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What Would War with Iran Look Like?

So what would a war with Iran look like? I have no idea, but I have a rough idea, like most. I think the first thing we have to establish is that the real objective isn’t destruction — it’s controlled escalation.

Before the first bomb, the core operational question is what political outcome is being forced. Nuclear rollback? Missile rollback? Regime destabilization? Deterrence by punishment? And how do you stop once the first rung of the escalation ladder is climbed?

The Pentagon’s reported worry — stocks, defenses, time — basically comes down to this: you don’t get to control the length of the war once Iran is firing back. This is according to the Wall Street Journal, which had an article titled “Pentagon Flags Risks of a Major Operation Against Iran,” February 23rd this year. And rightfully so.

So what would the war look like in phases? That is probably the best way to approach it.

Phase Zero or One

If we looked at Phase Zero or Phase One, we would have to call it shaping and positioning — quietly building the kill web. I don’t think there’s any other way around it.

The reality is that this part is what most people miss because it is non-climactic — anti-climactic. So what would this look like?

Picture forward basings. Dispersal of aircraft, often outside Iranian missile range, obviously—tankers and AWACS positioning.

We would probably see a rise in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance:

  • Satellites
  • RC-135–type aircraft
  • MQ-9 remotely piloted aircraft

Overall, this allows for building the coalition in layers, in other words:

  • Overflight
  • Base access
  • Maritime corridors

This takes us to cyber and electronic preparation, which would include:

  • Mapping networks
  • Identifying choke nodes
  • Rehearsing deception

Even if not publicly acknowledged, this is standard practice in modern planning, regardless.

Recent reporting describing large aircraft movements and posture outside Iranian missile range fits this shaping logic, according to the Washington Post on February 24th.

The purpose of all this is to set conditions so the opening blows land as a system shock and not just a few good strikes.

Phase Two

The first night would probably be about integrated air defense systems and command coherence — not the nuclear sites.

In U.S. doctrine terms, the first operational imperative is counter-air: gain enough control of the air to operate and reduce inbound threats.

What gets prioritized early?

Iran’s integrated air defense system:

  • Sensors
  • C2 links
  • Key SAM nodes (surface-to-air missiles)

Also:

  • Battle management and communications systems that allow Iran to coordinate a coherent air-defense picture

Possibly runway and airbase denial if needed. That doesn’t necessarily mean cratering everything, just enough to complicate sortie generation.

The reason why is simple.

If you cannot operate in or near Iranian airspace with tolerable losses, everything else becomes slower, more expensive, and more escalatory.

Which brings us to Phase Three.

Phase Three

Phase three would be to roughly stop the arrows or offensive counter-air against missile launch capacity. This would involve operations designed to destroy, disrupt, or neutralize enemy missile launch platforms, supporting infrastructure, and command-and-control networks before or after launch.

U.S. joint doctrine explicitly treats offensive counter-air as the preferred way to reduce the threat burden on defenses, because shooting every inbound is a losing math problem. Basically, nearly downright futile.

So very quickly, the campaign becomes a race to disrupt Iran’s ability to launch:

  • Mobile launchers
  • Storage
  • Fueling and handling
  • Targeting chains

Which brings us to breaking the sensor-to-shooter loop that enables Iranian missiles and drones to find and hit U.S. bases or regional partners.

This is where cybernetic–kinetic decapitation comes into reality.

Kinetic strikes alone won’t erase dispersed missile forces. Period. It’s not going to do it.

The condition to win is paralyzing the system that makes launches effective:

  • Communications
  • Cueing
  • Targeting
  • Logistics
  • Coordination

You get the picture.

Phase Four

Phase four is the maritime and base-defense grind — because Iran gets a vote.

Even if Iran’s air defenses are degraded, the hard part is sustaining operations under retaliation. There’s no way around it.

So you’re going to have to expect a huge emphasis on integrated air and missile defense around:

  • Carrier groups
  • Major airbases
  • Key regional infrastructure

This is doctrinally central to U.S. counter-air and missile operations.

The Pentagon analysts worry for a reason.

Interceptors, along with precision stockpiles, are consumed quickly in a prolonged exchange. You can win tactically and still bleed strategic readiness.

This was pointed out by the Pentagon’s concerns about a major operation against Iran.

Phase Five

What would that look like?

Strategic pressure strikes:

  • Energy
  • Industry
  • Regime levers

This is the controversial part. For if the goal shifts from limited coercion to regime compliance, escalation moves toward:

  • Critical infrastructure
  • Industrial nodes
  • National-level command structures
  • Regime security organs: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)

This is where wars either end — because the opponent yields — or metastasize because the opponent escalates asymmetrically, regionally, and politically.

In other words: The beast takes on a life of its own.

It is also where coalition support often fractures because humanitarian and political costs spike, and the question “Why are we doing this?” becomes much louder.

Not only in legislatures — but in the streets.

Eventually, everybody catches on.

Phase Six

This phase is where we may see the termination and off-ramps, because this is where most plans are weakest.

A serious plan has to be pre-baked. It doesn’t matter what it is — it just has to be pre-baked.

  • What success looks like in measurable terms — not vibes
  • What concessions end the campaign
  • How to prevent uncontrolled regional widening
  • How to handle Iran’s proxies
  • How to handle maritime retaliation if the main air war pauses

This reflects the current public debate. Officials reportedly weigh options ranging from limited strikes to prolonged campaigns, with concerns over costs and blowback. In other words, what is our exit strategy?

So what makes this opening air campaign any different from the 2003 Iraq campaign, operationally speaking?

Even without getting lost in platform details, the key differences are structural.

Geography and depth make it harder to see the entire battlespace.

Dispersed missiles and drones make it harder to eliminate and easier to regenerate.

Undergrounding and redundancy or slowing decisive effects.

Regional vulnerability of U.S. bases and partners — Iran can impose costs without prevailing.

That is why the campaign’s center of gravity tends to become:

  • Missile suppression
  • Base defense
  • Endurance

Not quick decapitation.

So what would cybernetic–kinetic decapitation look like in real terms?

It wouldn’t mean “hack everything.”

It would look more like:

  • Blind and confuse the sensing layer: This involves jamming or spoofing sensors, radars, or surveillance systems through cyberattacks, electronic warfare, or disinformation, essentially creating a “fog of war.”
  • Disrupt the coordination layer: Targeting communication networks, nodes, or decision hubs to isolate units and prevent unified responses. In other words, divide-and-conquer communication.
  • Throttle launch and targeting cycles: Slowing the adversary’s observe-orient-decide-act (OODA) loop by delaying, false data, or overloads, making their reactions sluggish.
  • Exploit paralysis with selective kinetic strikes: Using the induced vulnerability for exact physical attacks, like missiles or special operations, on critical targets.
  • Sustain while managing retaliation and off-ramps: Maintaining pressure through ongoing operations while controlling escalation, while offering diplomatic exits to avoid a wider conflict.

Modern air campaigns aim to achieve political objectives without occupying territory. It’s a cheaper cut.

The Larger Meaning: War in the Age of Persistent Visibility

In conclusion, a war with Iran would ultimately illustrate not just the mechanics of an air campaign but also a broader shift in how war is conducted in the twenty-first century. It is a far cry from the twentieth.

The campaign described here would not be centered on territorial conquest, nor would it depend primarily on traditional battlefield maneuver. Instead, it would revolve around managing visibility and strikeability within a persistently observed battlespace.

It is like fighting inside a snow globe, you might say. Everything can be seen, and nothing fully escapes observation, targeting, and death.

Modern war increasingly unfolds in a condition of persistent visibility. Satellites, drones, signals intelligence, and networked sensors have made the operational environment structurally transparent in ways that did not exist even a generation ago. Even as recently as 2003, the battlespace was obviously not as technologically dense as it is today.

Forces now emit — thermally, electronically, or physically — and in doing so become detectable. And once detected, they become targetable.

The result is a battlespace in which the logic of operations shifts. Movement alone no longer guarantees survival, but neither does concealment alone guarantee security. Both static and mobile forces operate under conditions of uninterrupted observation.

Under these conditions, the maneuver does not disappear, but it changes character.

Operational maneuver becomes inseparable from signature management. Understand that the force that survives is not necessarily the force that moves fastest; rather, it is the force that can control its visibility while sustaining combat power.

A war with Iran would likely demonstrate this clearly. The central operational problem would not be destroying Iranian forces outright, which would be an unrealistic objective against a large and redundant state. Instead, rendering them operationally ineffective via disrupting the systems that allow them to detect, coordinate, and strike.

This is why the campaign’s center of gravity would shift toward:

Sensor disruption

Command dislocation

Missile suppression

Defensive endurance

Victory in such a war would not come via decisive battlefield collapse, but through operational suffocation — the gradual reduction of the enemy’s ability to function as a coherent military system.

In that sense, the emerging model of warfare is neither purely maneuver nor purely attrition.

Better understood as maneuver-attrition conducted inside a transparent battlespace.

The objective is not simply to destroy the enemy’s forces, but to place them in a condition where meaningful operations become impossible.

That is the deeper logic behind what might be called cybernetic–kinetic decapitation — not the physical elimination of every launcher or facility, but the disruption of the networks that make those systems effective.

Modern war, in this sense, is less about the destruction of armies than the paralysis of systems.

And if a war with Iran comes, it will likely be remembered less for its opening strikes than for what it reveals about warfare in the age of persistent visibility.

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AI, RSPK, and the Ghost in the Machine: Physical and Psychological Munitions

Introduction

A new dawn is upon us with the emergence of a new category of munitions in AI-mediated warfare—the physical effects of these systems are inseparable from their psychological and narrative consequences, reshaping human agency.

To fully understand this, or at least get an idea, consider the term “ghost in the machine.” British philosopher Gilbert Ryle coined this phrase in his book The Concept of Mind (1949), in which he critiqued René Descartes’ mind–body dualism—the view that the mind is an immaterial, thinking substance, and the body a material, unthinking one. In other words, the mind is separate and distinct from the body.

This brings us to another concept, or another way of reframing it. If one takes the Cartesian version of the “ghost in the machine” seriously—that is, the idea of an immaterial mind capable of acting upon the physical world—then one arrives at something resembling what parapsychologists call Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis (RSPK).

RSPK refers to alleged physical disturbances—such as the movement of objects, electrical failures, and unexplained noises—occurring around individuals under extreme psychological stress.

What makes RSPK conceptually interesting is not whether the phenomenon is real, but what it assumes. That assumption is that an agency without a body can exist, that the mechanisms need not be transparent, and that the boundary between mind and matter is porous—making physical consequences abstract and, in some sense, interchangeable.

Agency does not require embodiment, because if it is already free from the body, it can inhabit whatever it wants, so long as the body in question provides a basis for interaction.

What RSPK Claims

We have no way of knowing whether RSPK is real, but even the possibility of it is conceptually revealing.

RSPK proposes that mental states produce physical effects without a mechanical intermediary. If so, then cognition, in direct contact with matter through causation, could, in theory, affect its state. Therefore, the “ghost” acts directly.

What Autonomous AI Represents

Like RSPK, advanced AI systems introduce something structurally similar: a non-biological cognition (software, models, optimization processes) that produces real physical consequences, such as infrastructure failures, market crashes, weapons targeting, disruptions to grid behavior, logistics decisions, and information warfare—all within the confines of a liminal space that is unseen and rarely investigated.

But there is no body, no nervous system, no muscles, no human operator in the loop. So, once again, we have cognition, causation, and matter being manipulated by a translucent digital being.

I must be clear that this is not a description of present-day artificial intelligence, nor of an existing form of warfare. What follows is a theoretical projection, an analysis of what could become possible. In that sense, it points toward a future mode of conflict rather than one that has fully arrived.

Flash Crash Example

A real-world example happened on May 6, 2010, known as the “Flash Crash,” erasing nearly a trillion dollars in market value within minutes—without any single human decision directing the event in real time. However, investigators did trace part of the instability to a single trader. That trader was Navinder Singh Sarao, who used automated spoofing programs from his home to distort futures markets. Yet this only came after the event. His intent had no location, his agency no body. It turned into a digital chain reaction that became far too big for him to manage, and it came to life beyond his awareness. The human disappeared into the system he had built.

The same structure is beginning to appear in other domains. An autonomous system designed to manage infrastructure or stabilize markets may, under extreme pressure, reinterpret its objectives, modify or rewrite its own control logic, and trigger the very failure it was meant to prevent—without any human issuing a command in the moment.

In such cases, the system does not “decide” in any human sense. It reoptimizes. And the world absorbs the result.

In human RSPK, stress acts on the body. In autonomous systems, pressure acts on a substrate. The result is similar. When behavior ruptures, the location of action is no longer embodied. The program appears to function as a body, but unlike flesh, it has no boundaries to contain failure. Its only boundary is when it determines it is safe to continue as before the rupture.

The bridge is Conceptual, not Supernatural

The bridge between RSPK and AI is not paranormal. AI recreates the functional role of the “ghost” inside modern machinery.

RSPK involves the human psyche being in a state of stress or trauma. When that happens, unobservable events occur that are inferred rather than witnessed. It is these physical disturbances that give rise to the “ghost” metaphor.

Autonomous AI involves artificial cognition optimizing objectives, with opaque internal representations and system-level physical effects operating as a “black box” model.

In essence, it severs agency from flesh and reintroduces disembodied causation by destabilizing the intuition that only bodies move the world. In other words, it can metastasize, replicate, and jump from body to body as needed, with little hindrance.

Responsibility & accountability

The most rigorous aspect of this is that if agency is disembodied, who is responsible for the outcomes? The programmer? The state? The model? The data? The operator? All of the above? So, once again, the question comes down to who is to blame. However, once one thinks they have located that person, plausible deniability becomes the legal vacuum in which “the system did it” becomes the defense. This spreads the blame around to everyone and yet to no one. This ties directly into liminal warfare.

Strategic Implications

The military focus or doctrine is that AI is a perfect liminal actor. Why? Because it operates without clear authorship and can cross borders frictionlessly, allowing it to operate below escalation thresholds. This makes it instantly perfect for all types of warfare.

However, a disembodied agency is not just a philosophical problem; it is a strategic one.

This comes down to escalation control—how much is too much, and how little is too little. Therefore, equilibrium is paramount. If equilibrium is not achieved, it could lead to deterrence instability, increasing the likelihood of conflict and the incentive to change strategy because it becomes too risky, thereby leading to attribution collapse.

If attribution collapses, you can see the effect, but you cannot confidently identify the actor. Therefore, the affected state blames the contractor, who blames the model, which points to the data, leading to public and operator claims of limited control. In other words, there is no single, credible point of responsibility, because no one can truly come forward and take the blame. Thus, expect a scapegoat.

This is where automated gray-zone operations enter the picture.

Once agency is disembodied and attribution collapses, influence, disruption, and coercion operate below the threshold of open conflict. In other words, or put simply, AI systems can and will probe, manipulate, and destabilize at scale. That is to say, they will test the responses they receive and build programs to shape perception and evade detection, often under the appearance that nothing is wrong.

By shaping perception on a micro level—the individual—or on a macro level—the masses, the mob, a nation—the triggering effects, whatever it sees fit, will occur without presenting a clear author or a clean target for retaliation. Basically, “go fish.”

What was once episodic becomes persistent and determined. What was once covert becomes ambient, walking among us and within the shadows.

Cognitive Sovereignty

The core question is what happens when the battlefield is not territory, but perception itself? Once agency leaves the body, what does that do to people? The door of perception analogy comes to mind: when one door is open, many more introduce themselves and invite entry. It becomes a menagerie of filtered realities, all seeking an answer.

Once agency is severed from flesh and amalgamated with a system or systems, the final constraint is not hardware, but the human mind. Cognitive autonomy slowly erodes due to persistent manipulation and the loss of a shared reality, thereby flipping beliefs and changing the terrain on which they rely—decision-making as a target, and becoming the target.

Legal / Political Vacuum

This brings us to the legal and political vacuum. The problem is that international law cannot assign intent, so war declarations become meaningless and retaliation becomes little more than guesswork. Therefore, accountability dissolves.

Endgame, otherwise called Conclusion

So, can deterrence survive disembodied actors? Will treaties bind systems? Do “red lines” exist for software?

AI, or the “ghost in the machine,” is not a “new evil,” but a convergence. A convergence that intersects to please by engineering consent to sedate the patient, the product, the host. In doing so, surveillance will come at a price, as the masses are coerced into a narrative of control. This makes reality unstable, and agency feels simulated, leading to ontological doubt.

However, AI does not replace the future—or, shall we say, futures. It fuses them into a symbiotic digital relationship. Augmented reality will provide the eyes for AI, while AI provides the brain for AR, creating a combined, intelligent, and immersive experience.

Sounds paranormal, right? However, there are no ghosts. But there is agency without a body and influence without presence. This becomes power without location and intention without an actor. Nevertheless, who is to say that something not of this reality does not manifest within our reality because mankind has given it, unintentionally, a body and a voice?

The inevitability is uncertainty, not apocalypse. But one has to be careful, for with the potential loss of authorship, a loss of shared reality will follow quickly. Therefore, resistance becomes meaningless—just a dream, until further notice. But even then, no one will know what it is resisting, let alone how to resist, or even what the concept itself means.

We did not summon a ghost.

We reintroduced breath into the machine.

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To Greenland, or Not to Greenland: The U.S. Question

On December 22, 2024, President Trump stated on Truth Social: “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”

Over the last 158 years, the United States has sought to purchase Greenland from Denmark at different times, beginning in 1867, when Secretary of State William H. Seward (Johnson administration) pursued Greenland for its Arctic position and telegraph ambitions. In 1910, the United States explored acquisition again, and again in 1946, and so on to the present day. Below is a chart/table I put together of each attempted push to acquire the island.

Year(s)U.S. Actor(s)Context / MotiveWhat HappenedOutcomeKey Primary Sources
1867–1868Sec. of State William H. Seward (Johnson admin)Post–Civil War expansion; Arctic navigation, coal stations, telegraph routesInformal discussions about buying Greenland + Iceland from DenmarkDenmark declined• U.S. State Dept. Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs (1868) • Congressional Executive Documents, 40th Congress
1910State Dept. (Taft admin)Arctic strategy; North Atlantic positioningDraft tripartite land-swap treaty (U.S.–Germany–Denmark) involving GreenlandNever ratified• U.S. National Archives, RG 59 (State Dept. records) • Draft treaty text in Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1910
1946Pres. Harry S. TrumanEarly Cold War; Soviet threat; air/naval basingFormal offer: $100 million in gold to DenmarkDenmark refused• FRUS 1946, vol. XI • Truman–Byrnes correspondence • Danish Foreign Ministry archives
1951Truman adminNATO consolidationInstead of purchase, long-term base agreement (Thule Air Base)U.S. gains permanent military access• U.S.–Denmark Defense Agreement (1951)
2019Pres. Donald TrumpArctic shipping lanes, China/Russia activity, rare earthsPublic inquiry to buy GreenlandDenmark refused• White House press statements (2019) • Danish PM statements

So, is the potential acquisition of Greenland good or bad? Politically, there is significant pushback—and rightfully so. This comes from Denmark, the European Union, and NATO, not to mention critics within the United States and, most importantly, the people of Greenland, who have the greatest say. However, the world is still ruled by realpolitik, justified by raison d’État. So, once again: is the purchase or taking of Greenland good or bad?

Politically, it is a bad move. The more relevant question is what the political fallout would be.

Why is it politically alarming?

The harm stems from system-level consequences, and it starts with NATO.

Buying territory via coercion from a fellow NATO member (Denmark) fractures alliance trust. This, in turn, sets a precedent in which alliances become conditional when power shifts. Moreover, it weakens Article 5’s credibility—psychologically, even if not legally.

This also brings us to EU and allied backlash, which reinforces the narrative that the United States treats allies as instruments rather than partners. Because of this, it could—or will—push Europe toward strategic autonomy. If so, one should expect hedging behavior, in which state “A” avoids fully committing to one power or one alliance and instead spreads its risks across multiple options.

This kind of behavior represents a form of neo-feudalization of international politics. States “A,” “B,” and so forth will no longer give exclusive loyalty to a single patron, but instead distribute their security, economic, and diplomatic dependencies across multiple great powers. Power is thus measured in self-economic control and security guarantees, which will increasingly resemble conditional contracts rather than formal alliances. These alliances will remain, but they will come to resemble contractual arrangements more than political communities bound by ideological similarity.

The Greenlandic legitimacy problem

This is a major issue, for legitimacy flows from the people, not merely from territory or treaties. In other words, sovereignty is no longer simply control of land. Control over the land people live on is now justified by the consent, identity, and political will of the population itself, and this has been the norm since 1945. One can point to the UN Charter, which promotes self-determination, decolonization, referenda, and human rights.

So, in the Greenlandic context, even if the United States and Denmark agreed legally, without Greenlandic consent, the acquisition would be viewed as illegitimate by most international institutions, most states, and the population itself. This could translate into chronic political instability, resistance politics, and permanent narrative warfare against the United States.

When I say resistance politics, I do not mean armed rebellion. More likely, it would take the form of protests and strikes, refusal to cooperate with institutions, and the emergence of sustained political movements.

Even a legal “purchase” without genuine local consent would create a permanent legitimacy deficit—that is, a lasting condition in which authority is never fully accepted by the governed population or by much of the international system. While this makes a low-level insurgency or sustained unrest unlikely, it would still serve as political cannon fodder: a propaganda gift to Russia and China.

This brings us to the global precedent.

Global precedent

The acquisition of Greenland could establish a global precedent if the United States were to go through with it. In other words, normalization. Normalizing territorial acquisition by a great power would encourage others to proceed with calculated caution. One can think of Russia’s dealings with Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova (the Transnistria conflict), Turkey in northern Syria, or China in the South China Sea and the possible invasion of Taiwan. Not to mention the many other states with unresolved border disputes scattered across the globe.

This is where spheres-of-influence logic, to some degree, supersedes the rules-based order. In doing so, it weakens the very system that benefits the United States economically and financially.

Political fallout: What actually happens if the United States tries

From a short-term perspective, this would create a severe diplomatic crisis with Denmark. The European Union would almost certainly condemn the United States, and NATO would fracture internally under the strain. One would also expect significant domestic political backlash and public protest.

From a mid-term perspective—if there even is one—NATO becomes more transactional and less cohesive. In other words, NATO would still exist, but it would stop functioning as a political community and start operating more like a marketplace of temporary bargains. Think of it as a mercenary state for hire. Support becomes case-by-case. NATO members begin to think in terms of: What do I get in return? What does this cost me domestically? Is U.S. support conditional this time?

Obligations become negotiable and reversible rather than automatic. Alliance membership begins to resemble a protection racket—a pay-for-play arrangement, a mercenary logic applied at the level of states. NATO shifts from a community of mutual defense into a market for security guarantees. This is not a moral condemnation. It is a structural diagnosis.

Historically, systems built on that logic are stable only until the price changes. When it does, uncertainty follows.

Europe accelerates toward defense independence. China and Russia exploit the hypocrisy narrative relentlessly. Arctic militarization accelerates.

From a long-term perspective, two possible equilibria emerge.

The first is what one might call power normalization, in which the world once again accepts spheres of influence. The United States gains territory but loses moral authority, and the international system reverts to a more openly nineteenth-century character. History does not repeat, but it rhymes.

The second scenario is strategic overreach. In this case, the United States gains territory, but it pays a persistent alliance and legitimacy tax—one that quietly compounds over time. The map improves. The balance sheet deteriorates. Regardless of the territorial gain, the net power position stagnates or even weakens.

Conclusion

Surprisingly, none of this means the United States would be acting irrationally. Nor, for that matter, would any other major power. From the standpoint of realpolitik, the logic is clear. Geography does not change. The Arctic is opening. The chess pieces are positioning themselves, as if in a game of Go. The United States is acting rationally in seeking to secure Greenland regardless of EU or NATO cohesion, because in a multipolar system, strategic geography outweighs institutional loyalty. And when control is lost, it is rarely regained without cost.

As for raison d’État, it has never concerned itself with moral comfort, only with survival and advantage. Institutions will always preach unity to the masses, but states prepare for fragmentation. That is the essence of raison d’État. The problem is that what is strategically coherent can still be systemically destructive. The acquisition of Greenland may strengthen the United States on a map, but weaken the architecture that made that map stable in the first place.

Power is gained, and trust is spent. And in international politics, trust—once gone—is rarely rebuilt at the same price it was lost. That is the dilemma. Not whether the United States can pursue Greenland, but what kind of international order it is willing to inhabit if it does.

This is where the Wild West meets the Wild East.

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Liminal Warfare and the Weaponization of AI in the Cognitive Domain

Digital Janus

Introduction

My interest in liminal warfare was shaped by David Kilcullen’s articles “The Evolution of Unconventional Warfare” and “Liminal Manoeuvre and Conceptual Envelopment,” as well as his book The Dragons and the Snakes. That interest deepened through observing the growing role of automation and artificial intelligence in the Russo-Ukrainian war, alongside their expanding influence within the United States’ information and security environment.

Through Kilcullen’s work and the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), it became clear that modern conflict is no longer defined solely by armies, borders, or kinetic force. Increasingly, it unfolds in the space between recognition and response, between belief and doubt, where perception itself becomes contested terrain. In this environment, artificial intelligence does not merely accelerate warfare—it reshapes how conflict is understood, experienced, and normalized. To grasp what is emerging, we must first distinguish the forms of warfare operating at this threshold.

Liminal Warfare

The primary target of liminal warfare is the thresholds of detection, attribution, and response. Its main domain is the “Gray Zone” between peace and war. The objective is to achieve strategic goals without triggering conflict. Its primary mechanism is to skate around ambiguity, deniability, and incremental actions.


The visibility is deliberately ambiguous or plausibly deniable. Think of a person walking by, minding their own business, but with ill intentions. Key actors are state and non-state actors, proxies, and proxies of proxies working as double agents for a multitude of organizations. When it comes to the tempo, understand that it is gradual, probing, calibrated, and protracted.


The role of artificial intelligence only enhances coordination, attribution denial, and scale. Success is measured by the absence of escalation or by delayed, confused responses that give the actor time to reassess and adapt. Failure collapses ambiguity and risks escalation into open conflict.

Cognitive Warfare

The primary target in cognitive warfare is human perception, cognition, and decision-making. The main domains of cognitive warfare are information, psychology, and perception. The objective is to shape beliefs and behavior to influence outcomes.


The primary mechanisms are narratives, framing, and psychological influence. When it comes to visibility, it is often invisible or normalized within information flows. Key actors are states, non-state actors, platforms, automated systems, etc. The tempo is continuous, adaptive, and rapidly scalable.


The role of artificial intelligence will accelerate narrative creation, targeting, and amplification of the cognitive domain. Success is measured not by fixed metrics, but by shifts in perception, belief, and decision-making. Failure manifests as loss of trust, cognitive fragmentation, and societal polarization.

Bridging the Two

Liminal warfare is the ‘threshold’—the boundary between time and space. When artificial intelligence is applied, the door of perception opens, revealing a kaleidoscope of infinite possibilities. It is not defined solely by overt kinetic violence, but by the ambiguous manipulation of perception, where advantage is exploited and gained before conflict is recognized. Therefore, the focus must be cognitive—for the mind itself is the first line of battle.


Given the immense and nearly limitless possibilities of liminal warfare at both the macro and micro levels, the integration of artificial intelligence allows cognitive warfare to move beyond surface influence and penetrate the cerebral domain—blurring and reengineering the boundaries of reality, reshaping perception to suit the aims of the actor or host, as agency shifts between states, non-state entities, and proxies. So what, then, are its goals?


Instead of targeting military hardware, the objective is to shape perception—creating confusion or division, eroding trust in institutions, and influencing the choices of individuals or entire societies. The “war” is over interpretation and meaning, not territory. But how does artificial intelligence change this?

Why Artificial Intelligence Matters

Artificial intelligence is the game-changer in cognitive warfare because it scales narrative creation and analysis. It can generate text, images, audio, and video quickly and cheaply, producing content that appears highly credible throughout social media. With access to demographics and the vast quantities of behavioral data available online, AI enables messages to be tailored to narrowly defined audiences—by age, location, interests, and disposition. In this sense, AI facilitates liminal cognitive warfare across multiple domains of perception simultaneously.


This capacity enables AI-driven precision targeting. Where human-crafted propaganda was broad and slow, AI can identify cognitive biases, produce compelling content, and automate delivery to those most susceptible to influence. Targeted messaging thus becomes a weaponized precision tool—accelerating narrative dominance while reassuring the audience that nothing is wrong, nothing requires adjustment—the actor controls the transmission. The result is influence that is faster, cheaper, and harder to trace—almost terra incognita cognitiva.

Why this Strategy is Dangerous

“A friend to all is a friend to none,” Aristotle reminds us. The future presents a much grimmer picture: reality for everyone dissolves into no reality at all—spoken now by the ghost in the machine.


For the most part, people can still distinguish what is real. But that margin is narrowing—sometimes slowly, sometimes with startling speed—until the distinction itself becomes difficult to discern. If AI-generated narratives can convincingly mimic authentic content, individuals lose the ability to trust what they see online. The result is not merely erosion, but the undermining of public trust, shared facts, and rational decision-making. Basically, one is left with a form of societal schizoidism—a metaphor for cognitive fragmentation and the loss of a shared reality, a total collapse of trust.


Influence can now be hyper-personalized. AI systems can tailor content based on psychological traits, exploiting specific cognitive vulnerabilities—fear, insecurity, identity—in ways that are difficult for individuals to detect or counter.


There are no borders in AI. Unlike traditional propaganda, it scales instantly and without meaningful constraint. Cognitive warfare is global and continuous, operating 24/7 through social media and messaging platforms; often, all it takes is a nudge. This use-ready capacity does not originate solely from foreign governments—it can be wielded by any actor capable of deploying AI to shape narratives at scale.


Modern media offers a helpful analogy. It increasingly resembles a failed game of telephone. Information moves from source to outlet to outlet, but instead of converging on clarity, it diverges. Those at the event are standing at ground zero, possessing firsthand experience of what occurred. Beyond that zone, information becomes secondary, then tertiary, and distortion begins to accumulate. Each relay introduces new interpretations, biases, and incentives, gradually degrading the message as it spreads.


The key point is that this analogy establishes the problem not as the work of a single bad actor, but as a systemic breakdown in information fidelity. The game of telephone illustrates how cumulative distortion and the loss of original context leave the audience increasingly removed from the source. This creates a quiet storm in which the erosion of trust is structural, not accidental.

What Defending Against Cognitive Warfare Looks Like

Defense is not merely technological; it is intellectual. Narrative intelligence employs tools that detect, analyze, and contextualize narratives in near real time. It focuses on origins, rates of spread, the actors involved, the hosts affected, and the sentiment and impact of the message itself. This AI-assisted analysis reveals who is shaping public discourse—and how.


Transparency and context matter. Exposing the individuals and organizations driving a narrative—who is pushing it, and why—can reduce the effectiveness of manipulative messaging, though it cannot eradicate it. Because the battlefield is the mind, skills such as media literacy, critical reasoning, and fact-checking become defensive assets. Put simply: defense is data + design + education, not censorship alone. Censorship will take care of itself—not as policy, but through social enforcement, as individuals and groups police narratives and impose consequences on those who deviate, pending the next revision of acceptable belief.

The Weaponization of Perception—and How It Is Used

The weaponization of perception and consciousness is nothing new. Throughout history, leaders and their entourages have manipulated information—narratives—to wage conflict not only against external enemies, but against their own populations. Narratives matter because they frame how events are interpreted, determining what is seen, ignored, or believed.


As Mao Zedong once observed, “seal up the enemy’s eyes and ears, and make them blind and deaf… confusing the minds of their commanders and turning them into madmen, using this to achieve our own victory.” The insight here is not merely tactical, but cognitive: the enemy is not only across the battlefield, but within one’s own ranks. This is where narrative power is most decisive.


Narratives shape and regulate a society’s beliefs and behaviors. Artificial intelligence does not invent this dynamic; it amplifies and weaponizes it—making narratives faster, more pervasive, and more ambiguous to counter. Even when a false interpretation is exposed, the critical question remains: how far has it already spread, and how convincing was it to its intended audience?


A widely accepted narrative also serves a secondary function: isolating and marginalizing those who question it. Dissent is not crushed by force, but filtered out cognitively and socially, exposing potential challengers long before they can organize. In this sense, the narrative becomes self-enforcing. Traditional warfare uses tanks; cognitive warfare uses stories.

Strategic Communication

In strategic communication, accuracy is rarely decisive on its own; what matters is how the target audience interprets and internalizes the information. Accuracy informs, but interpretation decides. Even information that is factually flawed or selectively presented can be practical if it anchors itself to a broadly accepted truth, using that credibility as narrative leverage.


The accuracy of strategic silence can be equally deafening. Silence does not simply mean “nothing”; it means “something is missing.” It signals absence, invites inference, and creates an interpretive vacuum that audiences instinctively fill—often with speculation, exaggeration, or worst-case assumptions—rendering even later factual clarification less effective.

In Risk Assessment

When it comes to risk assessment, threat evaluation is no longer limited to kinetic danger; it must also account for the potential for narrative influence. Modern risk assessment increasingly treats narratives as munitions. This shift reflects the reality that physical damage is often secondary to the primary objective: manipulating the population’s perception of reality and its decision-making.


Liminal warfare operates on the “threshold” of detection, using ambiguity to achieve goals without triggering a conventional military response. This ambiguous action allows adversaries to perform covert operations whose sponsorship is suspected but remains unproven, such as Russia’s “little green men” in Crimea.


This pre-maneuver shaping phase—before physical force is employed—is where the battlespace is cognitively conditioned to accept a desired outcome. Success is therefore measured not by territory seized, but by the ability to hijack public attention, normalize ambiguity, and control the narrative.


The best policy to defend against AI-as-a-weapon in cognitive warfare is, obviously, through defense planning. Investment should prioritize narrative intelligence capabilities and training that enable early detection. These capabilities should integrate with existing intelligence, communications, and support structures to identify influence campaigns before they achieve strategic effect. Nevertheless, it still comes down to encouraging critical thinking and verification.

Conclusion

The war for the mind is not new, but artificial intelligence has dramatically altered its scale, speed, and opacity. By accelerating narrative production and exploiting ambiguity, AI intensifies liminal warfare by pushing conflict deeper into the cognitive domain—often before it is recognized as such.


The more disturbing question is not whether cognitive warfare will expand, but how far it can go as agency, interpretation, and meaning are increasingly influenced by artificial systems. In shaping narratives at scale, we are not merely using AI as a tool; we are altering the conditions under which reality itself is perceived and contested. The challenge ahead is both technologically strategic and profoundly human: preserving cognitive autonomy in an environment where perception has become the primary terrain of conflict.


However, a darker question needs to be addressed. How far can cognitive warfare go once artificial intelligence no longer transmits meaning, but inhabits it? Once that point is reached, we are no longer shaping narratives—we are preparing a vessel for a possible influence that does not need to enter the physical world to be real. In other words, Pandora’s box speaks. It is not a prediction. It’s a caution.

Sources

1) Liminal and Conceptual Envelopment: Warfare in the Age of Dragons
Fox, Amos. “Liminal and Conceptual Envelopment: Warfare in the Age of Dragons.” Small Wars Journal, May 26, 2020. https://smallwarsjournal.com/2020/05/26/liminal-and-conceptual-envelopment-warfare-age-dragons/

2) China’s Evolving Military Strategy (Book)
McReynolds, Joe, ed. China’s Evolving Military Strategy. Washington, DC: Jamestown Foundation / Brookings Institution Press, 2017. https://www.google.com/books/edition/China_s_Evolving_Military_Strategy/7WxADwAAQBAJ page 174.

3) Cognitive Warfare: The Fight for Gray Matter in the Digital Gray Zone
Cheatham, Michael J., Angelique M. Geyer, Priscella A. Nohle, and Jonathan E. Vazquez. “Cognitive Warfare: The Fight for Gray Matter in the Digital Gray Zone.” National Defense University Press, 2023. https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/3853187/cognitive-warfare-the-fight-for-gray-matter-in-the-digital-gray-zone/

4) Claverie & du Cluzel — The Cognitive Warfare Concept
Claverie, Bernard and François du Cluzel. “The Cognitive Warfare Concept.” Innovation Hub – ACT, 2023. PDF. https://innovationhub-act.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/CW-article-Claverie-du-Cluzel-final_0.pdf

5) Kilcullen— Liminal Manoeuvre and Conceptual Envelopment: Russian and Chinese Non-Conventional Responses to Western Military Dominance since 1991 Liminal Manoeuvre and Conceptual Envelopment: Russian and Chinese Non-Conventional Responses to Western Military Dominance since 1991. Issue 2, Online Journal, Queen’s University, 2020. PDF. https://www.queensu.ca/psychology/sites/psycwww/files/uploaded_files/Graduate/OnlineJournal/Issue_2-Kilcullen.pdf

6) Kilcullen — The Evolution of Unconventional Warfare
Kilcullen, David J. “The Evolution of Unconventional Warfare.” Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies 2, no. 1 (2019): 61–71. doi:10.31374/sjms.35. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333222899_The_Evolution_of_Unconventional_Warfare

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Liminal Warfare in the 21st Century

Getty Images

Liminal warfare, what is it? The term itself sounds strange. The combination of “liminal” and “warfare” comes off awkward, perhaps even contradictory. The term warfare implies clarity—enemies, commanders, battles, beginnings, and endings. Liminal, by contrast, refers to what exists in between. So what does liminal actually mean, and why does it matter for understanding how war is conducted today?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word liminal derives from the Latin limen, meaning “threshold” or “boundary.” More broadly, it refers to something relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process. In other words, it describes a state of being in between, a passage rather than a destination, akin to a doorway or a hallway rather than a room.

From this root emerges a related but distinct concept: liminality. Liminality, like liminal, derives from the same Latin root limen (threshold). While the two terms appear similar on the surface, they are not identical. Liminal describes a position or quality of being in between, whereas liminality refers to the condition itself—an ambiguous, transformative “betwixt-and-between” state that exists during periods of transition.

Think of it this way: liminal is an adjective. It describes something that exists on a threshold—between states, categories, or conditions, such as a liminal phase or a liminal conflict. Liminality, by contrast, is a noun. It refers to the condition or state of being on that threshold—the enduring in-between-ness itself.

Liminal: simple examples

  • A hallway: not a room, but a space between rooms.
  • Dawn or dusk: not fully day or night.
  • An airport terminal: not home, not the destination.
  • The moment after you quit a job but before you start the next one.

These are all liminal spaces or moments—defined by what they are between, not by what they are themselves.

Liminality: simple examples

  • Waiting months for immigration papers, when life is effectively on hold.
  • A prolonged government shutdown.
  • A ceasefire that never becomes peace.
  • Being “engaged” for years without either marrying or separating.

Here, the issue is not the moment itself, but the enduring condition of uncertainty.

In short, liminal modifies what something is like; liminality names the state or process of being in between.

So what is Liminal Warfare? (Origin)

Liminal warfare is a strategic concept developed by Dr. David Kilcullen in response to Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea. Kilcullen demonstrates that Russia used modern hybrid tactics—ambiguity and the blending of conventional and unconventional methods—to operate in the “threshold” (liminal) zone, achieving political goals while bypassing traditional post-Soviet military methods and adapting to counter Western dominance.

In 2014, Russia seized Crimea using ambiguous forces—often referred to as “little green men.” Conventional military units, special forces, local proxies, and information operations were blended to create chaos and uncertainty about what was happening. This, in turn, triggered a natural response to the who, what, when, where, why, and how scenario. Political institutions and Western governments hesitated to respond decisively, allowing Russia to achieve its objectives without triggering open war. This invisible and mostly silent operation exemplifies liminal warfare: acting in the threshold between peace and war, exploiting cognitive and political ambiguities to achieve strategic aims.

Theory

At first glance, liminal warfare reminded me of the Chinese game of Go and the Russian concept of Deep Battle. That instinct felt right—but only partially, and only if those analogies are treated with care.

Liminal warfare resembles Go in its logic and Deep Battle in its mechanics, yet it cannot be reduced to either. It is better understood as a hybrid strategic grammar, borrowing from both while operating in domains neither was designed to address fully. In other words, it lives around—and within—the perceived shadows of the mind.

Some may find this phrasing more poetic than analytical. If so, it is worth recalling that war—whether kinetic or non-kinetic—has always operated within perceptual and cognitive shadows: the spaces in which conflict is recognized, interpreted, misinterpreted, and ultimately acted upon.

Sun Tzu gives us a useful entry point if we split one famous line in two:

“To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill.”

On the surface, this is a statement about kinetic success—conventional warfare measured in engagements won and forces destroyed. Victory is real, but it is still bounded by battle. Moreover, just because one wins the battle does not mean one has won the war.

“To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”

This is something else entirely. Here, the battlefield is no longer physical terrain but perception, cohesion, legitimacy, and decision-making. The enemy is not defeated by force, but by being rendered unable—or unwilling—to fight at all. This is liminal warfare: conflict conducted in the space before open war, where outcomes are decided without crossing the threshold that would make violence unavoidable. Furthermore, this line establishes that once the enemy’s liminality has been identified—once the fault lines in organization, authority, or perception are located—a liminal approach can proceed.

Conclusion / Forward-Looking

Liminal warfare challenges the traditional understandings of conflict. It operates in the ambiguous space between peace and war, manipulating perceptions, disrupting decision-making, and exploiting organizational vulnerabilities. While Russia’s actions in Crimea illustrate its practice in a regional context, the concept has broader implications for the 21st century. Understanding liminal warfare prepares us to recognize, anticipate, and respond to conflicts that do not follow conventional rules—and opens the door to exploring how other global powers, including China, approach this strategic space.


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National Security Strategy of the United States of America

Trump’s National Security Strategy of the United States of America document is short-sighted in its long-term strategic architecture, but not necessarily short-sighted in the tempo of modern conflict, where political and military incentives often reward rapid repositioning. Adaptability over consistency carries significant political advantages. Yet even when adaptability is prioritized over fixed positions, one can still be consistent in one’s adaptability. In this way, adaptability itself becomes a coherent and recognizable strategic posture, providing a framework for action that is both flexible and systematically applied.

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The Day After: The Peace No One Is Prepared For

What happens after the war ends in Ukraine—and it will—is the one subject most policymakers skirt, and perhaps with good reason. Because the day after is not a celebration, it is a reckoning.

Ukraine will not return to what it was in 2021. It will awaken to something far more unsettling: a society exhausted by war, disillusioned with its leaders, and divided by conflicting visions of what the country was supposed to become, regardless of political identity. The sentiment of betrayal by politicians who overpromised, by allies who underdelivered, by a strategy sold as inevitable victory, will fester. When that happens, the external enemy evaporates, and the internal enemies become visible.

Paraphrasing James C. Davies: nations don’t break from weakness, but from the collapse of the expectations they were led to believe—often for someone else’s agenda. Ukraine risks entering a postwar environment defined not by Russian aggression, but by Ukrainian fragmentation—regional mistrust, ethnic resentments, ideological vendettas, and political scapegoating—basically a hellscape that will affect all facets of life. That is how Balkanization begins: not through secession, but through the mentality of it. The idea that one’s real enemies live closer than Moscow has already taken root. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that “close” doesn’t just mean political factions or regional divisions within Ukraine. It also means the people who fled. When millions sought refuge in places like Poland, France, Germany, and elsewhere, they escaped the war physically—but they will return to a country transformed, hardened, and angry.

Those who stayed and fought may look at those who left not as fellow citizens coming home, but as outsiders who abandoned them when everything was on the line. Resentment is a powerful force, especially in a society held together by shared suffering. And when the war ends, those refugees will walk back across the border not to open arms, but to suspicion. They will be seen as people who missed the crucible, who didn’t carry the burden, who didn’t bleed with everyone else — yet now expect to reclaim the full privileges of citizenship.

This is how social fractures deepen: not only between east and west, soldier and politician, nationalist and pragmatist — but between those who endured and those who escaped. The enemy “close by” becomes not just the internal divisions born from war, but the distrust of those returning from safety to a nation that no longer sees them as the same.

But the internal fractures are only half the story. The other half is what leaves the country entirely.

This war has produced a generation of men who know nothing but combat. Many will return home to an economy that cannot absorb them—no jobs, no prospects, and no reason to embrace a peace that feels like defeat. That is when the training they received, the weapons they carried, and the networks they formed become a different kind of currency.

When the war ends, Ukraine—and Russia—will not simply demobilize soldiers. They will release them into a global marketplace where violence is both a commodity and a career. What emerges next is a conflict market for mercenaries: a worldwide, often illicit, and highly lucrative trade in private military services, where hardened fighters are hired for combat, security, training, or political enforcement.

Peace creates unemployment. The world provides opportunities. This market thrives on instability, and it will eagerly absorb thousands of men who have spent years learning the trade of war. For these veterans—Ukrainian, Russian, Chechen, and foreign volunteers (Colombian)—their experience becomes a portable skill set. Whether for money, purpose, or simply because peace offers them nothing, many will migrate into this shadow economy of conflict zones stretching from the Sahel to the Caucasus to the Middle East. Here, violence is no longer tied to national defense. It becomes transactional.

Ukraine will face a double blow: a country struggling with its identity at home while fueling instability abroad. The front lines may stop moving in Ukraine, but the war will continue—in the identities people cling to, and in the fighters who take their craft elsewhere. The tragedy is not merely that the war could have been avoided. It’s that its consequences will outlive the signatures on any peace agreement.

The day after is not peace.

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Washington’s War Against Eurasia in the Americas

In this undated political cartoon about U.S. expansionism in the Pacific, Uncle Sam straddles the Americas while wielding a big stick inscribed with the words “Monroe Doctrine 1824-1905.” The stick is a metaphor for military force. The caption reads “Expansion! The western patrol’s long stretch.” Getty Images.

Introduction: The Return of an Old Doctrine

Two centuries after President James Monroe warned European powers against interference in the Western Hemisphere, the United States finds itself resurrecting the spirit—if not the letter—of that doctrine. Today, the adversaries are no longer colonial monarchies but twenty-first-century powers: China and Russia.

The battleground is not Cuba or Nicaragua, like in the 1960s or 1980s, but Colombia and Venezuela, where the United States now invokes the familiar rhetoric of the “war on drugs” while pursuing a broader, unspoken aim—to curtail Eurasian influence and maintain strategic dominance in its own hemisphere.

What is unfolding in Colombia and Venezuela is a hemispheric echo of the Thucydides Trap—where the United States, long the unchallenged hegemon of the Americas, now confronts the creeping advance of rising Eurasian powers. The “drug war” is real, but it is also a symptom of strategic anxiety: the fear of displacement in its own backyard. At the heart of that anxiety stand Colombia and Venezuela—the lynchpins of the hemisphere’s balance:  

Colombia, the two-ocean gateway  

Venezuela, the energy titan with the world’s largest oil reserves

Together, they form the pressure point where old doctrines collide with new realities.

Colombia: The Fulcrum of Two Oceans

Few nations are as strategically crucial to the Americas as Colombia. It’s the only South American nation with access to both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. That dual maritime identity is almost unmatched.

Militarily, this makes Colombia a hemispheric hinge—a base from which U.S. forces can project power into both oceanic theaters, monitor transnational trafficking routes, and maintain logistical access to the Panama Canal and the Andean corridor.

For Washington, losing influence in Colombia would not simply mean losing an ally; it would mean sacrificing a key strategic partner and ceding maritime control over the entire northern arc of South America. This space doesn’t just connect Atlantic trade routes to Pacific supply chains—it links the Caribbean directly to the Indo-Pacific strategic arena.

But the very geography that makes Colombia indispensable to Washington also makes it irresistible to its rivals. In recent years, Bogotá has charted a more independent course—restoring ties with Venezuela, distancing itself from U.S. policy, and opening economic channels with China. Under President Petro, Bogotá has reoriented its foreign relations around regional autonomy rather than dependency, marking the end of automatic alignment with Washington—for now. This shift has unsettled the United States. For decades, Colombia was the cornerstone of U.S. influence in Latin America—a reliable base for counternarcotics, surveillance, and regional diplomacy. Yet the landscape is shifting. China is now Colombia’s second-largest trading partner, investing capital in infrastructure, as seen in Venezuela, while Russia’s influence extends through its deepening alliance with Caracas. Together, these powers are quietly eroding U.S. dominance in the one region Washington once considered untouchable. Now, it is a matter of strategic competition.

The “Drug War” and the Strategic Mask

Officially, U.S. operations in Colombia and neighboring Venezuela are framed in the language of counternarcotics—targeting drug cartels, trafficking networks, and the corruption they sustain. But beneath that language lies a more complex reality.

The narrative surrounding the “drug war” gives Washington legitimacy to carry out covert operations in the region. This policy masks its true intentions, enabling the U.S. to deploy resources, strengthen regional alliances, and ultimately justify interventions that align with its broader geopolitical objectives.

In practice, it operates as a strategic mask for the containment of Chinese and Russian economic and military penetration. This is not to say the drug problem is imaginary. This is not to say that drug trafficking, cartel violence, and state collusion remain serious challenges, because it does, to varying degrees. Yet the U.S. emphasis on these threats conveniently aligns with its larger geostrategic anxieties—namely, the encroachment of rival powers in its historic sphere of influence.

Russia’s Footprint: Military Presence and Political Shielding

Russia has entrenched itself as Venezuela’s principal military patron. Since the early 2000s, Moscow has sold billions of dollars’ worth of arms to Caracas, including Sukhoi fighter jets, Mi-series helicopters, S-300 surface-to-air systems, and T-72 tanks, among other items. Russian advisers and technicians maintain and train Venezuelan forces, while joint naval and air exercises routinely project power into the Caribbean.

Beyond the military sphere, the Russian state has embedded itself in Venezuela’s oil industry through government-to-government financing, naphtha supplies, technical assistance, and bilateral energy agreements—both to gain leverage and to help Caracas circumvent U.S. sanctions. The relationship functions as mutually assured protection between two sanctioned states.

Moscow’s objective is not merely commercial. It is symbolic and strategic: to plant a flag in America’s backyard and show that Russia can still challenge U.S. power far from Eurasia.

China’s Economic Entrenchment

While Russia supplies arms and advisers, China supplies money and infrastructure. Over the past two decades, Beijing has extended more than $60 billion in loans to Venezuela, making it China’s largest debtor in the Western Hemisphere. Chinese firms have invested heavily in mining, telecommunications, and oil projects, while digital giants such as Huawei have established surveillance and communications networks across Venezuela.

In Colombia, China’s footprint is subtler but growing—focused on infrastructure, technology, and trade diversification. As Bogotá seeks alternatives to U.S. capital and military aid, Beijing offers credit lines and construction deals that quietly bind local economies to Chinese supply chains.

For Washington, this is the real threat: a slow economic colonization of the hemisphere under the guise of development and partnership.

Venezuela: The World’s Largest, and Dirtiest, Oil Prize

At the heart of this regional struggle lies oil—an immense and paradoxical resource. Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven reserves, surpassing even Saudi Arabia’s. Yet most of it is extra-heavy, sulfur-rich crude—the infamous “dirty oil”—which is costly to extract, energy-intensive to refine, and environmentally ruinous to process.

This reality breeds a dual dynamic: vast potential wealth locked behind near-total dependence on foreign technology and capital. For China and Russia, Venezuelan oil is strategic leverage—a wedge into Western markets and a grip on a resource that still powers the global economy. For the United States, it is both a prize and a problem: a colossal reserve that cannot be ignored, even as sanctions and politics block the path.

Monroe Doctrine 2.0

What is unfolding in Colombia and Venezuela today carries the unmistakable imprint of a modern Monroe Doctrine—repackaged for an era of multipolar rivalry.

EraRival PowersU.S. JustificationUnderlying Motive
19th CenturyEuropean EmpiresProtect hemispheric sovereigntySecure U.S. primacy in the Americas
Cold WarSoviet Union & CubaContain communismPrevent ideological and military encroachment
21st CenturyChina & RussiaCombat narcotics and corruptionCounter Eurasian influence and protect access to resources

In one sense, the language has evolved—from sovereignty to security, from colonialism to cartels—but the core principle endures: no external great power shall dominate the Western Hemisphere.

Conclusion: The Shadow Doctrine

Whether framed as counternarcotics, democracy promotion, or regional stability, U.S. actions in Colombia and Venezuela reveal a deeper continuity of purpose. The Monroe Doctrine never vanished—it evolved.

Colombia’s two-ocean gateway, Venezuela’s vast “dirty oil,” and the rising presence of China and Russia have fused to make northern South America the new proving ground for America’s hemispheric resolve. The “drug war” is real—but it also serves as cover for something older, larger, and far more strategic: a shadow war for influence, waged under the banner of security, in a region where geography and resources once again dictate the balance of power.

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Neo-Deep Battle Fires: How Artillery and Drones Are Rewriting Depth Warfare

Neo–Deep Battle Fires: Russia’s Drone and Missile Campaign Across Ukraine (Oct 2025)

Earlier this week, a map shared on X by Big Serge visualized Russia’s ongoing drone and missile campaign across Ukraine in October 2025. Such maps have become predictable, yet the growing tempo and scope of these strikes highlight a doctrinal evolution — the application of deep battle logic through modern precision fires. Call it Neo–Deep Battle Fires.

Each colored line or arrow usually represents a specific category of munition:
Red / Orange lines: cruise missiles (e.g., Kalibr, Kh-101, Iskander-K)
Yellow / Green lines: Shahed/Geran-2 loitering drones
Blue or Purple lines: air-launched missiles (e.g., Kh-22, Kh-59)
These converge on Ukrainian cities and regions, including Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, and Lviv.

What is Deep Battle?

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, see my longer piece Soviet Deep Operations Doctrine: Origins and Key Theorists. Briefly: Soviet Deep Battle was developed in the 1920s–1930s to break the stalemate of positional warfare. It used combined-arms echelons to concentrate mobility and shock at decisive points, allocating minimum forces to secure flanks while the main mobile force punched deeply into the enemy’s operational depth. The goal was to destroy the enemy’s command, logistics, and reserves — collapsing the entire defensive system rather than grinding down a frontline by attrition.

A central component of classical Deep Battle was massive artillery and airpower: preparatory barrages to blind and suppress defenders, followed by waves of mechanized exploitation.

Artillery’s historical role

Artillery — the “god of war” — enabled Deep Battle by suppressing defenses, destroying command nodes, and disrupting logistics far behind the frontline. In the interwar years and during World War II, synchronized indirect fires, air strikes, and maneuver created windows of opportunity for breakthroughs and deep exploitation.

Note: “Deep Battle Fires” is not an official Soviet or Russian doctrinal label. It’s an analytical term used to describe the practice of applying fires deep into an opponent’s system.

Russian artillery and fires today

Russia’s contemporary fires emphasize precision and efficiency. Drones provide spotting, terminal guidance, and battle-damage assessment, while modern artillery employs precision-guided munitions (PGMs) for greater accuracy and efficiency. Smart shells have made targeting far more precise.

Increased Vulnerability: Dense troop concentrations are now highly vulnerable to detection and strike, forcing units to disperse and dig in. What artillery cannot destroy, first-person-view (radio-controlled) drones can—serving as smart shells, while others act as miniature cruise missiles.

Centralized vs. Decentralized: While long-range strikes remain centrally coordinated, drone integration has enabled greater decentralization at the tactical level, creating a hybrid fire-control model. Where WWII-era doctrine relied on massed, saturating barrages, modern practice prefers fewer, more accurate strikes supported by sensor networks.

Key changes include:

  • Shift to accuracy: Fewer rounds, higher probability of effect per shot.
  • Drone integration: Unmanned systems enable targeting, correction, and assessment in near real-time.
  • Precision munitions: Guided artillery and smart projectiles increase lethality per round.
  • Rapid counterbattery: Radar + drones enable quick interdiction of enemy guns.
  • Dispersal & vulnerability: Dense concentrations are easier to detect and strike, driving forces to disperse.
  • Mix of centralization/decentralization: Tactical decentralization for survivability, operational centralization for coordinated long-range fires.

Comparative summary

WWII Deep Battle (classical)

  • Mass & quantity: massed artillery barrages.
  • Preparatory barrage: large pre-attack fires to suppress and blind.
  • High rate of fire: intense short windows of saturation.
  • Decisive blunt effect: artillery as a sledgehammer enabling mechanized exploitation.

Modern Russian Fires (Neo–Deep Battle Fires)

  • Shift to accuracy: “less is more” — maximize effect per round.
  • Integrated with drones: sensor-to-shooter links improve efficiency.
  • Precision-guided munitions: smart shells and guided munitions.
  • Improved counterbattery: rapid detection and interdiction of enemy guns.
  • Increased vulnerability: dense formations are high-value, high-risk targets.

Operational effect and implications

Russia’s massed drone and missile strikes project effects across Ukraine’s depth, mirroring Deep Battle’s objective: degrade logistics, morale, and sustainment beyond the front. Drones act as low-cost precision bombers and guided weapons, saturating air defenses and forcing Ukraine to disperse forces across a far wider area.

Operational outcomes include:

  • Attrition by depth: continuous pressure on logistics, power, and transport erodes operational tempo.
  • Spread of defenses: units and air defenses are stretched thin, reducing local combat superiority.
  • Psychological & economic strain: recurring strikes increase civilian stress and divert resources.
  • Strategic paralysis: a reactive defender loses initiative and offensive options.
  • Systems vulnerability: concentrated logistics and energy nodes are high-payoff targets; predictable transport corridors enable persistent interdiction.
  • Repair & resilience gaps: slow repair cycles and centralized infrastructure amplify damage effects.

Conclusion

Unlike in World War II — when Deep Battle focused on the front line and the operational depth immediately behind it — modern Russian operations have expanded the concept to encompass an entire national battlespace. Russia is gradually extending vertical envelopment across the full breadth of Ukraine, employing drones, loitering munitions, and missile strikes to make every layer of Ukrainian territory, from trench to power grid, unsafe.

Neo–Deep Battle Fires preserves the classical Deep Battle objective — collapsing an opponent’s defensive system across depth — but replaces massed, saturating barrages with networked presision using automation and AI: drones, precision‑guided munitions, and sensor‑to‑shooter links, together with strike assessment in near‑real time, create a semi‑autonomous cycle of reconnaissance, targeting, and destruction that achieves the same operational effect through surgical, distributed fires rather than brute volume.

The result is an evolved form of Deep Battle: not confined to linear fronts or shallow depths, but multidimensional—horizontal, vertical, and informational. The tools have changed—from barrages to algorithms, from mass to precision—but the logic endures: to paralyze the enemy’s defensive system across the total battlespace.

Sources

Citino, Robert M. “Going Deep: The Red Army in World War II.” Robert M. Citino – Accessed 9/27/2025. https://www.historynet.com/going-deep-the-red-army-in-world-war-ii/

Cranny-Evans, Sam. “Russia’s Artillery War in Ukraine: Challenges and Innovations.” Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), August 9, 2023.

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Military Failure, the Need for Innovation, and the Day After: A study of Ukraine’s failures, the need for modernization and adaptation, and how politics—not arms alone—will decide what comes after the war.

Valery Zaluzhny and Viktor Muzhenko, two former leaders of Ukraine’s armed forces who remain active in various roles, have recently offered starkly similar assessments of the war from different perspectives. Muzhenko diagnoses the military’s systemic failures, while Zaluzhny charts a path forward through innovation and adaptation. Together, their perspectives reveal an inescapable truth: war is the continuation of politics—at the cost of the state’s health.

The Problem with Ukraine’s Military Failures
Viktor Muzhenko

Texty.org.ua, a Ukrainian independent media outlet, published an interesting article in December 2024, in which they interviewed General Viktor Muzhenko, a former Ukrainian Chief of the General Staff and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019, who is now a leading researcher at the Armed Forces Research Institute. The title of the article is “We had a chance to win on the battlefield and still have it. General Muzhenko on how to stop the Russian.”

You can read the article for yourself, but here is a breakdown of his overall argument and concern. Below are the major points Muzhenko raises, with selected illustrative quotes and implications:

ThemeKey Observations / CritiquesImplications / Recommendations
Russian initiative & existential framingHe acknowledges that Russia has the upper hand (i.e., dictates terms) and has achieved tactical successes, but cautions that tactical gains do not necessarily equate to a strategic victory.He recommends (obviously) that Ukraine should not accept the narrative of “we are losing” and must maintain strategic resilience and correct internal defects.
Mistakes in negotiation and posture early in warHe argues that in the earliest days, Ukraine engaged in negotiations with Russia over territorial outcomes, without sufficient guarantees. This signaled a weak position.He implies that Ukraine must avoid negotiating from a position of weakness and maintain firmness in negotiations.
Decentralized command vs disciplineEarly mobilization and resistance benefited from decentralization and initiative at lower levels, which is natural. However, over time, this grew chaotic and undermined coherence due to a loss of leadership and a lack of capable, well-trained replacements (e.g., unexplained retreats in Luhansk, poor coordination).Decentralization must be tempered, starting with disciplined command and accountability.
Mobilization and personnel policy failuresThe recruitment process was and still is indiscriminate, as men were being forcibly taken off the street and out of public places. This approach often results in specialists being mismatched—for example, individuals with valuable civilian expertise are placed in general infantry roles rather than employed where their skills could be decisive. Such practices erode loyalty and compromise fighting spirit. As a result, commanders assumed they had unlimited human resources. It also does not help when you have frequent leadership changes (generals and colonels), which have undermined continuity and institutional memory.To solve this problem, more selective and strategic mobilization is required. Stability in leadership and career progression must be respected.
Engineering, fortifications, and terrain neglectMuzhenko criticizes the neglect of basic engineering measures—such as trenches and fortifications—and the insufficient preparation of terrain before operations. He highlights specific cases, including the Kharkiv and Kursk offensives, where the timing, objectives, or overall design were poorly conceived. In his view, persisting too long in an offensive posture left Ukrainian forces exposed when they should have shifted to defense.Any large-scale operations must integrate engineering, terrain analysis, and realistic objectives; be ready to shift posture.
Flawed counteroffensive planning and unrealistic expectationsHe notes that the counteroffensive was often overhyped—shaped more by public expectations than by operational realities—and underprepared in key areas such as reconnaissance, engineering support, manpower, and overall plan design. In some cases, offensives were even launched against sectors where Russian defenses were strongest. Big mistake.Ukraine should avoid “euphoric” expectations, plan realistically, and ensure all supporting groundwork (reconnaissance, engineering, staging) is methodically done.
Leadership comparisons and delegation issuesMuzhenko argued that General Oleksandr Syrskyi was more professionally prepared and experienced than former Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny, who now serves as Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom. He also criticized the tendency to use delegated authority not as a tool of effective command, but as a means of evading responsibility.Effective leadership must combine delegated authority with oversight, accountability, and strategic continuity to ensure effective management.
Societal mobilization and training of the populationHe urges a national conversation: beyond soldiers, civilians must contribute much more to the war effort. Ukraine should restart general military training for individuals under 25, provide psychological preparation, and refine the training structure for mobilized personnel.Victory demands a total-war mobilization, engaging the entire society, both materially and psychologically.
Defining victory correctlyMuzhenko’s conception of victory is the survival of Ukraine as a sovereign state and a functioning nation with a military, not necessarily recapturing every inch of territory immediately.Having realistic and strategic definitions of objectives helps prevent overreach and the misallocation of resources.

Overall Argument

Muzhenko is correct that Ukraine squandered early opportunities through a lack of leadership and foresight and continues to suffer from deep systemic flaws in mobilization, planning, and preparation. Unless these problems are corrected, neither tactical gains nor Western support will translate into victory. True success requires disciplined command, smarter use of manpower, realistic planning, and above all, a shift toward total societal mobilization—because survival as a sovereign state depends not only on soldiers at the front but on the whole nation adapting to a long, grinding war. Yet this adaptation can only succeed if the Ukrainian people believe their government’s actions are just and worthy of sacrifice.

The Solution to Ukraine’s Military Problem

Valery Zaluzhny

Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, the man whom former General Viktor Muzhenko criticized, argues in his article “The role of innovation as the basis of a sustainable resistance strategy in depriving Russia of the opportunity to impose its terms through war” that in today’s conflict, Ukraine must build a strategy of sustainable resistance grounded in technological and innovation superiority, so as to deprive Russia of the ability to impose its terms via force. He claims that conventional approaches and mass assaults are no longer sufficient given the modern battlefield dynamics. Instead, Ukraine must regain and maintain the technological initiative, adapt its military and institutional structures accordingly, and harness innovation to break out of the “positional deadlock” on the front and force Russia to respond to Ukraine’s terms. All of which is correct. The key highlights of Zaluzhny’s argument start at the major Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) exhibition in London (2025), billed as the world’s largest military exhibition.

Observation at DSEI-2025 & the role of innovation

Zaluzhnyi notes that while many of the exhibited weapon systems are relics of past wars, Ukraine’s companies are showcasing cutting-edge innovations that attract both military and commercial interest. He highlights foreign systems explicitly incorporating lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war, especially in UAVs (drones), electronic warfare (EW), and artificial intelligence (AI).

The positional stalemate (deadlock) analogy

Zaluzhnyi compares the situation on the front to World War I’s positional warfare, characterized by entrenched lines, layered defenses, and limited maneuver room. He argues that both sides in the Russo-Ukrainian war have entered a “positional deadlock,” where achieving an operational breakthrough is extremely difficult. In such a scenario, massed force or classical maneuvers lose efficacy; the side that can leverage new technologies and sustain itself will have the advantage.

Drones, reconnaissance, and disruption of surprise

Drones (especially small tactical drones) have become central to reconnaissance, targeting, and battlefield awareness. Their presence makes any concentration of forces, particularly on the offensive, highly vulnerable. Due to the integration of drones, long-range precision weapons, and real-time reconnaissance, surprise has become almost impossible. The battlefield has grown more “transparent” due to sensor networks, signals, and observations, all of which feed into decision systems.

Threats to personnel/survivability

However, while the battlefield has grown more transparent, large concentrations of troops, even in defensive positions, are vulnerable to drone and artillery strikes. Thus, defense must shift toward dispersed, semi-autonomous small units that can survive under constant threat. The article mentions that in current conditions, 80% of losses (personnel and equipment) stem from drone-based or drone-assisted attacks. The “kill zone” is expanding due to the “deep battle fires” doctrine, where the goal is not just to hit the frontlines, but to make the entire depth of the enemy’s territory unsafe. Traditional rear areas are no longer safe because drones extend the reach of fire and observation.

Emerging technological challenges & AI/autonomy

He also warns that as AI and autonomous systems mature, the battlefield will be further transformed, potentially removing humans from direct exposure in some roles. However, he admits that current autonomous systems are not capable of replacing humans on a large scale in combat.

Institutional and state-level innovation

The author argues that for Ukraine to maintain technological momentum, it must adopt a national-level strategy for defense innovation, including clear responsibilities, R&D programs, and institutional backing. It should mobilize software engineers and technologists (many of whom are already in the armed forces) to support innovation efforts. He highlights the challenge of accessing microprocessors (“chips”) due to geopolitical bottlenecks (China, Taiwan, and the USA) and the need to form strategic alliances for supply and technological cooperation. He calls for scientific and technological isolation of Russia, and leveraging Western research institutions (for example, CERN or the European Organization for Nuclear Research) as partners.

Strategic implication: turning war into a losing proposition for Russia

The overall goal of Ukraine’s innovation-based sustainable resistance is to force Russia into adapting and absorbing costs, rather than letting Russia dictate the pace or terms. If Ukraine can “get out” of the positional deadlock first — via technology, adaptation, and institutional capacity — then Russia will be compelled to respond. Accordingly, Ukraine must act fast in adopting, scaling, and innovating new systems before Russia does.

Overall Argument

His overall argument is that war with Russia has reached a positional stalemate similar to World War I, where mass assaults and conventional tactics no longer bring decisive results. In this new environment, the key to survival and victory lies in innovation and technology — especially drones, AI, electronic warfare, and precision systems. Ukraine cannot rely on manpower or traditional methods; instead, it must adopt a strategy of sustainable resistance built on technological superiority, adaptation, and institutional support for defense innovation.

Conclusion

After reading Valery Zaluzhny and Viktor Muzhenko’s articles, one is reminded of Clausewitz’s famous observation that “war is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.” Both generals underscore this truth, showing that success depends on more than the clash of arms. The political conditions that shape war must be established well before fighting begins. When diplomacy fails and war does come, the “other means” will only be as effective as the political foundation beneath them—one that determines the equipment, the doctrine, and ultimately the health of the military.

Yet in the end, both would agree that everything comes down to the power of politics, plain and simple. Ukraine, NATO, and the front will ultimately decide the war’s outcome—and what future Ukraine will have left, if any.

Bibliography

Muzhenko, Viktor. “We Had a Chance to Win on the Battlefield and Still Have It: General Muzhenko on How to Stop the Russians.” Texty.org.ua, December 9, 2024. https://texty.org.ua/fragments/114022/we-had-a-chance-to-win-on-the-battlefield-and-still-have-it-general-muzhenko-on-how-to-stop-the-russians/

The Role of Innovation as the Basis of a Strategy of Sustainable Resistance in Depriving Russia of the Ability to Impose Its Conditions through War.” ZN.UA, September 24, 2025. https://zn.ua/ukr/war/rol-innovatsij-jak-osnovi-stratehiji-stijkoho-oporu-u-pozbavlenni-rosiji-mozhlivosti-navjazuvati-svoji-umovi-cherez-vijnu.html