Scholar’s Stage Full Index

Geopolitics of the Middle East

• “Khashoggi’s Death is the Crisis We Have Been Waiting For” (21 November 2018)
• “Sunzi on ISIS” (23 April 2016)
• “Saudi Arabia’s Dangerous Game” (13 March 2016) 
• “The Future of the Fertile Crescent: Thoughts from Nibras Kazimi” (25 November 2015)
• “The Fight Against ISIS: A Few (Unorthodox) Points For Discussion” (17 November 2015)
• “Iran: The Debate We Should Be Having” (24 July 2015)
• “A Civilization is at Stake Here” (27 February 2015)
• “ISIS, the Mongols, and “The Return of Ancient Challenges” (18 December 2014)

Geopolitics of Southeast and South Asia

• “Needed: Deep State Traffic Cops” (2 December 2021)
• “What Do Cambodians Think About China?” (12 March 2019)
• “Leveraging Indian Power The Right Way” (4 September 2017)
• “The Cambodian Tilt Towards China” (5 January 2017)
• “The CNRP Won’t Save the South China Sea” (3 July 2015)
• “A Few Comments on China, Vietnam and the HYSY981 Crisis” (22 May 2014)

U.S. Armed Forces

• “Fear the First Strike” (18 June 2021)
• “Fleet Tactics With Lt. Col Nate Lauterbach,” podcast episode (5 June 2021)
• “The Navy’s Knives Must Come Out” (12 May 2021)
• “Questions on the Future of the U.S. Marine Corps” (7 July 2020)
• “What Cyber-War Will Look Like” (6 July 2018)

The U.S. in Iraq

• “Pausing at the Precipice” (28 February 2022)
• “Learning From Our Defeat: The Skill of the Vulcans” (26 October 2021)
• “Learning From Our Defeat: The Assumptions of Donald Rumsfeld” (7 September 2021)
• “Solidarity, Weapon of Modernity” (22 July 2020)

The U.S. in Afghanistan

• “Needed: Deep State Traffic Cops” (2 December 2021)
• “Learning From Our Defeat: The Skill of the Vulcans” (26 October 2021)
• “Learning From Our Defeat: The Assumptions of Donald Rumsfeld” (7 September 2021).
• “We Must Learn From Our Defeat” (21 August 2021)
• “Fighting Like Taliban” (1 August 2021)
• Solidarity, Weapon of Modernity” (22 July 2020)
• “Akbar Ahmed on Terrorism and the Collapse of the Tribal Order” (15 October 2013)
• “’Winning Hearts and Minds’ Is Dead” (13 April 2013).

Modern Diplomacy

• “Of Sanctions and Strategic Bombers” (31 May 2022)
• “Thoughts on Shit Post Diplomacy” (22 February 2022)
• “Needed: Deep State Traffic Cops” (2 December 2021)
• “On Diplomats-in-Chief” (8 September, 2020)
• “So Begins a New Age of Instagram Diplomacy” (1 January 2020)

International Order 

• “Ukraine, China, and the Shadow of the ’90s” (15 March 2022)
• “Learning From Our Defeat: The Assumptions of Donald Rumsfeld” (7 September 2021) 
• “The First Failure of the Liberal Rules Based Order” (21 January 2021).
• “Yes, We Are in an Ideological Competition With China” (28 September 2020)

See also: CHINA: PRC International Relations—The World That China Wants; Communist Party of China—Xi Jinping

The “Nat-Sec” World

• “Of Sanctions and Strategic Bombers” (31 May 2022)
• “Thoughts on Shit Post Diplomacy” (22 February 2022)
• “Needed: Deep State Traffic Cops” (2 December 2021)
• “Learning From Our Defeat: The Skill of the Vulcans” (26 October 2021)
• “Yale and the Education of American Elites” (7 October 2021)
• “We Must Learn From Our Defeat” (21 August 2021)
• “Fear the First Strike” (18 June 2021)
• “Fleet Tactics With Lt. Col Nate Lauterbach,” podcast episode (5 June 2021)
• “The Navy’s Knives Must Come Out” (12 May 2021)
• “Against the Kennan Sweepstakes” (6 March 2021)
• “You Do Not Have the People” (3 March 2018)
• “America Will Always Fail At Regional Expertise” (13 January 2016)
• “Requiem for the Strategy Sphere” (2 November 2015)
• “Wanted: A Stupid-Proof Strategy For America” (30 October 2015)
• “Ends and Means” (1 September 2015)
• “American Policy Makers Do Not Read Books” (18 February 2015)
• “On Credibility” (2 September 2013)

The Sino-American Relationship

• “Generational Churn and the CPC” (30 April 2022)
• Sino-American Competition and the Struggle For Historical Analogies” (19 November 2021)
• “Fear the First Strike” (18 June 2021)
• “Against the Kennan Sweepstakes” (6 March 2021)
• “Assessing the Trump China Strategy: The Key Documents” (18 January, 2021)
• “China’s Attack on Australia is About America” (11 December 2020)
• “Do Not Choose Susan Rice” (19 November 2020)
• “Yes, We Are in an Ideological Competition With China” (28 September 2020)
• “Why Banning All Party Members is Stupid” (17 July 2020)
• “When “Engagement” Backfired: The Story Behind Pro-Communist Private Enterprise” (29 August 2020)
• “It Is Time For a Libertarian Case Against China” (29 April 2020)
• “The Education China Hands Need, But Most Do Not Get” (29 February, 2020)
• “Give No Heed to the Walking Dead” (1 July 2019)
• “Are We Ready For What Comes Next?” (22 May 2019)
• “Moral Hazards and China” (1 June 2018)
• “Do Mil-Mil Exchanges With the Chinese Do More Harm than Good?” (4 December 2017)
• “China: The Unknowable Kingdom” (16 November 2016)
• “Everybody Wants a Thucydides Trap” (30 October 2016)
• “Should America Give a Whit About the South China Sea?” (23 October 2015)
• “The United States Doesn’t Know What to Do With the East China Sea” (6 February 2014)

Communist Party of China —Party Building & Party Control

• “Generational Churn and the CPC” (30 April 2022)
• “On the Party and the Princelings” (30 November 2021)
• “Rethink What You Know About Xi’s Belt and Road” (25 October 2020)
• “Counting Speeches to Understand Xi Jinping” (12 October 2020)
• “Bootlicking in Beijing” (7 December 2018)

Communist Party of China —Ideology

• “Xi Jinping’s War on Spontaneous Order” (28 September 2021)
• “Xi Jinping and the Laws of History” (9 July 2020)
• “A Note on “Historical Nihilism” (20 November 2019)
• “Xi Jinping and the Laws of History” (9 July 2020) “A Note on “Historical Nihilism” (20 November 2019)
• “Xi Jinping Explains His Political Philosophy” (2 June 2019)
• “Where is the Communism in the Chinese Communist Party?” (29 December 2018)

See also: CHINA: PRC International Relations—The World That China Wants; Communist Party of China—Stability Maintenance; Communist Party of China—Xi Jinping

Communist Party of China — Political Economy 

• “Xi Jinping’s War on Spontaneous Order” (28 September 2021)
• “Engagement’s Second Order Catastrophes” (9 July 2021)
• “When “Engagement” Backfired: The Story Behind Pro-Communist Private Enterprise” (29 August 2020) “
• “Its Not The Economy, Stupid!” What Wealth Can’t Explain About Chinese Politics” (16 June 2015)
• “Can China Liberalize in Time? Keep Your Eyes on Shandong” (27 December 2014)
• “Passages I Highlighted in My Copy of “Red Capitalism”” (16 August 2014)
• “Notes From Beijing: About that Chinese Social Contract” (24 August 2013)

See also: PRC INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS — THE BELT AND ROAD

Communist Party of China — Stability Maintenance  

• “On the Party and the Princelings” (30 November 2021)
• “Everything I Got Wrong in 2020” (6 January, 2021)
• “Political and Practical Implications of the Wuhan Virus” (28 January 2020)
• “Fissures in the Façade” (8 December 2019)
• “Mr. Science, Meet Mr. Stability” (4 October 2019)
• “Chinese Are Partisan Too” (14 August 2019)
• “Two Case Studies in Communist Insecurity” (24 July 2019)
• “It Is Not Like That Black Mirror Episode” (June 2019)
• “Reflections on China’s Stalinist Heritage II: Just How Totalitarian is Modern China?” (7 March 2019)
• “Reflections on China’s Stalinist Heritage I: A Tyrant’s Toolkit” (17 January 2019)
• “A Small Note on the Terror of Uncertainty” (13 September 2018)
• “Things That Will Get You Thrown in a Chinese Political Education Camp” (11 September 2018)
• “Chinese Journalism and Chinese Soft Power” (31 July 2015)
• “Bargaining with the Dragon: Some Straight Talk on Hong Kong” (6 October 2014)
• “Notes From Beijing: About that Chinese Social Contract” (24 August 2013)

Communist Party of China — Xi Jinping

• “Everything I Got Wrong in 2020” (6 January, 2021)
• “Rethink What You Know About Xi’s Belt and Road” (25 October 2020)
• “Counting Speeches to Understand Xi Jinping” (12 October 2020)
• “Xi Jinping and the Laws of History” (9 July 2020)
• “Review: Inside the Mind of Xi Jinping” (25 November 2019)
• “A Note on “Historical Nihilism” (20 November 2019)
• “Xi Jinping Explains His Political Philosophy” (2 June 2019)
• “Bootlicking in Beijing” (7 December 2018)

PRC International Relations—The World China Wants

• “Ukraine, China, and the Shadow of the ’90s” (15 March 2022)
• “Yes, We Are in an Ideological Competition With China” (28 September 2020)
• “The World That China Wants (III): Taking Chinese Communism Seriously” (29 July 2020)
• “The World That China Wants (II): The Communist Case In Brief” (18 May 2020)
• “The World That China Wants (Part I): Why Intentions Matter” (15 April 2020)
• “China’s Vision of Victory?” (14 October 2019)
• “China Does Not Want Your Rules Based Order” (4 June 2016)

PRC International Relations—Diplomacy and Intelligence

• “So Begins a New Age of Instagram Diplomacy” (1 January 2020)
• “Chinese Influence and Intelligence Activities: A Few Notes” (20 September 2017)
• “Chinese Journalism and Chinese Soft Power” (31 July 2015)

PRC International Relations—The World China Wants

• “Yes, We Are in an Ideological Competition With China” (28 September 2020)
• “The World That China Wants (III): Taking Chinese Communism Seriously” (29 July 2020)
• “The World That China Wants (II): The Communist Case In Brief” (18 May 2020)
• “The World That China Wants (Part I): Why Intentions Matter” (15 April 2020)
• “China’s Vision of Victory?” (14 October 2019)
• “China Does Not Want Your Rules Based Order” (4 June 2016)

PRC International Relations — Belt and Road

• “Everything I Got Wrong in 2020” (6 January, 2021)
• “Rethink What You Know About Xi’s Belt and Road” (25 October 2020)
• “The Utterly Dysfunctional Belt and Road” (8 May 2019)
• “Bootlicking in Beijing” (7 December 2018) .

PRC International Relations—The PLA

• Sino-American Competition and the Struggle For Historical Analogies” (19 November 2021)
• “Do Mil-Mil Exchanges With the Chinese Do More Harm than Good?” (4 December 2017)
• “Costly Signaling in the South China Sea” (6 July 2016)
• “Arms and Influence… and China” (16 June 2016)

See also: TAIWAN: Taiwan—Military Affairs

PRC International Relations—Diplomacy and Intelligence

• “So Begins a New Age of Instagram Diplomacy” (1 January 2020)
• “Chinese Influence and Intelligence Activities: A Few Notes” (20 September 2017)
• “Chinese Journalism and Chinese Soft Power” (31 July 2015)

Cambodia

• “The First Failure of the Liberal Rules Based Order” (21 January 2021)
• “Reflections on China’s Stalinist Heritage II: Just How Totalitarian is Modern China?” (7 March 2019)
• “There Will Be No Cambodian “Spring”” (5 August 2014)
• “Infiltrating the Khmer Rouge – The Nate Thayer Story” (29 May 2014)
• “How to Be Buddy-Buddy With an Guerilla General” (25 January 2014)
• “I’m From Princeton, and I’m Here to Help!” (2 January 2014)

Japan

• “Fleet Tactics With Lt. Col Nate Lauterbach,” podcast episode (5 June 2021)
• “Japan’s Achilles Heel?” (6 May 2020)

Vietnam

• “The Asian Productivity Race” (11 April 2016)

India

• “Trying to Make Sense of India’s Sexual Violence, State by State” (3 October 2013)

Korea

“Why Chinese Culture Has Not Conquered Us All” (26 April 2022)

Strategic Theorists—Ancient

• “Beware the Alcibiades Point” (14 December 2016) 
• “Sunzi on ISIS” (23 April 2016)
• “The OODA Loop, Ancient China Style” (26 July 2015)
• “Chinese Strategic Tradition: A Research Program (II)” (28 May 2015)
• “Chinese Strategic Tradition: A Research Program (I)” (26 May 2015)
• “The Radical Sunzi” (2 January 2015)
• “Not Everyone Likes Sunzi” (17 October 2013)

Strategic Theorists—Modern

• “Of Sanctions and Strategic Bombers” (31 May 2022)
• Sino-American Competition and the Struggle For Historical Analogies” (19 November 2021)
• “Book Notes—Strategy: A History” (16 July 2019)
• “Book Notes — Military Strategy: A Very Short Introduction” (1 May 2018)
• “The OODA Loop, Ancient China Style” (26 July 2015)

Strategic Culture

• “Yale and the Education of American Elites” (7 October 2021)
• “As the Generations Churn: The Strategic Consequences of Cultural Change in Communist Russia… and China?” (26 August 2021)
• “Newsflash: The Chinese Play Chess Too” (5 June 2015)

Terrorism

• “Akbar Ahmed on Terrorism and the Collapse of the Tribal Order” (15 October 2013)
• “Radical Islamic Terrorism in Context, pt II” (10 October 2013)
• “Radical Islamic Terrorism in Context, pt I” (9 October 2013)

Strategic Theory—Cognitive Foundations

• “The Marvelous Machiavellian Mind Reader” (4 November 2018)
• “Psychology Makes the Strategist” (20 September 2018)
• “Fiction and the Strategist” (19 June 2015)

Causes of War

• “Men of Honor, Men of Interest” (1 December 2016)
• “Everybody Wants a Thucydides Trap” (30 October 2016)
• “The Extraordinary Thing About WWII Is What Happened After” (6 June 2015)
• “Shame and War” (17 February 2014)

Civil War

• “Solidarity, Weapon of Modernity” (22 July 2020)
• “On Days of Disorder” (31 May 2020)

Counterinsurgency

• “Winning Hearts and Minds” Is Dead” (13 April 2013)

Naval Warfare

• “Fear the First Strike” (18 June 2021)
• “Fleet Tactics With Lt. Col Nate Lauterbach,” podcast episode (5 June 2021)

Asabiyah

• “Solidarity, Weapon of Modernity” (22 July 2020)
• “Introducing: Asabiyah” (2 May 2015)
• “ISIS, the Mongols, and “The Return of Ancient Challenges” (18 December 2014)

Electoral Politics

• “How To Win An Election” (27 August 2020)
• “Hacking Democracy” (1 April 2016)
• “Understanding Dysfunctional Democracies” (4 May 2014)

The Extremist Gambit

• “A Brief Model of Extremist Politics” (26 August 2019)
• “Radical Islamic Terrorism in Context, pt II” (10 October 2013)
• “Radical Islamic Terrorism in Context, pt I” (9 October 2013)
• .

Democratization

• “Why Didn’t China Give Birth to Democracy?” (22 July 2018)
• “Emmanuel Todd’s Theory of Modernity” (14 July 2013).

Republicanism

• “Thoughts on Post-Liberalism (I)” (27 January 2022)
• “Pining for Democracy: A Few Readings” (10 November 2018)
• “Awareness vs. Action: Two Modes of Protest in American History” (7 October 2015)
• “Honor, Dignity, and Victimhood: A Tour Through Three Centuries of American Political Culture” (16 September 2015)
• “Redefining the Nature of the American Polity” (5 October 2013)
• “Despots Near and Despots Far” (16 July 2013)
• “Independence and Rights” (15 February 2013) .

Localism and Decentralization

• “Honor, Dignity, and Victimhood: A Tour Through Three Centuries of American Political Culture” (16 September 2015)
• “Despots Near and Despots Far” (16 July 2013)
• “America 3.0” (9 June 2013)
• “Economies of Scale Killed the American Dream” (1 July 2013)

Justice

• “Vengeance As Justice: Passages I Highlighted in My Copy of “Eye for an Eye” (26 January 2018)
• “Honor, Dignity, and Victimhood: A Tour Through Three Centuries of American Political Culture” (16 September 2015)

Freedom

• “Xi Jinping’s War on Spontaneous Order” (28 September 2021)
• “Redefining the Nature of the American Polity” (5 October 2013)
• “Independence and Rights” (15 February 2013)
• “Despots Near and Despots Far” (16 July 2013)

Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism 

• “Xi Jinping’s War on Spontaneous Order” (28 September 2021)
• “A Theory of Authoritarian Personality Cults” (19 December 2020)
• “Public Opinion in Authoritarian States” (16 September 2019)
• “Chinese Are Partisan Too” (14 August 2019)
• “A Small Note on the Terror of Uncertainty” (13 September 2018)

Regime Stability

• “On Sparks Before the Prairie Fire” (9 October 2020)
• “On Days of Disorder” (31 May 2020)
• “Why Didn’t China Give Birth to Democracy?” (22 July 2018)
• “On Survivalism” (2 May 2013).

The Spirit of Faction

• “Public Opinion in Authoritarian States” (16 September 2019)
• “Chinese Are Partisan Too” (14 August 2019)
• “Reason is for Stabbing” (1 March 2019)
• “Signal Like Its 1711: James Addison on Partisan Signaling, 18th Century Style” (30 May 2015)

See also: POLITICAL THEORY: The Extremist Gambit; CONTEMPORARY AMERICA: Contemporary Partisanship

Meritocracy

• “Learning From Our Defeat: The Skill of the Vulcans” (26 October 2021)
• “The Problem Isn’t the ‘Merit,’ It’s the ‘Ocracy’” (20 December 2019)
• “Meritocracy” (21 January 2015)

Expertise

• “Yale and the Education of American Elites” (7 October 2021)
• “The Limits of Expertise” (18 January 2014)

Signaling

• “Of Words and Weapons” (29 January 2019)
• “Signal Like Its 1711: James Addison on Partisan Signaling, 18th Century Style” (30 May 2015)

Complexity and Cognition

• “The Framers and the Framed: Notes On the Slate Star Codex Controversy” (25 February 2021)
• “The Marvelous Machiavellian Mind Reader” (4 November 2018)

See also: PSYCHOLOGY AND THE HUMAN SCIENCES: Social Cognition

Persuasion and Argument

• “In Favor of Bad Takes” (13 July 2021)
• “Do Not Trust Your Arguments” (3 September 2019)
• “Reason is for Stabbing” (1 March 2019)
• “Of Words and Weapons” (29 January 2019)

Tradition

• “Tradition is Smarter Than You Are” (27 August 2018)

Great Works/Canon

• “How I Taught the Iliad to Chinese Teenagers” (30 May 2021)
• “Where Have All the Great Works Gone?” (30 January 2021)
• “A Non-Western Canon: What Would a List of Humanity’s 100 Greatest Writers Look Like?” (25 October 2019)
• “Learning From Old China” (24 July 2017)
• “History is Written by the Losers” (21 November 2016)
• “Why I Read Thucydides” (17 October 2016)
• “Chinese Strategic Tradition: A Research Program (II)” (28 May 2015)
• “Chinese Strategic Tradition: A Research Program (I)” (26 May 2015)
• “Escaping the Echo Chamber of Modernity” (24 October 2013)
• “Do The Great Books Have a Place in the 21st Century?” (27 May 2013)

Popular Culture

• “Myths of the Over-Managed” (21 July 2021)
• “Conservative Fairy Tales & Liberal Allegories?” (30 September 2017)
• “Which is Worse: Game of Thrones or the Culture that Watches It?” (13 June 2015)

Literature

• “How I Taught the Iliad to Chinese Teenagers” (30 May 2021)
• “Shakespeare : Just What Kind of Writer Was He?” (4 November 2019)
• “On the Three Basic Types of Literature” (2 November 2019)
• “On The Tolkienic Hero” (22 March 2019)
• “Teaching the Humanities as Terribly as Possible” (17 November 2018)
• “Shakespeare in American Politics” (30 September 2015)
• “Fiction and the Strategist” (19 June 2015)
• “A Few Thoughts on Ender’s Game” (3 November 2013)

Poetry

• “Longfellow and the Decline of American Poetry” (27 February, 2021)
• “On Adding Phrases to the Language” (13 October 2019)

Marxism

• “Xi Jinping’s War on Spontaneous Order” (28 September 2021)
• “Bootstrapping Marx With the Peasant Masses” (29 January 2021)
• “Leninist Politics: A Reading Course” (30 November, 2020)
• “Of Words and Weapons” (29 January 2019)

Culture War Stuff

• “Culture Wars are Long Wars” (3 July 2021)
• “The Framers and the Framed: Notes On the Slate Star Codex Controversy” (25 February 2021)
• “Everything I Got Wrong in 2020” (6 January, 2021)
• “This is Not The American Cultural Revolution” (5 August 2020)
• “Why Is the Fight for Free Speech Led by the Psychologists?” (5 November 2018)
• “My Grand Theory of Jordan Peterson” (23 March 2018)
• “A Short Defense of the Musical Hamilton”  (18 February 2018)
• “Everything is Worse in China” (19 July 2017)

See also: CONTEMPORARY AMERICA: Conservative Civil War; Contemporary Partisanship; Generational Divides; Sex, Gender and All That; 

Elections, Bills, and the Like

• “A Note on the Romney Vote” (7 February 2020)
• “Observations from Washington” (30 October 2018)
• “The Election We All Saw Coming” (21 December 2016)
• “Winning the Popular Vote While Losing Grip on Reality” (13 November 2016)
• “The Time Has Come To Give the Lie” (11 November 2016)
• “Are You Prepared For November 9th?” (5 September 2016)
• “Trump is Not the New Hitler—He is the New Andrew Jackson” (28 February 2016)
• “Rise of the Rookies: Trudeau’s Grand Experiment” (1 February 2016)
• “Why Did Asian America Abandon the GOP?” (4 November 2015)
• “Far Right and Far Left Coming Together – With Infographics!” (13 June 2013)
• “Far Right and Far Left – Two Peas in a Pod?” (10 April 2013)

Demographics

• “Why Did Asian America Abandon the GOP?” (4 November 2015)
• “How Many Generations Until Immigrants Think ‘Like the Rest of Us?’” (1 March 2014)
• “America Makes You Violent” (8 January 2014)
• “2010s: The Decade Asian America Goes Mainstream” (5 June 2013)

Conservatives’ Civil War

• “Thoughts on Post-Liberalism (I)” (27 January 2022)
• “Further Notes on the New Right” (24 May 2021)
• “The Problem of the New Right” (24 April 2021)
• “Against Patrick Deneen (II)” (3 June 2020)
• “Against Patrick Deneen (I)” (10 May 2020)
• “Talking Very Online Conservatism with Titus Techera” (23 April 2020)
• “Conservatism’s Generational Civil War” (17 March 2020)
• “Porn Restriction for Realists” (16 March 2020)

Sex, Gender, and All That

• “Porn Restriction for Realists” (16 March 2020)
• “Manning Up in Ancient China” (10 July 2018)
• “The Economics of Sex” (18 February 2014)

Media Dynamics 

• “Scrap the Myth of Panic” (15 July 2021)
• “The Framers and the Framed: Notes On the Slate Star Codex Controversy” (25 February 2021)
• “Why Writers (and Think Tankers) Feud So Viciously” (16 February, 2021)
• “Public Intellectuals Have Short Shelf Lives—But Why?” (29 January 2020)
• “Do Not Trust Journalists (A Mormon Example)” (18 December 2019)
• “On the Angst of American Journalists” (8 August 2019)

Miscellany 

• “If You Were to Write a History of 21^st Century America, What Would It Look Like?” (17 June 2019)

Social Capital and Community

• “Thoughts on Post-Liberalism (I)” (27 January 2022)
• “Scrap the Myth of Panic” (15 July 2021)
• “A Note on the Romney Vote” (7 February 2020)
• “Pining for Democracy: A Few Readings” (10 November 2018)
• “Awareness vs. Action: Two Modes of Protest in American History” (7 October 2015)
• “Honor, Dignity, and Victimhood: A Tour Through Three Centuries of American Political Culture” (16 September 2015)
• “America 3.0” (9 June 2013)

See also: CONTEMPORARY AMERICA: The ‘On Cultures That Build’ Thesis; POLITICAL THEORY: Asabiyah

The “On Culture That Build” Thesis

• “Thoughts on Post-Liberalism (I)” (27 January 2022)
• “Myths of the Over Managed” (21 July 2021)
• “We Were Builders Once, and Strong” (20 October, 2020)
• “On Cultures That Build” (18 June 2020)
• “The Title IX-ifcation of American Childhood” (25 September 2019)
• “The Decline of American Democracy (in one Infographic!)” (10 October 2017)
• “Honor, Dignity, and Victimhood: A Tour Through Three Centuries of American Political Culture” (16 September 2015)

Generational Divides

• “Generational Churn and the CPC” (30 April 2022)
• “As the Generations Churn: The Strategic Consequences of Cultural Change in Communist Russia… and China?” (26 August 2021)
• “Culture Wars are Long Wars” (3 July 2021)
• “On Life in the Shadow of the Boomers” (28 October 2020)
• “Talking Very Online Conservatism with Titus Techera” (23 April 2020)
• “Conservatism’s Generational Civil War” (17 March 2020)

Inequality, Economics, and Class

• “The Problem Isn’t the ‘Merit,’ It’s the ‘Ocracy’” (30 December 2019)
• “The Next 40 Years in Twelve Hundred Words” (19 July 2014)
• “Economies of Scale Killed the American Dream” (1 July 2013)
• “What Happens When Wall Street Goes Up Against the CIA?” (2 May 2013)

Contemporary Partisanship

• “Plagues of Hate” (2 November 2020)
• “How To Win An Election” (27 August 2020)

Political Violence in America 

• “Scrap the Myth of Panic” (15 July 2021)
• “Everything I Got Wrong in 2020” (6 January, 2021)
• “On Sparks Before the Prairie Fire” (9 October 2020)
• “This is Not The American Cultural Revolution” (5 August 2020)
• “On Days of Disorder” (31 May 2020)

Social Media and Online Communities

• “In Favor of Bad Takes” (13 July 2021)
• “Why I am Bearish on Substack” (22 November, 2020)
• “The World That Twitter Made” (10 July 2020)
• “So Begins a New Age of Instagram Diplomacy” (1 January 2020)
• “Editorial vs. Coffee House Blogging” (6 November 2015)
• “Requiem for the Strategy Sphere” (2 November 2015)
• “The World, As Seen Through Contested Wikipedia Pages” (18 July 2013)

Academia

• “Yale and the Education of American Elites” (7 October 2021)
• “How to Save the (Institutional) Humanities” (25 May 2019)
• “Teaching the Humanities as Terribly as Possible” (17 November 2018)
• “Why Is the Fight for Free Speech Led by the Psychologists?” (5 November 2018)
• “Modern Universities Are An Exercise in Insanity” (14 January 2018)
• “History is Written by the Losers” (21 November 2016)
• “Economies of Scale Killed the American Dream” (1 July 2013)

Character Building

• “Yale and the Education of American Elites” (7 October 2021)
• “A Note on the Romney Vote” (7 February 2020)
• “On The Tolkienic Hero” (22 March 2019)

The Search for Meaning

• “Thoughts on Post-Liberalism (I)” (27 January 2022)
• “Conservatism’s Generational Civil War” (17 March 2020)
• “Questing for Transcendence” (28 April 2019)
• “The Inner Life of Chinese Teenagers” (19 April 2019)
• “On the American Football Game” (4 February 2019)
• “My Grand Theory of Jordan Peterson” (23 March 2018)

Ideology and its Discontents

• “Thoughts on Post-Liberalism (I)” (27 January 2022)
• “Culture Wars are Long Wars” (3 July 2021)
• “Further Notes on the New Right” (24 May 2021)
• “The Problem of the New Right” (24 April 2021)
• “Conservatism’s Generational Civil War” (17 March 2020)

Religion

• “Do Not Trust Journalists (A Mormon Example)” (18 December 2019)
• “Questing for Transcendence” (28 April 2019)
• “A Parable Concerning Tolerance” (6 March 2017)
• “Vox Will Never Understand Islam… Or Any Religion, Really” (15 November 2015)
• “A Civilization is at Stake Here” (27 February 2015)

Reading

• “Learning From Old China” (24 July 2017)

Incentives

• “Why Writers (and Think Tankers) Feud So Viciously” (16 February, 2021)
• “A Note on the Romney Vote” (7 February 2020)
• “Public Intellectuals Have Short Shelf Lives—But Why?” (29 January 2020)

Methodology

• “Everything I Got Wrong in 2020” (6 January, 2021)
• “Spengler and the Search for a Science of Human Culture” (14 December 2020)
• “Historians, Fear Not the Psychologists” (8 November 2019)
• “A Study Guide for Human Society, Part I” (29 July 2019)
• “So Why Did They Publish Them? – A Few Notes on the Latest Batch of Fail-to-Replicates” (2 September 2018)
• “Is a Science of Cultural Change Possible?” (17 July 2015)
• “The Cross Section Illusion” (7 June 2014)

State Building

• “Taking Cross Cultural Psychology Seriously” (21 December 2018)
• “Why Didn’t China Give Birth to Democracy?” (22 July 2018)
• “Darwin and War in Ancient China, Sengoku Japan, and Early Modern Europe” (8 November 2015)

Cultural Evolution

• “Everything I Got Wrong in 2020” (6 January, 2021)
• “Spengler and the Search for a Science of Human Culture” (14 December 2020)
• “Historians, Fear Not the Psychologists” (8 November 2019)
• “Taking Cross Cultural Psychology Seriously” (21 December 2018)
• “Tradition is Smarter Than You Are” (27 August 2018)
• “Why do Humans Cooperate?” (15 October 2015)

Cross Cultural Psychology

• “Taking Cross Cultural Psychology Seriously” (21 December 2018)

Evolutionary Psychology

“Against Human Sexual Selection” (12 May 2019)

“Reason is for Stabbing” (1 March 2019)

See also: PSYCHOLOGY AND THE HUMAN SCIENCES: SOCIAL COGNITION

Social Cognition

• “Culture Wars are Long Wars” (3 July 2021)
• “The Marvelous Machiavellian Mind Reader” (4 November 2018)
• “Psychology Makes the Strategist” (20 September 2018)
• “So Why Did They Publish Them? – A Few Notes on the Latest Batch of Fail-to-Replicates” (2 September 2018)

Psychometrics

• “Public Intellectuals Have Short Shelf Lives—But Why?” (29 January 2020)

Neuroscience

• “Freud Did Not Discover the Unconscious” (30 November 2019)

Honor

• “Why Writers (and Think Tankers) Feud So Viciously” (16 February, 2021)
• “Vengeance As Justice: Passages I Highlighted in My Copy of “Eye for an Eye” (26 January 2018)

Historiography 

• “Historians, Slave of Fashion?” (16 June 2021)
• “Spengler and the Search for a Science of Human Culture” (14 December 2020)
• “Why Do We Know So Little About China’s WWII?” (12 February 2016)
• “East Asian Military History – A Few Historiographical Notes” (18 December 2015)
• “Which Wars Are Most Important?” (8 August 2015)
• “What History Should An American Know?” (5 July 2015)
• “There Is No “Right Side” of History” (24 June 2015)
• “What Books Do We Need to Rewrite All of Human History?” (14 May 2014)
• “A Few Stray Thoughts on World History and its Books” (11 September 2013)

Cold War

• “Sino-American Competition and the Struggle For Historical Analogies” (19 November 2021)
• “As the Generations Churn: The Strategic Consequences of Cultural Change in Communist Russia… and China?” (26 August 2021)
•  “Bootstrapping Marx With the Peasant Masses” (29 January 2021)
• “A Theory of Authoritarian Personality Cults” (19 December 2020)
• “Leninist Politics: A Reading Course” (30 November, 2020)

Chinese History (Shang-Tang)

• “Making Sense of Chinese History: A Reading List” (23 December 2018)
• “Being vs. Doing in Ancient Chinese Thought–A Note” (11 July 2018)
• “Manning Up in Ancient China” (10 July 2018)
• “Learning From Old China” (24 July 2017)
• “Beware the Alcibiades Point” (14 December 2016) 
• “History is Written by the Losers” (21 November 2016)
• “Sunzi on ISIS” (23 April 2016)
• “East Asian Military History – A Few Historiographical Notes” (18 December 2015)
• “Chinese Strategic Tradition: A Research Program (II)” (28 May 2015)
• “Chinese Strategic Tradition: A Research Program (I)” (26 May 2015)
• “The Radical Sunzi” (2 January 2015)
• “What Edward Luttwak Doesn’t Know About Ancient China (Or a Short History of Han-Xiongnu Relations), pt. 2” (6 September 2014)
• “What Edward Luttwak Doesn’t Know About Ancient China (Or a Short History of Han-Xiongnu Relations), pt. 1” (4 September 2014)
• “Chinese Cookery: Notes on the History of Chinese Stir Fry” (13 June 2014)
• “Geography and Chinese History – The Fractured Land Hypothesis” (4 June 2013)

Chinese History (Song-Qing)

• “Book Review: The Great State” (1 May 2020)
• “Making Sense of Chinese History: A Reading List” (23 December 2018)
• “Why Didn’t China Give Birth to Democracy?” (22 July 2018)
• “China Was Never an Empire of the Mind” (31 July 2016)
• “East Asian Military History – A Few Historiographical Notes” (18 December 2015)
• “Wanted: A Stupid-Proof Strategy For America” (30 October 2015)
• “Chinese Strategic Tradition: A Research Program (II)” (28 May 2015)
• “Chinese Strategic Tradition: A Research Program (I)” (26 May 2015)
• “Chinese Cookery: Notes on the History of Chinese Stir Fry” (13 June 2014)
• “Smallpox on the Steppe” (8 March 2014)
• “Not Everyone Likes Sunzi” (17 October 2013)
• “Geography and Chinese History – The Fractured Land Hypothesis” (4 June 2013)
• “Striking It Rich in Ancient Times: An Example From the Song Dynasty” (26 April 2013)

Chinese History (Modern)

• “As the Generations Churn: The Strategic Consequences of Cultural Change in Communist Russia… and China?” (26 August 2021)
• “Bootstrapping Marx With the Peasant Masses” (29 January 2021)
• “Leninist Politics: A Reading Course” (30 November, 2020)
• “This is Not The American Cultural Revolution” (5 August 2020)
• “Mr. Science, Meet Mr. Stability” (1 October 2019)
• “Reflections on China’s Stalinist Heritage II: Just How Totalitarian is Modern China?” (7 March 2019)
• “Reflections on China’s Stalinist Heritage I: A Tyrant’s Toolkit” (17 January 2019)
• “Making Sense of Chinese History: A Reading List” (23 December 2018)
• “Chiang Kai Shek’s Gamble–Reviewing Shanghai and Nanjing 1937” (19 April 2016)
• “Why Do We Know So Little About China’s WWII?” (12 February 2016)
• “Why Was There No “May Fourth Movement” in India?” (2 October 2015)
• “Chinese Strategic Tradition: A Research Program (II)” (28 May 2015)
• “Chinese Strategic Tradition: A Research Program (I)” (26 May 2015)
• “Meditations on Maoism — Ye Fu’s “Hard Road Home” (30 April 2014)

American History (Colonial and Revolutionary)

• “Further Notes on the New Right” (24 May 2021)
• “The Problem of the New Right” (24 April 2021)
• “Against Patrick Deneen (II)” (3 June 2020)
• “Against Patrick Deneen (I)” (10 May 2020)
• “The New England Colonies: A History Decided by Culture, or by Ecology?” (28 February 2020)
• “A Parable Concerning Tolerance” (6 March 2017)
• “Jefferson and Adams are Gone” (4 July 2013)
• “America 3.0” (9 June 2013)

American History (Antebellum and Civil War)

• “Historians, Slave of Fashion?” (16 June 2021)
• “The Magic in Modernity” (26 May 2021)
• “On Sparks Before the Prairie Fire” (9 October 2020)
• “We Were Builders Once, and Strong” (20 October, 2020)
• “On Cultures That Build” (18 June 2020)
• “Pining for Democracy: A Few Readings” (10 November 2018)
• “Awareness vs. Action: Two Modes of Protest in American History” (7 October 2015)
• “Shakespeare in American Politics” (30 September 2015)
• “Honor, Dignity, and Victimhood: A Tour Through Three Centuries of American Political Culture” (16 September 2015)
• “Radical Islamic Terrorism in Context, pt II” (10 October 2013)
• “Despots Near and Despots Far” (16 July 2013)
• “America 3.0” (9 June 2013)

American History (Gilded and Progressive Eras)

• “Plagues of Hate” (2 November 2020)
• “On Sparks Before the Prairie Fire” (9 October 2020)
• “America 3.0” (9 June 2013)

American History (WWI Through WWII)

• “On Cultures That Build” (18 June 2020)
• “On Adding Phrases to the Language” (13 October 2019)
• “Passages I Highlighted in My Copy of “Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s”’ (24 June 2019)
• “Economies of Scale Killed the American Dream” (1 July 2013)

American History (Post-War)

• “Learning From Our Defeat: The Skill of the Vulcans” (26 October 2021)
• “Historians, Slave of Fashion?” (16 June 2021)
• “Further Notes on the New Right” (24 May 2021)
• “The Problem of the New Right” (24 April 2021)
• “On Life in the Shadow of the Boomers” (28 October 2020)
• “On Sparks Before the Prairie Fire” (9 October 2020)
• “On Cultures That Build” (18 June 2020)
• “On Adding Phrases to the Language” (13 October 2019)
• “Honor, Dignity, and Victimhood: A Tour Through Three Centuries of American Political Culture” (16 September 2015)
• “Economies of Scale Killed the American Dream” (1 July 2013)
• “America 3.0” (9 June 2013)

Big History

• “The Rise and Fall of Civilizations: A Reader’s Course” (13 January 2013)
• “Macro-History: A Few More Books” (14 December 2014)
• “Another Look at ‘The Rise of the West’ – But With Better Numbers” (20 November 2013)
• “A Few Stray Thoughts on World History and its Books” (11 September 2013)
• “The Rise of the West: Asking the Right Questions” (7 July 2013)
• “Quick Hits: Life Before the Plow” (22 May 2013)
• “Global Temperature, 0-2000 AD” (23 April 2013)

Intellectual History

•  “Where Have All the Great Works Gone?” (30 January 2021)
• “Spengler and the Search for a Science of Human Culture” (14 December 2020)
• “On Life in the Shadow of the Boomers” (28 October 2020)
• “Freud Did Not Discover the Unconscious” (30 November 2019)
• “On Adding Phrases to the Language” (13 October 2019)
• “I Choose Hannah Arendt” (5 October 2019)
• “Book Notes—Strategy: A History” (16 July 2019)
• “On The Tolkienic Hero” (22 March 2019)

Japan (Premodern)

• “East Asian Military History – A Few Historiographical Notes” (18 December 2015)
• “Darwin and War in Ancient China, Sengoku Japan, and Early Modern Europe” (8 November 2015)

Japan (Modern)

• “Chiang Kai Shek’s Gamble–Reviewing Shanghai and Nanjing 1937” (19 April 2016)
• “When Modern War Met an Antique Art” (8 may 2015)

Rome and Greece

• “Thoughts on Post-Liberalism (I)” (27 January 2022)
• “Beware the Alcibiades Point” (14 December 2016) 
• “Men of Honor, Men of Interest” (1 December 2016)
• “History is Written by the Losers” (21 November 2016)
• “Everybody Wants a Thucydides Trap” (30 October 2016)
• “Why I Read Thucydides” (17 October 2016)
• “Wanted: A Stupid-Proof Strategy For America” (30 October 2015)
• “A Few More Thoughts on the Terrors of Pre-Modern Battle” (27 October 2015)
• “Pre-Modern Battlefields Were Absolutely Terrifying” (25 October 2015)
• “Health Isn’t Wealth II” (25 April 2015) 
• “Health ≠ Wealth” (22 March 2015)

Western Europe (up to French Revolution)

• “Plagues of Hate” (2 November 2020)
• “Historians, Fear Not the Psychologists” (8 November 2019)
• “Darwin and War in Ancient China, Sengoku Japan, and Early Modern Europe” (8 November 2015)
• “Emmanuel Todd’s Theory of Modernity” (14 July 2013)
  

  Western Europe (French Revolution to today)

  “Of Sanctions and Strategic Bombers” (31 May 2022)
• “Plagues of Hate” (2 November 2020)

India (Modern)

• “Why Was There No “May Fourth Movement” in India?” (2 October 2015)

India (Premodern)

Mongols and other Nomadic Peoples

• “Introducing: Asabiyah” (2 May 2015)
• “Why the Mongols Conquered the World, According to the Mongols” (23 February 2015)
• “ISIS, the Mongols, and “The Return of Ancient Challenges” (18 December 2014)
• “Smallpox on the Steppe” (8 March 2014)
• “The Nomadic Survival Strategy: Salzman’s 20 Observations” (11 November 2013)
• “Introducing: The Mongol Project” (6 November 2013)
• “Radical Islamic Terrorism in Context, pt I” (9 October 2013)

Ancient Middle East (up to Islamic Conquests)

Premodern Middle East (from Islamic Conquests to 20^th Century)

• “A Civilization is at Stake Here” (27 February 2015)
• “Radical Islamic Terrorism in Context, pt I” (9 October 2013)
• “Radical Islamic Terrorism in Context, pt II” (10 October 2013)
• “Iran – Not as Persian as You Think” (6 July 2013)

Eastern Europe and Russia (Pre-Soviet)

• “Thoughts on Shit Post Diplomacy” (22 February 2022)
• “The Russian Strategy for Empire” (20 March 2014)

Eastern Europe and Russia (Soviet and post Soviet)

• “Ukraine, China, and the Shadow of the ’90s” (15 March 2022)
• Sino-American Competition and the Struggle For Historical Analogies” (19 November 2021)
• “As the Generations Churn: The Strategic Consequences of Cultural Change in Communist Russia… and China?” (26 August 2021)
• “A Theory of Authoritarian Personality Cults” (19 December 2020)
• “Leninist Politics: A Reading Course” (30 November, 2020)

Pandemics

• “Plagues of Hate” (2 November 2020)
• “Bullet Reviews: A Bunch of Books on Epidemic and Disaster Response” (31 March 2020)
• “Political and Practical Implications of the Wuhan Virus” (28 January 2020)

Ecology and Environmental Science

• “The New England Colonies: A History Decided by Culture, or by Ecology?” (28 February 2020)
• “A Few Thoughts on Environmental History” (6 July 2014)

Every Book I Read In___

• “Every Book I Read in 2021” (6 January 2022)
• “Every Book I Read in 2020” (4 January 2021)
• “Every Book I Read in 2019” (3 January 2020)
• “Every Book I Read in 2018” (1 January 2019)
• “Every Book I Read in 2017” (1 January 2018)
• “Every Book I Read in 2016” (3 January 2017)
• “Every Book I Read in 2015” (1 January 2016)
• “Every Book I Read in 2014” (1 January 2015)
• “Every Book I Read in 2013” (31 December 2013)

Reading Lists

• “The Rise and Fall of Civilizations: A Reader’s Course” (13 January 2013)
• “Leninist Politics: A Reading Course” (30 November, 2020)
• “Bullet Reviews: A Bunch of Books on Epidemic and Disaster Response” (31 March 2020)
• “Making Sense of Chinese History: A Reading List” (23 December 2018)
• “Pining for Democracy: A Few Readings” (10 November 2018)
• “Macro-History: A Few More Books” (14 December 2014)
• “Quantum Libraries” (23 July 2014)