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@agl@infosec.exchange
Post #110119
2026-01-03 16:48 UTC
Even when the underlying reality changes, the status quo has a strong grip. People are deeply creatures of habit. It's also difficult for the emerging understanding to overcome the barrier of becoming "common knowledge" and, prior to that, people will follow old patterns because they assume that it's expected.
High-salience events create new common knowledge and so lead to larger changes in behaviour than might otherwise be justified. For example, the '56 Suez crisis was a high-salience event that communicated that world power had shifted from Europe to the US. Its impact was much greater than a narrow analysis would convey.
The Russo-Ukrainian war and today's events are also high-salience, and they communicate that there aren't any rules any longer.
One consequence is that, in the absence of Pax(ish) Americana, the only effective defense is a nuclear one. This was well understood: a lot of the motivation for creating the post-WWII system was to create an alternative to nuclear weapons. But Libya gave up its program and Gaddafi ended up dead. Ukraine gave up its weapons and got invaded. Venezuela didn't have them.
It'll take a while for this to play out, but I suspect keeping it in mind will help with understanding the news over the next decade or so.
Replies (3)
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@agl@infosec.exchange As I said elsewhere, I'm really going to miss the Pax Americana. I won't deny that it was imperfect and unevenly distributed. But damn, it sure seems a whole lot better than whatever this thing is that we're blindly stumbling into.
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@agl@infosec.exchange Yep, as the years go by I become more convinced Brazil should have developed its nuclear triad program when it had the chance.
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@agl@infosec.exchange Not disagreeing on the conclusion, but TBH inaction on Budapest memorandum justified by Russia being a nuclear power in 2022 already sent a sufficient message to anyone listening, and the same narrative wrt Israel in Gaza have cemented that perception by mid-2024.
In turn the nuclear proliferation makes use of nuclear weapons in minor conflicts and their normalization and escalation unavoidable, unfortunately, with fallout consequences for everyone.
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