September 12, 2010

A thought, while writing the last post. Thinking about international politics invariably involves a lot of rational-choice stuff, or rational-choice at one remove. Although this may not make sense in a platonic game-theory way, how do so-and-so’s interests, preferences, and meta-knowledge of their own situation have to differ from yours to make it work? They’ve…

Read More survival of the survivors

Adam Elkus has a piece out entitled The Hezbollah Myth and Asymmetric Warfare, in which he criticises what he sees as a tendency to over-rate the power of guerrillas in the light of the 2006 war. Having read it, I think the real question here is about expectations and goals. Hezbollah didn’t defeat the Israelis…

Read More 2006 again, and a brief history of recent wrong