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C2SI’s “Paragraph 1,” Part III: Fighting Back
One ring to rule them all – The coherence of the Axis of Authoritarianism should not be overstated. For instance, despite its moves toward China and Iran, its record of human rights abuses at home and international humanitarian law violations in its war in Yemen, and its assassination of dissidents abroad, authoritarian Saudi Arabia remains,… Read more
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C2SI’s “Paragraph 1,” Part II: The Rise of the Axis of Authoritarianism
In the previous post in this series, we gave an overview of how the liberal international order emerged. Now we’ll look at the threat: the “Axis of Authoritarianism.” – Enemy forces During the 1990s and the GWOT era, the main threats to rules-based international order were perceived to come from state failure and non-state actors,… Read more
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The Importance of International Humanitarian Law (IHL)
The Importance of IHL As we write this, the eyes of the world are on the conflict in the Mideast. In response to the 7 October Hamas raid into southern Israel that killed around 1300 people, the majority of them civilians who were deliberately targeted, Israel is conducting preparatory bombardment of Gaza ahead of a… Read more
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How Hard Should You Train?
Friday during the torrential downpours in New England, I slipped and fell while trying to navigate a puddle. In good paratrooper form, I locked my feet and knees together as quickly as possible and pulled my arms to my chest to minimize the risk of damage to my wrists and arms. I fell awkwardly but… Read more
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C2SI’s “Paragraph 1,” Part 1: Liberal Democracy and the Rules-Based Order Under Threat
In a military operations order, “Paragraph 1” lays out the situation faced by a unit as it prepares for a mission. So what does C2SI’s “paragraph 1” look like? What about the global context drives the need for an organization with our mission? While the immediate trigger was the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we created… Read more
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The Price of Training: A Thought Exercise
Consider a hypothetical situation. You’re tasked with standing up a company-level military unit – building it from scratch (in fact, this isn’t that much of a hypothetical – this has happened effectively dozens of times in Ukraine). You have all the soldiers and all the equipment. Now all you have to do is train it… Read more
At the Ready
