Collections: How the Weak Can Win – A Primer on Protracted War

Thanks to our volunteer narrator, this post is now available in audio format. This week, in an effort to fill in some of the theoretical basis for thinking about how weaker powers think about fighting against or defending themselves from stronger powers, I'm going to give you all a basic 101-level survey of the theory … Continue reading Collections: How the Weak Can Win – A Primer on Protracted War →

Miscellanea: Understanding the War in Ukraine

This week, I want to break from our usual format and respond to the fairly unusual global events. I expect a lot of my readers are trying to get a grasp on what is happening right now in Ukraine and in my own experience the traditional news media often struggles to adequately explain complex issues … Continue reading Miscellanea: Understanding the War in Ukraine →

Miscellanea: Thoughts on CKIII: Royal Court

This week, we're going to be a bit silly and talk about the recently released Royal Court, a DLC expansion for Paradox's medieval grand strategy game Crusader Kings III, because I think it is attempting something fairly interesting that relatively few strategy games do. This isn't going to be a review - there are a … Continue reading Miscellanea: Thoughts on CKIII: Royal Court →

Collections: Rome: Decline and Fall? Part III: Things

This is the third and final part (I, II, III) of our series tackling the complicated and still debated question of 'how bad was the fall of Rome (in the West)?' In our first part, we looked at the question through the prism of 'words' - language, culture, religion and literature. There we found a … Continue reading Collections: Rome: Decline and Fall? Part III: Things →

Collections: Rome: Decline and Fall? Part II: Institutions

This is the second of a three part (I, II, III) series tackling the complicated and still very much debated question of 'how bad was the fall of Rome (in the West)?' In the last part, we looked at 'words' - culture, literature, language and religion. What we found is that in these aspects, signs … Continue reading Collections: Rome: Decline and Fall? Part II: Institutions →

Collections: Rome: Decline and Fall? Part I: Words

This week we're going to start tackling a complex and much debated question: 'how bad was the fall of Rome (in the West)?' This was the topic that won the vote among the patrons of the ACOUP Senate. The original questions here were 'what caused the loss of state capacity during the collapse of the … Continue reading Collections: Rome: Decline and Fall? Part I: Words →

Fireside Friday: January 7, 2022

First fireside of the new year! Percy (right) had been fully hidden under the tree-skirt, but Ollie's continued investigations found him out. For this week's musing, I'm in a mind to talk about the tension between preparing for different kinds of war, in particular between counter-insurgency (COIN) and large-scale combat operations (LSCO), in part because … Continue reading Fireside Friday: January 7, 2022 →

Collections: Fortification, Part V: The Age of Industrial Firepower

This is the final part of a five part (I, II, III, IV, V) series covering some of the basics of fortification, all the way from ancient city walls to modern anti-access/area denial systems. Last week, we looked at the changes which gunpowder-based weaponry enforced on fortification design in Europe, leading to the emergence of … Continue reading Collections: Fortification, Part V: The Age of Industrial Firepower →