Category: Strategy

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Thinking about life in a nuclear armed crowd.

The title of this post comes from Albert Wohlstetter’s 1976 seminal essay Moving Towards Life in a Nuclear Armed Crowd. In that essay he contemplated a world in which several nations had nuclear weapons, and also the strategic logics governing their proliferation, deployment and use (mainly as a deterrent). For years after his essay was published, the number of nuclear-armed states remained low. Today they include the US, UK, France, PRC, Russia, India and Pakistan, with Israel as an unacknowledged member of the club and Iran and North Korea as rogue aspirants. At one time late in the Cold War, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa had nuclear weapons programs but abandoned them as part of the their transitions to democracy. By and large the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has kept the acquisition of nuclear weapons in check, something that along with various arms control agreements between the US and USSR/Russia (SALT I and II, START, the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF)), helped stabilise a low number nuclear weapons state status quo for five decades.

But that may be about to change. Not only have nuclear powers like the PRC, India and Pakistan opted to not be bound by international arms control agreements and others like Israel, Iran, India, Pakistan and DPRK have ignored the NPT. All of the major bilateral treaties between the US and Russia governing strategic and tactical nuclear weapons have been allowed to lapse. The non-proliferation regime now mostly exists on paper and is self-enforcing in any event. There are no genuine compliance mechanisms outside of voluntary compliance by States themselves, and in the current moment nuclear armed states do not wish to comply

The situation has been made considerably worse by the re-election of Donald Trump to the US presidency. Although he speaks of securing some sort of “deal” with Iran that freezes its nuclear weapons development programs, his threats of withdrawing from NATO, including withdrawal of security guarantees under the collective security provisions of Article 5 of the NATO Charter, coupled with his pivot towards Russia in its conflict with Ukraine, has forced some countries to reconsider their approach towards nuclear weapons. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told his parliament this week that Poland “must reach for the most modern possibilities, also related to nuclear weapons and modern unconventional weapons” because of the threat of Russian aggression and unreliability of the US as a security partner under such circumstances. Similarly, French President Emmanuel Macron has floated the idea of extending a French “nuclear umbrella” over Europe (read: NATO and the EU) should the US renege on its Article 5 obligations.

The perception that the US is no longer a reliable security partner, at least under the Trump administration, must be considered by front-line states such as South Korea and Taiwan, perhaps even Japan and Germany, that are threatened by nuclear armed rivals and which until now were heavily dependent on the US nuclear deterrent for defending against aggression from those rivals. The situation is made worse because Trump is now using extortion (he calls it “leverage”) as part of his approach to security partners. His demands that Ukraine sign over strategic mineral rights to the US and that Panama return control of the Panama Canal to the US under threat of re-occupation are part of a pattern in which US security guarantees are contingent on what the US can materially get in exchange for them. Even then, Trump is notoriously unethical and prone to lying and changing his mind, so what US guarantees may be offered may be rescinded down the road.

Trump wants US security partners to spend 2 to 5 percent of GDP on defence and threatens to not honour US agreements with them if they do not. Although this may well force some NATO members and others to up their spending on defence (as Australia, Poland and South Korea already do), the one-size-fits-all percentage of GDP demand fails to recognise the circumstances of small and medium democracies such as NZ, Portugal and Holland, among others. Trump may call it driving a hard bargain, others may say that his approach is “transactional,” but in truth he is extorting US allies on the security front in order to gain concessions in other areas. And for “whatever” reason, he admires Putin and deeply dislikes Ukrainian president Zelensky as well as Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau, something reflected in his approach to bilateral issues and the way he talks about them. The personal is very much political with Trump, and he is an impulsive bully when he believes that it suits him to be.

The US pivot towards Russia under Trump has been much discussed in terms of its implications for the world order, strategic balancing among Great Powers and the future of the US-centric alliance systems in Europe and Asia. It truly is a major transitional moment of friction in world affairs. But the issue of nuclear proliferation as a response to the changed US stance has gone relatively unnoticed. Remember, these are not the moves of rogue states that are hostile to the old liberal international order. These are and may well continue to be the responses of democratic and/or Western aligned states that were integral members of that old order, who now feel abandoned and vulnerable to the aggression of authoritarian Great Powers like Russia and the PRC.

In the absence of the US nuclear guarantee and in the security vacuum created by its strategic pivot, indigenous development and deployment of nuclear weapons becomes a distinct possibility for a number of states that used to have the US nuclear guarantee but now are unsure if that is still true, and have the technological capabilities to do so. The global spread of high technologies makes the pursuit of nuclear weapons easier than in previous eras, and if time, money and willpower are devoted to doing so, nuclear proliferation will inevitably happen. Remember that nuclear weapons are primarily deterrent weapons. They are designed to deter attacks or retaliate once attacked, but not to strike first (unless destruction of the targeted society is the objective and retaliation in kind is discounted). They are the ultimate hedge against aggression, and now some non-nuclear states are reconsidering their options in that regard because the US cannot be trusted to come to their defence.

Russia has repeatedly raised the spectre of using tactical nuclear weapons in Europe should it feel cornered, but even the Kremlin understands that this is more an intimidation bluff aimed at comfortable Western populations rather than a serious strategic gambit. But that only obtains if the US still honors its nuclear defense commitments under NATO Article 5, and if it no longer does, then the Europeans and other US allies need to reassess their nuclear options because Russian threats must, in that light, be considered sincere.

Even so, first use of nuclear weapons, specially against a non-nuclear state, remains as the ultimate red line. But that line has been blurred by Trump’s equivocation. Nuclear hedging has now become a realistic option not just for front-line democratic states facing authoritarian aggression, but with regards to the US itself because it is a no longer a reliable democratic ally but is instead a country dominated by an increasingly authoritarian policy mindset at home and in its relations further abroad. Ironically, the “madman with a nuke” thesis that served as the core of deterrence theory in the past and which continues to serve as the basis for resistance to Iran and North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs can now be applied to the US itself.

There are two ways to look at the situation. On the one hand the chances of nuclear proliferation have increased thanks to Trump’s foreign policy, especially with regards to US international commitments and alliance obligations. On the other hand, deterrence theory is in for an overhaul in light of the push to proliferate. This might re-invigorate notions of flexible response and moves to provide stop gaps in the escalatory chain from battlefield to strategic war. Notions of nuclear deterrence that were crafted in the Cold War and which did not change with the move from a bi-polar to a unipolar to a multi-polar international system must now be adapted to the realities of a looser configuration–some call them metroplexes or constellations–in which the spread of advanced technologies makes the possibility of indigenous development of nuclear deterrence capabilities more feasible than in the old security umbrella arrangements of previous decades.

The irony is that it is the US pivot towards Russia that has popped the cork on the nuclear proliferation bottle. States like Iran and the DPRK have been subject to sanctions regimes that have slowed the development of their nuclear arsenals. But that happened against the backdrop of the US providing binding security guarantees to its allies, offering a credible nuclear deterrent to those who would seek to do harm against them and giving material support to the NPT. That is not longer true. It is the US that now must be viewed with suspicion, if not fear. The briefcase with nuclear codes is within a few arm’s lengths wherever Trump goes and he is now staffing the highest ranks of the US military-security complex with personal loyalists and sycophants rather than seasoned, politically neutral, level headed professionals with experience in the practice of strategic gamesmanship, including nuclear deterrence and war planning. Under those circumstances it would be derelict for military and political leaders in erstwhile US allied states to not hedge their bets by considering acquiring nuclear weapons of their own.

This was not what Wohlstetter envisioned when he wrote his essay. But after a period where that nuclear armed crowd appeared to stabilise and even shrink, some of his insights have become relevant again. It may no longer be about MAD (mutual assured destruction), but it sure is SAD.

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Media Link: “A View from Afar” on the lame duck window of opportunity.

In the last episode of this year Selwyn Manning and I discuss the rebel assault on Aleppo in Syria and tit-for-tat missile exchanges between Russia and Ukraine as illustrative of foreign actor attempts to gain geopolitical leverage as part of hedging strategies undertaken before Trump assumes office on January 2025. We had good audience participation and discussion, which you can find here.

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Media Link: AVFA on Israel going rogue.

In this episode of the “A view from Afar” podcast Selwyn Manning and I discuss Israel’s expansion of its war in Lebanon as part of a “six front” strategy that it thinks it can win, focusing on the decision-making process and strategic logic at play that led to the most recent turn of events. Plus some game theory references just to place things in proper context.

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Media Link: ” A View from Afar” on multidimensional hybrid warfare and the ineffectiveness of multilateral institutions.

This week’s “A View from Afar” podcast addresses the issue of multidimensional hybrid warfare using the Israeli pager attacks in Lebanon as a starting point before moving on to discuss the failures of multilateral institutions, the UN in particular, when it comes to handling war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is a sad state of affairs.

The Murky World of Israel’s Booby-Trapped Pagers and Walkie-Talkies

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Security Politics in Peripheral Democracies: Excerpt Two.

A question of size.

Small size generally means large vulnerability. The perception of threat is broader and often more immediate for small countries. The feeling of comparative weakness, of exposure to risk, and of potential intimidation by larger powers often permeates the security perspectives of small states. Some even exhibit “garrison state” approaches to national security, including adoption of policies of preemption. Israel is the salient case of recent times, but in this sample Chile has a history of garrison state outlooks due to its narrow land mass and extensive land and sea borders (leading to a lack of strategic “depth”). Irrespective of the specific response, such concerns about relative weakness and vulnerability translate into a pressing need to accurately read evolving threat scenarios, changing geopolitical contexts and strategic circumstances. 

This is true regardless of physical location. As World War Two demonstrated, advances in military technology allow for global force projection by large military powers, something that even island states like New Zealand have experienced first hand. Thus, regardless of the lengths to which they are compelled to go in order to defend themselves, small countries often believe that they must be more vigilant than large countries against a variety of potential threats both near and afar. For example, domestic instability in Indonesia, the Solomon Islands or Papua New Guinea may hold relatively little concern to the United States, China or Russia beyond a potentially adverse impact on economic interests and the possibility of local proxies dragging them into direct conflict. The growing Chinese submarine presence shadowing its blue water fishing fleet in the South Pacific is of relatively low concern to European and African powers. But for New Zealand, instability in the Melanesian archipelago and Southwest Pacific or militarisation of the Antarctic constitute more immediate threats. That can either be by drawing New Zealand into direct military intervention, or from ethnic conflicts in the Solomons or New Guinea spilling over onto other island states in the Western Pacific and/or expatriate communities located throughout the region. For its part, the Chinese naval presence in the Southwest Pacific is seen as an emerging threat to important sea lanes of communication between East/Southeast Asia and the Antipodes. This has become a major concern for New Zealand as well as its larger security partners.

For its part, Chile has more to be concerned about Peruvian maritime territorial ambitions (and vice versa) than Brazil does with Peruvian land encroachment, while Portugal has more to fear from unchecked North African mass migration and the potential for backlash produced by its involvement in NATO deployments than does a similarly sized country like Austria. On the other hand many small nations do not exhibit undue preoccupation with external threats, either because they are seen to not exist, or more often, precisely because they are included in security alliances such as NATO. But that is exactly why they join: if they felt secure they would not feel the need to align with such umbrella organizations, or to seek the bi-lateral protection of larger defense patrons. To the contrary, the starting point for most small states is a quest for security that they find impossible to achieve on their own.  How they do so is secondary to the imperative that they do so. 

The issue, again, is a matter of size. Beyond the elements of discipline, motivation and will, a nation’s ability to defend itself, much less wage war, is determined by the size of its resource base. Size is physical, economic and human. Advantages in size translate into military strength, be it via economies of scale (production of basic military base materials such as iron and oil), population (ability to muster troops), or geography (that is, the concept of strategic depth (land mass and terrain under arms), the larger of which makes for difficult conquest by external aggressors (unless they adopt piecemeal warfare approaches such as those being employed by Russia in the Ukraine, which are susceptible to marshalling-of-force defensive strategies). Needless to say, the ability to translate resource advantages into war-fighting capability passes through a raft of other intervening variables such as political legitimacy, ideological motivation, technological sophistication and the like. But all things being equal, size confers military advantage. For those lacking in human and natural resource bases, sources of comparative advantage, or economies of scale and population numbers upon which to draw on, policies of complete self-defense are impossible. For them, neutrality, subordination or alliance are the strategic options. 

To be sure, the value of well-trained citizen militias like those of Switzerland in deterring aggressors by raising the costs of invasion cannot be discounted. When strategically organized into a prolonged armed resistance employing guerrilla (irregular, non-conventional) tactics, small states may even stand a respectable chance of prevailing in an asymmetric war of attrition against larger adversaries whose vital interests are not at stake and who choose not to wage wars of annihilation. Vietnam is a case in point, and Cuban defense strategy is premised on such a scenario (although the origins of the Stalinist regimes in both countries brought with it the help of larger military patrons, which, if lessened now, guaranteed their initial survival and consolidation). But for most small countries, foreign military assistance and mutual defense agreements are the most sought after key to national security.This makes small states, and their military planners, especially conscious of changes in the geostrategic environments in which they operate. 

Dependent as they are on their connections with larger powers, on the specific nature of these relations, on their internal political dynamics and on the ongoing relations between the larger powers themselves, security practitioners in small democracies must be able to respond quickly to changing geopolitical events and shifting strategic doctrines. This may not always be in accordance with the perspectives of civilian political elites or the public at large, who do not necessarily perceive security issues in a manner akin to those directly responsible for national defense. In fact, quite the contrary often occurs.

Absent dire, immediate and compelling threats to national sovereignty or physical integrity, the public in many small democracies see spending on external defense as a luxury that comes at the expense of other core areas of state endeavour such as health, education and welfare. The public perception often is that being small and insignificant on the world strategic stage means that these countries do not attract the unwanted attention of larger states, and when they do attract such attention, they can rely on others for protection.  Conversely, political and military elites in small democracies are more cognizent of the fact that it is the commitment of military forces to external security roles, be they multilateral or bilateral in nature, along with or beyond cultural-diplomatic or economic and trade ties, that secure them the protection of larger patrons.

Because of this difference in perspective, spending on external defense often translates into a losing election proposition for democratic governments in small countries. This is due to the fact that domestic policy areas (including domestic anti-crime efforts) are more vital than military security when it comes to the reproduction of the contingent mass consent that is the foundational stone of democratic regimes. In any political system based upon competitive elections and contingent mass consent, foreign military commitments are particularly susceptible to the vagaries of public opinion, especially in times of peace. In small democracies the issue is particularly acute given the limited resource base available, which means that military involvement in foreign theaters requires universally compelling rationales that transcend patriotic impulses exploitable–one way or the other–during electoral cycles. In most cases the comfort of a larger security umbrella is the preferred option, with unilateral external force projection being the exception to the norm. 

The was evident in Portugal in the 1980s and 1990s, where the slow process of post-authoritarian military reform towards new external missions was not so much due to ingrained corporate attitudes and bureaucratic entrenchment within the armed forces that favored continuation of internal security roles. Rather, it was more a product of two internal factors: inter-service rivalries over the strategic orientation to be adopted, and competing government priorities. The latter were driven by public concerns with domestic issues rather than military projection in the absence of immediate threats, especially given the “insurance policy” provided by Portuguese membership in NATO. (Vasconcelos, 1986; 1988). The former were driven by conflicts within the armed forces about which service branch should be given leadership priority and corresponding resources given the new strategic posture. The Army? The Navy? The Air Force? How should they be organised and how much should each be funded? That was at the core of the inter-service disagreements over future force composition and projection.

But are small democracies any more vulnerable or their concerns with military preparedness and projection any different than those of other small countries with non-democratic forms of rule?  The answer is yes, and the issue is one of internal politics rather than external threat realities. Small authoritarian regimes may at times divert scarce societal resources to external defense operations because domestic mass consent is not sought or put to legitimate tests of accountability. What this means is that unlike small democracies, which must make the case for external military involvement in a way that passes successfully through the filter of popular consent, small authoritarian regimes simply do not have to do so. The colonial defense strategies of authoritarian Portugal are emblematic in this regard, and Chile’s territorial sabre rattling against Argentina and Peru under the Pinochet dictatorship was a manipulation of rather than a response to genuine threats or nationalistic sentiment on the part of the Chilean population. The fore-mentioned cases of Cuba and Vietnam, however “popular” they claim to be, are further examples of small authoritarian regimes unconstrained by the filter of freely given consent. Moreover, under all authoritarian regimes, big or small, the military-security apparatuses are primarily used for internal control, with the difference between inclusionary and exclusionary dictatorships being read by their management of political opposition, ideological mobilization capabilities, control of productive investment and labor market conditioners. In all cases, public expenditures on security in small authoritarian regimes far outstrip those seen under small democratic regimes, and their capabilities of control of the domestic population often exceed even those of larger authoritarian brethren (e.g. Singapore versus Myanmar).

NEXT: The notion of geopolitical periphery.

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Security Politics in Peripheral Democracies: Excerpt One.

This project analyzes security politics in three peripheral democracies (Chile, New Zealand, Portugal) during the 30 years after the end of the Cold War. It argues that changes in the geopolitical landscape and geo-strategic context are interpreted differently by small democracies with peripheral involvement in the major international security decisions of modern times, different geopolitical perspectives, foreign relations networks and dissimilar histories of civil-military relations (post-authoritarian versus post-colonial in this sample). These democracies react to but do not initiate changes in the strategic environment in which they operate. The specific combination of internal and external factors involved in security policy-making  translates into different strategic perspectives, institutional features and policy outcomes that combine the traditional interest in preservation of the nation-state with an understanding of the diplomatic as well as military and intelligence necessities of variegated partnerships in a fluid international environment in which the threat of traditional inter-state conflict shares space with asymmetric warfare involving state and non-state actors. 

The issue of how small states, and small democracies in particular, react to changes in the international security environment is especially salient during periods of global change such as the period following the end of the Cold War. During that time international security affairs suffered two appreciable modifications that required major adjustments on the part of a wide variety of actors, especially militarily and economically vulnerable countries such as those studied here. 

These milestones were the end of the Cold War and its attendant bi-polar security alliance structure at the beginning of the 1990s, the subsequent emergence of a unipolar international system in which the United States served as the world “hegemon” and systems regulator by acting as a global police force that intervened in a number of low intensity conflicts that were not existential in nature (to the US and its major allies), but which promoted regional instability that undermined the international system as a whole. 

This was manifest in the spread of Islamicist-inspired insurgencies in response to Western secular expansion after the decline of the Stalinist bloc. The latter saw its definitive pronouncement on September 11, 2001, which forced another turn of the international security “screw.” That was marked by the advent of global unconventional warfare in concert with ongoing conventional operations and increased preoccupation about the use of weapons of mass destruction by non-state as well as state actors. Notions of cooperative security, which had replaced collective security doctrines as the dominant Western security paradigm in the 1990s, gave way to global asymmetric warfare involving collective security partners. Multinational counter-insurgency operations in parallel with peace-keeping and nation-building (as operations other than war) became the dominant form of conflict until the mid 2010s, 

At the same time, while the US and various coalition partners expended blood and treasure fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, Northern Africa, Syria, the Sahel and East Africa (and beyond), other powers directed resources into economic and military development unimpeded by the costs of those “small wars.” India, Russia and the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) poured resources into building the foundations for their rise to Great Power status (India and the PRC as emergent powers and Russia as a re-emergent former Superpower). From 2001 to the present the international system began a process of transition, as of yet incomplete, to a multipolar order in which the US is now just one of several Great Powers competing for influence using “hard” as well as “soft” (and “smart” and “sharp”) power in order to achieve strategic objectives. 

The move to multipolarity was accelerated in the 2010s by the end of many of the low intensity conflicts that preoccupied Western military leaders in the early 2000s. The US and its coalition partners withdrew from Afghanistan and Iraq and downsized their presence in other areas in which jihadism was present. The territorial defeat of the Islamic State (aka ISIS or Daesh) in Northern Iraq and Syria reduced armed disputes involving jihadists to localized encounters. Syria remains stalemated between the Russian-backed Assad regime, US-backed anti-Assad forces and ISIS remnants while post-Gaddafi Libya is rendered by sectarian violence unimpeded but armed by outside forces. The Taliban have regained control of Afghanistan. Shiite and Sunni militias vie with the post-occupation Iraqi defense forces for dominance. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, with the war ongoing, while Israel responded to the October 2023 Hamas attacks that killed 1300 people and in which 150 were taken hostage by engaging in asymmetrical collective punishment against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank that has resulted in over 40,000 deaths, mostly civilian non-combatants. The PRC has expanded its reach deep into the South China Sea, provoking clashes with its littoral neighbors, while at the same time pushing its land claims against countries on its western borders. The Sahel region has seen a rise of indigenous militant groups opposing local authorities and their Western partners (such as the Tuareg in Mali). Via proxies and directly, Iran has conducted attacks on Israeli and Western interests, and the Kim regime in North Korea continues to rattle its nuclear sword. In effect, by the end of the 2010s, the global “War on Terror” was effectively over but conflicts and wars, both conventional and unconventional, remained as a systemic constant.

In both East and West but more importantly, in the global North and South, the strategic gaze has returned to a “Big War” focus involving peer militaries in the emerging multipolar system. The PRC’s aggressive military diplomacy in the South China Sea, marked by island-building projects in disputed waters that defy international norms regarding territorial sovereignty and maritime laws, coupled with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, represent the two most obvious signposts that a return to “Big Wars” is now on the minds of strategic planners world-wide. The way in which peripheral democracies responded to these events and others therefore offers insight into the broader issues at play in the realm of comparative security politics in the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries. 

So why choose Chile, New Zealand and Portugal as case studies? The justification for their selection is made by the internal differences that underlie their geo-strategic commonality. All are small in population size and geographically distant from the major centers of international conflict and security decision-making. All are countries of the “West,” albeit of different ethnic and cultural traditions and democratic capitalist maturity. All have recent histories of UN-mandated peace keeping, and all have minor involvement in the larger conflicts of the early twenty-first century. Military forces from all of these countries are currently deployed overseas as part of UN-mandated multinational security commitments. All have seen their military politics transformed, to one degree or another, by the strategic-doctrinal and geopolitical shifts that followed the end of the Cold War. Yet, varying in length of democratic experience, institutional stability and levels of economic development, each has a very distinct set of civil-military relations, military institutional culture and strategic perspective that impact on their specific response to the changing global security context after 1990. It is the effects of these changes on national security politics across three geographic regions that are of concern here.

Why go “small, democratic and peripheral” when studying comparative security politics? The world strategic environment is dominated by large countries with substantial military resources and the nature of contemporary conflicts has taken on increasingly complex characteristics, so it appears counter-intuitive, if not inconsequential, to study countries that have no major impact on the strategic matters of the day. However, there is good justification to do so, because small democratic nations serve as weather vanes of larger global trends and the repercussive effects that they generate. It is equally clear is that there are few studies that systematically compare, on a cross-regional basis, the military politics of small, peripheral democracies. There are virtually none that do so with a specific focus on the way the post-Cold War move to unipolarity, subsequent rise of the War on Terror, followed by the shift to multipolarity and return of Big War strategising between peer competitors has influenced the evolution of military-security dynamics in them.

NEXT: A question of size.

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Excerpting “Security Politics in Peripheral Democracies.”

In the late 2000s-early 2010s I was researching and writing a book titled “Security Politics in Peripheral Democracies: Chile, New Zealand and Portugal.” The book was a cross-regional Small-N qualitative comparison of the security strategies and postures of three small democracies on the global geopolitical periphery, both physically and in terms of their involvement in the major strategic decisions of modern times. I set the time frame for the study as the period 1990-2020 because it covered the end of the Cold War as a starting point and included 9/11, the so-called War on Terror and the transition from bipolarity to unipolarity to multipolarity in the International system (the latter which remains ongoing). Its original endpoint will require some extension to account for developments since 2020, but the conceptual apparatus and analytic framework underpinning the study remains valid as a methodological approach (more on this later).

As some readers may know, I departed NZ academia in 2007 and after spending three years at the National University of Singapore I returned to NZ to follow my wife (who took an academic job in her homeland) and to help raise a family. I resurrected and rebranded a consultancy that I had started in the US prior to my arrival in NZ and left academia for good. That was a bittersweet decision to make, since I enjoyed teaching and research, but I am told and have seen that the academic Taylorism and market-driven managerialism that I butted heads with in the 2000s has gotten much worse since my departure from the academe.

Unfortunately, without the institutional support of a university and needing to monetarize my knowledge and experience via the consultancy in order to help pay the bills, I had to abandon the book project. I already had 13,000 words written by way of an introduction outlining the rationale behind and methodological approach to the project, but needed follow up research funds to undertake field research in the countries being studied. That was impossible given my new “business” orientation, plus I had already been turned down for a Marsden Research Grant while still at the NZ university where I used to work (it turns out the Marsden Fund award committee at that time was uninterested in security topics, much less a cross-national comparative study in which NZ was just one case study rather than the focus of attention). In fact, even such basic things as not being able to access a university library greatly impended my ability to do the secondary research required for the book to be comprehensive and thorough in its analysis. If one thinks of the cost of buying specialised books and subscriptions to professional journals and other pertinent material (for example, a single individual subscription to one political science journal can cost US$400/year), then it should be clear that writing academic books involving in-depth research in a social science discipline requires institutional support that I no longer had. Confronted by that reality, I shelved the project even as I thought of resurrecting it later or at least eventually writing an academic article that summarised my findings.

Ten years or so later, I have started to look at what I wrote and decided that I am going to except the introduction here at KP in order to share the conceptual premises and analytic framework used in it. I am hoping that some readers will find the argument of interest and if so inclined, offer critiques, comments and suggestions. I am not sure that the book will ever come to fruition but perhaps I can get that academic article out or simply publish it on the consultancy website even if it is more of a think piece than a targeted assessment of a matter relevant to paying client interests. Most importantly, it gives me a reason to re-visit the original argument and make updates as part of the review and revision process.

The excerpts will begin to appear in the next post. I shall try to keep them relatively short but true to the original book narrative.

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Media Link: “A View from Afar” on deterrence versus de-escalation.

In this week’s “A View from Afar” podcast Selwyn Manning and I return to the airwaves to discuss whether deterrence is still a useful concept in international relations and, if so, whether it applies equally to all states. We also consider whether deterrence contributes to international security dilemmas and whether it is antithetical to de-escalation. You can find the show here.

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Voting as a multi-order process of choice.

Recent elections around the world got me to thinking about voting. At a broad level, voting involves processes and choices. Embedded in both are the logics that go into “sincere” versus “tactical” voting. “Sincere” voting is usually a matter of preferred choice, specifically of a candidate or outcome. Simply put, a person votes for their preferred option. But what about “lesser evil” or “second best” choices? Are they “sincere”? Rather than a matter of genuine sincerity of choice, the general demarcation separating “sincere” voting from “tactical” voting is not so much the motive for choice or the specific choices involved but the all or nothing of the process–it is the final selection point before an elected entity or outcome is confirmed. In other words, sincere choices are end choices, regardless of the logics by which they are made.

This allows us to distinguish between elections as a process versus elections as choices between options. Until the last vote is counted in the final round of voting, everything is tactical even if choices for individuals are sincere in the moment.

Under Mixed Member Proportionate (MMP) electoral systems like that in NZ voters do tactical voting all of the time. They consider the relationship between party and candidate votes and choose accordingly. Sometimes voters go with a straight party-candidate vote but other times they split votes between party and candidates. That depends on how they view specific party chances in inter-party competition, the electorate candidate in relation to their party, that candidate in relation to the electorate voting history (does she stand a chance?), and the merits of other candidates in a given electorate. Much of this assessment is done unconsciously in the moment of choice but in any event the voter’s calculation is multi-level and relative in nature.

A vote is tactical when we vote for a candidate or party or coalition or ballot option with the shadow of the future in mind, as far as we can foresee it. We may do so for defensive as well as win-seeking reasons, like what happened in France this past week, where the Left removed competing candidates in a number of electorates in order to improve the chances of designated “unity” candidates defeating rightwing opponents in the second round of parliamentary elections. That was done in order to help defeat the serious possibility of a rightwing victory in the second round parliamentary elections after the first round saw the Right win a significant plurality of the vote. The tactic of limiting inter-Left competition was defensive in nature rather than a “go for the win” effort because all involved understood the costs of allowing a rightwing victory and put their immediate preferences (and differences) aside in order to confront the common threat.

When it comes to tactical voting people may also vote for lesser evils rather than preferred options because the context in which voting occurs may advise them to do so. Voters may simply have to choose between otherwise distasteful candidates or options. In multiple round voting it is the process as much as the immediate outcomes that motivate voters in the first instance, as they are seeking to do something now in order to set up a better sincere choice option in the future. Think of the US primary system, where party candidates are selected not just for their merits but also with an eye towards their “electability” in the general elections. A candidate with lesser ideological purity or Party credentials may win in the selection round because primary voters feel that s/he is more likely to be elected in a general election where sincere choices are made.

On the other side of the coin, as a campaign strategy, what Labour recently did in the UK when it flooded electorates with candidates, even in Tory strongholds where it traditionally had zero chance of competing, was a “throw it at the wall and see what sticks” first-order approach. Labour put up slates of candidates who in many cases have little to no experience in politics and who were in a number of instances sent as electoral cannon fodder into historically secure Conservative electorates. Labour strategists banked on the belief that public disgruntlement with the Conservatives would spill over into Labour winning at least some traditionally Tory seats, and in that they were successful. But this was just the first order outcome. The second order outcome is how these candidates-turned-MPs will perform given their lack of experience. Some will do well but if enough turn out to be incompetent or worse, then Labour runs the risk of incurring a voter backlash against it in just one electoral cycle. That is the second-order problem of the “throw at the wall” candidate selection tactic: good for the short-run, but a bit uncertain over the longer term.

For his part, French President Macron has ruled out working with the largest of the Left parties (“France Unbowed”) in the coalition that came first in the second round of the French parliamentary elections thanks to the defensive unity candidate first order manoeuvres, so is now trying to carve away smaller Left parties from the Left coalition so they can form a majority coalition with his Centrists. He apparently has promised the Prime Minister’s job to a Left candidate if they agree to his terms (in France the president selects the PM). But if he cannot do this, then France will be in political gridlock through and beyond the Olympics. So his first order tactical gambit of calling snap elections and forming a defensive alliance against the Rightists worked, but now the second order consequences embedded in the process must be confronted and resolved less the otherwise unwelcome triumph of the Right become reality.

In Iran the reformist Pezeshkian won the run-off election against a conservative hard-liner. The latter could be seen as a “continuist” following the approach of his dead predecessor (recently killed in a helicopter crash), whereas Pezeshkian seeks a thaw in Iran’s foreign relations with the West and a relaxation of restrictions on social freedoms at home. But since the Council of Elders and the Ayatollah Khamenei are the real power brokers in Iran, perhaps they allowed Pezeshkian to run (they did not allow any other reformist to do so) in order to gauge public sentiment and/or use the elections as an escape value that eases social pressures on the regime by allowing the electorate to institutionally vent its views. Think of it as an Iranian political pressure cooker, with the electorate permitted to let off pent-up steam during the election process.

The first round of that vote only brought 40 percent of the electorate to the polls, but the second round brought in 53 percent. Beyond the narrowing of the field of candidates in the second round, the turnout and strong majority vote for Pezeshkian demonstrates the apparent need for some reform-mongering when it comes to policy making. This is a strong signal that the Elders must consider if they are to keep a lid on things. They have been sent a message about what the public wants in public policy, especially (judging from field reports) about social mores and behaviours. But what about the hard-liners? They have the guns, are not going away and are ill-disposed towards Pezeshkian’s proposals.. So the second order question is to reform monger or not and if so, how much is too much? Again, it is a process, and the choice of Pezeshkian is a first-order means towards a perhaps necessary but uncertain end.

In the US the Biden question is not only should he stay or should he go, but also how and when? Sooner or later? At the convention or before? Does he designate an heir if he goes (presumably Vice President Harris) or does he throw it open to a short-list of previously vetted candidates? The James Carville opinion piece in the New York Times was an interesting proposition, with its geographically organized Town Halls acting as an extended job interview process for designated candidates. And the George Clooney op-ed in the same newspaper pretty much spells out why Biden has moved from being an asset to a liability for the Democrats. Here too there is a process as well as the individual to consider, something that must converge into an electable platform that can defeat Trump. So the first order choice is about Biden staying or going, the second order choice is about when and how to replace him and the third order choice is about the agenda and team needed to defeat Trump. With those three parts of the process resolved, a sincere choice can be presented to the electorate in November.

This is about more than Joe Biden. In a democracy people serve their party in the first instance, the party serves the country in the second instance and the country serves the nation in the last instance (“country” being a political entity with territorial boundaries codified in the notion of “State” and “nation” being a political society or culture legally represented by a country). For the Democrats the issue is not just about choice of a presidential candidate in light of Biden’s perceived limitations (age, fragility, cognitive decline), but about the institutional process by which their candidate choice is made. The process is time-sensitive given the upcoming Election date, so the choices must be soon and facilitated by the institutional process. It remains to be seen if Biden and other Democrats fully understand the difference between his fortunes and those of the party–and the country itself, but if they do, then the process of candidate selection is as important as the candidates themselves.

Again, I am no voting behaviour expert (too much bean-counting and tea leaf-reading for me), so please take this very incomplete and shallow sketch as a a preliminary rumination about choice and process in voting. I will leave for another day discussion of certain hard realities about voting in practice–things like voter suppression, gerrymandering, redistricting, incumbent advantage, campaign finance laws and loopholes, polling, etc.–as well as the use of game theoretic and AI models as predictive tools in voting analysis. That is best left to those who focus on such things. But having said that I do think that recent elections offer an opportunity to ponder the process as well as the choices that democratic elections involve. Hence this note.

Author’s Postscript: This essay serves as the basis of my remarks for the “A View from Afar” podcast of July 14, 2024.

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Media Link: “A View from Afar” on the moment of friction, and more.

After a hiatus of over four months Selwyn Manning and I finally got it together to re-start the “A View from Afar” podcast series. We shall see how we go but aim to do 2 episodes per month if possible.

Here we start of with a catch up on events since the last podcast of 2023. Selwyn liked the KP moment of friction post from April 1, and so we used it as the stepping stone into a discussion that incorporates material from several recent KP posts and other news. I hope that you find the podcast of interest. You can find it here.