursuing perfect capabilities that risk arriving too late. Such an approach accepts that in a state of constant technological flux, some failure is inevitable and should be treated as an opportunity for accelerated learning. This is the logic behind the Royal Navy’s planned regulatory “sandbox” for autonomous systems (Ministry of Defence, 2025, p. 105-106), a concept that must be expanded across all domains. An elastic and adaptive force, capable of improvising under pressure, offers a more credible deterrent to a bricoleur than a rigid one, however powerful. It signals a capacity to endure, to adapt, and to respond effectively amid the very chaos the adversary seeks to create.

4. Conclusion

Arguably, a rationally designed and integrated force remains indispensable for the enduring demands of high-intensity warfare. Integration alone, however, is no longer sufficient. The central insight for UK defence is that an over-optimisation for elegant, systemic coherence can itself become a vulnerability when facing an opponent whose strategy is to weaponise disorder. Power in the 21st century is increasingly a function of adaptability. The challenge, therefore, is to create an architecture that is not only strong but also elastic; one that can, when necessary, fracture gracefully into many semi-autonomous nodes, each authorised to improvise within the commander’s intent. Deterrence means more than pure strength, it is the ability to adapt one’s defence to the changing strategic landscape.

Bibliography

Ditrych, O. (2024). DECONSTRUCTING RUSSIA’S BRICOLAGE TACTICS: Strategic insights for defeating the Kremlin. EUISS Brief 18. Paris: European Union Institute for Security Studies.

Ministry of Defence. (2025). Strategic Defence Review 2025: Making Britain Safer, Secure at Home, Strong Abroad. London: HM Government.

Torun, Z. (2024). Review of ‘Russia’s War on Everybody. And What it Means for You’, by Keir Giles. Europe-Asia Studies, 76(4), pp. 667-668.

Treverton, G. F. and Jones, S. G. (2005). Measuring National Power. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.

Header image for an article on PGM usage by Russia

Precision Reconsidered: Russia’s Shift from Guided Missiles to Mass Bombardment

By

On May 29, 2025

In Strategy

Previously Russia positioned itself as a modern power able to cripple an adversary’s decision-cycle with carefully targeted precision-guided munitions. Three years of war in Ukraine have punctured that story. The Kremlin now relies on volume rather than accuracy, trading the prestige of “surgical” strikes for the blunt attrition of drone swarms and repurposed air-defence missiles. What follows traces that transition and asks what it does to Western analytical assumptions about technology, ethics and power.

From Surgical Imagery to Saturation Practice

Pentagon tallies show that Russian forces loosed more than one thousand one hundred guided missiles in the first month of the invasion, yet many exploded in apartment blocks rather than command nodes (Department of Defense, 2022). Domestic production never kept pace. By mid-2023 Russian factories were turning out roughly sixty new cruise missiles a month, a fraction of operational demand (Williams, 2023).

Facing depletion, Moscow shifted firepower architecture. S-300 surface-to-air missiles were redirected at ground targets, increasing miss distances, while Iranian-designed Shahed drones began to pad nightly salvos (Army Recognition, 2024). Guided-missile launches fell steadily while drone use soared, reaching an estimated total of four thousand deployed by the first quarter of 2025 (Atalan and Jensen, 2025). The identity of the high-tech precision striker gave way to the practicalities of magazine depth and industrial capacity.

Implications for Western Analysis

Western security discourse long treated accuracy as a twin proof of technical mastery and ethical restraint (Schmitt and Widmar, 2014; Wilson, 2020). Russia’s practice weakens both pillars. Norms endure through consistent observance and recognition; when a major power claims the vocabulary of precision while accepting wide error margins, the social meaning of accuracy erodes (Tannenwald, 2017).

The episode therefore offers a methodological caution. Counting missiles without attending to their symbolic weight risks analytical short-sightedness. The shift towards low-cost saturation munitions signals a recalibration of Russian strategic identity and alters the deterrence calculus of adversaries who must now defend against continuous drone attrition rather than episodic cruise-missile raids. Civilian resilience, alliance solidarity and arms-control expectations all pivot on how quickly that new reality is understood.

In Summary

Russia’s move from precision-guided missiles to mass bombardment is more than a supply-chain story. It marks the point where an identity built on technological finesse buckled under material constraint, transforming both the battlefield and the normative landscape around it. Analysts tracking future conflicts would do well to remember that weapons categories are not only hardware inventories but carriers of meaning, and that meaning can shift faster than production lines.

Bibliography

Army Recognition 2024. ‘Russia Repurposes S-300 Surface-to-Air Missiles for Ground Attacks Against Kharkiv’, 5 January.

Atalan, Y. and Jensen, B. 2025. Drone Saturation: Russia’s Shahed Campaign. CSIS Brief, 13 May.

Department of Defense 2022. ‘Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby Holds a Press Briefing’, 21 March.

Schmitt, M. and Widmar, E. 2014. ‘On Target: Precision and Balance in the Contemporary Law of Targeting’. Journal of National Security Law and Policy, 7(3).

Tannenwald, N. 2017. ‘How Strong Are the Nuclear Taboo and the Chemical Weapons Ban?’ The Washington Quarterly, 40(1), 79–98.

Williams, I. 2023. ‘Russia Isn’t Going to Run Out of Missiles’. CSIS Analysis, 28 June.

Wilson, N. 2020. ‘The Ambiguities of Precision Warfare’, Intimacies of Remote Warfare commentary, 12 June. 

UN Helmet on the ground

Reflection – The UN’s Legitimacy Gap: A Haiti Case Study

By

On May 18, 2025

In Strategy

Thomas Weiss identifies five “gaps” that chronically hamper global governance: knowledge, normative, policy, institutional and compliance (Weiss 2013).  In Haiti, those gaps seem to have coalesced into what many Haitians read as an enduring legitimacy deficit.  A more charitable interpretation does note instances of UN adaptation – better crime mapping after 2011, a dramatic scaling-up of the Haitian National Police (HNP), and a science-led cholera response – but, examined closely, such achievements tend to appear partial and fragile, leaving the larger breach largely intact.

Knowledge and compliance.  MINUSTAH’s 2004 start-up underestimated the dense, shifting alliances between gangs and political patrons.  When a contingent from Nepal inadvertently introduced cholera in 2010, infecting more than 800,000 people and claiming over 10,000 lives (Frerichs et al. 2012; Katz 2013), the Organisation spent six years contesting its own liability before an apology was issued (United Nations 2016).  Subsequent epidemiological work certainly curbed transmission, yet the delay itself suggested an accountability reflex still subordinate to reputational caution – an impression hard to reverse.

Normative conduct.  Sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers, including minors among the victims, seriously undercut the UN’s human-rights narrative.  The Associated Press counted more than 2,000 allegations between 2004 and 2016, with very few domestic prosecutions (Associated Press 2017).  Reforms adopted in 2017 – victim-centred assistance, mandatory pre-deployment training, a voluntary trust fund – mark welcome movement, and Haiti arguably catalysed those global norms.  Even so, the survivors’ experience of limited redress reinforces a perception that institutional learning operates at UN headquarters, not in the quartiers populaires where the harm occurred.

Policy and institutional adaptation.  Supporters of the UN strategy point to iterative mandates: from peace enforcement (MINUSTAH) to rule-of-law mentoring (MINUJUSTH) and, since 2019, a slim political office (BINUH), with a Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support force now in train (UN Security Council 2023).  Elections held in 2006, 2010 and 2016 proceeded on schedule with heavy UN logistical underwriting, and the HNP expanded from roughly 4,000 officers in 2004 to more than 15,000 by 2020 (Malone and Day 2020).  Yet the police have struggled to retain personnel and equipment since the draw-down, and gang territory has again expanded.  The pattern suggests that short, mandate-driven cycles may be ill-suited to a state so hollow that capacity must be nurtured for decades, not rotations.

Legitimacy in the balance.  Survey data gathered in Port-au-Prince in 2015 found only a minority favouring immediate UN withdrawal, indicating a degree of conditional acceptance; most respondents nonetheless judged the mission “only somewhat” effective (International Crisis Group 2016).  Such grudging tolerance implies utility rather than genuine confidence.  In other words, the Organisation remains necessary but is seldom trusted.

Taken together, Haiti illustrates how partial advances in knowledge production, normative reform, and institutional design, whilst real, have not yet outweighed the reputational cost of early missteps and uneven compliance.  Unless the UN sustains a far longer horizon of engagement – accepting that legitimacy is rebuilt in increments and measured locally – its blue helmet risks settling into an increasingly tarnished emblem: credible enough to be tolerated, rarely persuasive enough to inspire.

Bibliography

Associated Press. 2017. “UN Child Sex Ring Left Victims but No Arrests.” Associated Press investigative report, 12 April.

Frerichs, R. R., et al. 2012. “Nepalese Origin of Cholera Outbreak in Haiti.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109 (47): 19944–19949.

International Crisis Group. 2016. Haiti: Security and the Reinforcement of the Rule of Law. Latin America/Caribbean Report No. 62. Brussels: ICG.

Katz, Jonathan M. 2013. The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Malone, David M., and Adam Day. 2020. “Taking Measure of the UN’s Legacy at Seventy-Five.” Ethics & International Affairs 34 (3): 285–295.

United Nations. 2016. “Secretary-General’s Remarks to the General Assembly on a New Approach to Cholera in Haiti.” UN Doc. A/71/620, 1 December. New York: United Nations.

United Nations Security Council. 2023. Resolution 2699 (2023) on Haiti. UN Doc. S/RES/2699, 2 October.

Weiss, Thomas G. 2013. Global Governance: Why? What? Whither? Cambridge: Polity Press.

Cyber operators working at screens

From Theory to the Trenches: Introducing “Cyber Centres of Gravity”

By

On May 16, 2025

In Strategy

The nature of warfare is in constant flux. Clausewitz’s timeless insight that war is a “contest of wills” remains central, yet the means by which this contest is waged are transforming. Traditionally, Centres of Gravity (CoGs) were often seen as physical entities: armies, capitals, industrial capacity. The thinking was that neutralising these would cripple an adversary’s warfighting ability. However, it’s crucial to recognise, as scholars like Echevarria highlight, that Clausewitz himself acknowledged non-material CoGs, such as national will. The concept isn’t entirely new, but modern interpretations significantly expand upon it, especially in the context of cyberspace.

Today, the pervasive nature of information networks prompts us to consider what this means for strategic targeting. What happens when the critical vulnerabilities lie not just in the physical domain, but in an enemy’s belief systems, the legitimacy of their leadership, or their very grasp of shared reality? This is where exploring an emerging concept – what this article terms “Cyber Centres of Gravity” (Cyber CoGs) – becomes vital for contemporary military strategists. While “Cyber CoG” as a distinct term is still evolving and not yet firmly established in formal doctrine (which tends to use adjacent terms like cognitive targets or information influence objectives, as noted by analysts like Pawlak), its exploration helps us grapple with these new strategic challenges. Ignoring these intangible, yet increasingly critical, aspects in our information-saturated world could represent a significant strategic blind spot.

Understanding “Cyber CoGs”

So, what might a “Cyber CoG” entail? It can be conceptualised as a critical source of an adversary’s moral or political cohesion, their collective resolve, or a foundational element of their operative reality-construct that underpins their ability or will to resist your strategic objectives. The key idea is that significant degradation of such a “Cyber CoG,” predominantly through cyber-enabled means, could fundamentally unravel an enemy’s capacity or desire to continue a conflict, perhaps by altering their perception of the strategic landscape.

This isn’t merely about disrupting networks or servers, though such actions might play a role. A true “Cyber CoG,” in this conceptualisation, is intrinsically linked to these deeper wellsprings of an enemy’s will, cohesion, or their understanding of reality. If an operation doesn’t aim to decisively alter the strategic balance by impacting these moral, political, or epistemic foundations, it’s more likely an operational objective rather than an attack on a strategic “Cyber CoG”.

Clausewitz identified the CoG as “the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends”. In an age increasingly defined by information, this hub can often be found in the cognitive and informational realms. When societal “passion” can be manipulated through digital narratives, when a military’s operating environment is shaped by perception as much as by physical friction, and when governmental “reason” is threatened by the decay of a shared factual basis, cyberspace becomes an increasingly central domain in shaping strategic outcomes. While kinetic, economic, and geopolitical power still hold immense, often primary, sway in high-stakes confrontations (a point Gartzke’s work on the “Myth of Cyberwar” reminds us to consider), the cyber domain offers potent avenues to contest the very “reality” upon which an adversary’s will is constructed. Here, strategic success may rely less on physical destruction and more on the ability to influence or disrupt an adversary’s cognitive and narrative environments.

Identifying Potential “Cyber CoGs”: A Framework for Analysis

Pinpointing these potential “Cyber CoGs” requires a nuanced analytical approach, considering factors such as:

  1. Strategic Relevance: Does the potential target truly sustain the enemy’s will to fight or their core strategic calculus? This involves looking at national cohesion, public legitimacy, dominant narratives, key alliances, or shared assumptions underpinning their strategy. Its degradation should aim to undermine their strategic purpose or resolve.
  2. Cyber Primacy in Effect: Can cyber-enabled operations offer a uniquely effective, or significantly complementary, method for impacting this CoG, especially when compared or combined with kinetic, economic, or diplomatic levers? Some intangible CoGs may be less susceptible to physical attack but highly vulnerable to informational strategies.
  3. Potential for Decisive Influence: Is the intended effect of targeting the “Cyber CoG” likely to be decisive, whether through an irreversible loss of trust (e.g., in institutions or information), a critical breakdown in a foundational narrative, or a fundamental, lasting shift in the adversary’s perception of their strategic environment? It could also be a cumulative effect, eroding coherence and resolve over time.
  4. Linkage to Moral and Political Dimensions (Clausewitzian Character): Is the “Cyber CoG” intrinsically tied to the enemy’s unity, cohesion, will to resist, or the shared narratives defining their interests and threats? It’s not just a system or infrastructure but is linked to the collective spirit or governing principles.
  5. Strategic Viability and Responsibility: Can the proposed operation be conducted with a rigorous assessment of attribution risks, potential for unintended escalation, and broader second-order societal effects? This includes careful consideration of evolving international norms and legal frameworks.

Implications for Military Planners

Strategically engaging potential “Cyber CoGs” would necessitate evolving current approaches:

  • Integrated Intelligence: Identifying and understanding these “Cyber CoGs” demands a deep, multidisciplinary intelligence effort, fusing technical insights with profound cultural, political, cognitive, and narrative analysis. This requires collaboration between experts in fields like anthropology, sociology, political science, and data science to map the ‘human terrain’ and ‘narrative architecture’.
  • Dynamic and Adaptive Campaigning: Operations targeting “Cyber CoGs” are unlikely to be single events. Influencing moral cohesion or perceived reality is a complex, interactive process involving continuous adaptation to feedback loops, narrative shifts, and adversary countermeasures. The aim is often cognitive degradation or displacement, subtly altering the adversary’s decision-making calculus over time.
  • Strategic, Not Just Tactical, Focus: While drawing on tools from traditional information warfare or psychological operations, the concept of “Cyber CoGs” pushes for a more strategically ambitious focus on these Clausewitzian centers of power, wherever they may reside. When a CoG itself is located in the moral, political, or epistemic domains, cyber-enabled operations can become a key component of strategic engagement.

Navigating the Ethical and Legal Landscape

The capacity to strategically influence an adversary’s societal beliefs and perceived reality carries a profound ethical burden and operates within a complex legal landscape. Responsible statecraft demands a deliberate moral calculus, especially in the ambiguous “grey zone”. The Tallinn Manual 2.0, for instance, provides detailed interpretations of how international law applies to cyber operations, including complex issues around sovereignty, non-intervention, and due diligence. Operations that aim to alter perception or manipulate societal beliefs can brush up against these established and evolving legal interpretations. Pursuing strategic goals through such means requires careful navigation to avoid widespread societal disruption or unintended consequences that could undermine international order. There is also the risk of “blow-back,” where the methods used externally could erode internal democratic norms if not carefully managed.

Integrating New Concepts into Strategic Thinking

The future of conflict is undeniably intertwined with the contested terrains of perception, belief, and societal cohesion. Exploring concepts like “Cyber Centres of Gravity” can help us theorise and analyse these critical nodes of will, unity, and perceived reality. This endeavor is less about new technologies and more about refining our understanding of strategy itself: to influence an adversary’s will or alter their perceived reality to achieve strategic aims, through means that are proportionate, precise, and adapted to the evolving character of modern conflict.

Failing to adapt our thinking, to build the necessary multidisciplinary approaches, and to foster the institutional agility to operate in this transformed strategic landscape is a risk to our future strategic effectiveness.

Selected Bibliography

  • Brittain-Hale, Angela. “Clausewitzian Theory of War in the Age of Cognitive Warfare.” The Defense Horizon Journal (2023): 1–19.
  • Clausewitz, Carl von. On War. Edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976.
  • Echevarria, A. J. (2002). “Clausewitz’s Center of Gravity: Changing Our Warfighting Doctrine—Again!” Strategic Studies Institute.
  • Gartzke, E. (2013). “The Myth of Cyberwar: Bringing War in Cyberspace Back Down to Earth.” International Security, 38(2), 41–73.
  • Krieg, Andreas. Subversion: The Strategic Weaponization of Narratives. London: Routledge, 2023.
  • Lin, Herbert, and Jackie Kerr. “On Cyber-Enabled Information/Influence Warfare and Manipulation.” Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, 2017.
  • Pawlak, P. (2022). “Cognitive Warfare: Between Psychological Operations and Narrative Control.” EUISS Brief.
  • Schmitt, M. N. (Ed.). (2017). Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations. Cambridge University Press.

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