We're so obsessed with Islamic insurgency - see Kilcullen's The Accidental Guerrilla - that we risk ignoring other types of insurgency. Like the Naxalite...
Peter Hodge
Peter Hodge is a New Zealander. He blogs about global affairs at The Strategist. Peter has served in government (in national security, nation and community building fields) and the army, and worked in the mining industry in Western Australia. His childhood was spent in New Zealand and Malaysia. He has travelled and worked in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, North and South America, Australia, and the South Pacific.
“Spectre Force” – no managers need apply
Six years ago I wrote a thriller, "Death Ground"*. Set in a dystopian 2019, the manuscript's protagonist was Jeff Strangford, a burnt out undercover operative...
Applying Kilcullen’s ideas to urban regeneration
What do you do if you're fighting a counterinsurgency campaign and you run out of troops, western troops that is? According to David Kilcullen in The...
Micro-credit scheme fast, simple and direct
After reading Alex's post about Kiva, I decided to sign up with the web-based micro-credit lender. I lent money to a woman in the Philippines who wants to buy...
Is Australia’s defence strategy “goofy paranoia”?
Australian army signaller on patrol in East Timor, 2007 (photo: David Axe). American strategist Tom Barnett thinks that Australia's Defence White Paper is "a...
Criminal gangs and counterinsurgency
I love a gritty internet takedown. At Travels with Shiloh, Dean tears apart a Small Wars Journal article by John P Sullivan on 'criminal insurgencies and...
Kilcullen on Islamic radicalization in Europe
Last week Alex mentioned that Global Dashboard is a "hotbed of David Kilcullen fandom". Bravo! I'm a fan too, and I've been reading Kilcullen's The Accidental...
Kaplan on Kim Jong-il (or, what has Kaplan been smoking?)
Oh dear, what has Robert D Kaplan been smoking? Here he is writing about Kim Jong-il, North Korea's recent aggressive actions and the strategic situation in...
“Airstrip One” of the Asia Pacific
For the last 15 years I've studied strategic developments in the Asia Pacific region. But until fairly recently North Korea has been something of a...
More from Global Dashboard
Let’s make climate a culture war!
If the politics of climate change end up polarised, is that so bad? No – it’s disastrous. Or so I’ve long thought. Look at the US – where climate is even more polarised than abortion. Result: decades of flip flopping. Ambition under Clinton; reversal...
Big Elephants and Small Islands: getting beyond the New Aid Orthodoxy
Official development assistance (ODA) – or aid – is a small but conspicuous pillar of the international order, and its frailties are being exposed by COVID as surely as those of the other foundations of this order. The assumptions underpinning aid and its management...
Uncertainty and Humanitarian Action: What Donald Rumsfeld can teach us
Since its onset, one striking feature of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has been the narrative power of its novelty. This global narrative depicts COVID-19 pushing humanity towards a ‘historical divide’ of BC and AC (before and after COVID-19), where unknown,...