Two Audio Essays: The Escalation Ladder & Weaponised Interdependence

This week: two audio essays.

First up, they’re calling it the Poor Man’s Tomahawk. Ukraine is firing up to 2000 long range drones a week into Russia. The production facilities supplying them are scattered across Western Europe. These production facilities have an artificial shield, in that they are diplomatically protected. But how long this will last is unclear.

For its part, Ukraine would like the West to be more active in the war. And one way to do that would be to antagonise Russia into responding beyond its borders. There is now a 50% chance of erratic strikes into Europe proper within the next year, as Philip Pilkington makes clear in The Escalation Ladder.

Meanwhile, Andrew Collingwood has been supping on a 2019 masterwork of geopolitics. Weaponized Interdependence is the title of a Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman paper, in which the pair argue that states with political authority over the central "hubs" in global economic networks: such as those for finance, data, and trade, can exploit this position to gain a strategic advantage. States sitting atop those nodes can exploit two effects: panopticon (information dominance) and choke point (cutting off access to irreplaceable hubs).

Hormuz is one hub. Russia has its commodity hubs. And China has its manufacturing hub dominance.

Put it all together, and the new Iran war has revealed a structural shift in global power, says Andrew Collingwood.

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