Dear Wormwood,

The first time, hold off on deploying troops for a few days. Allow this scandal of "negligent" delay to spur spontaneous popular demands for a military presence. This will ease the subsequent military occupations of other cities.

Love,
Screwtape

The First Casualty

The so-called War on Terror is simply the latest manifestation of the new order of things, of what we may call the Permanent Warfare State. In such a situation, the old republican virtues of freedom and self-government cannot survive.

Airport-borne Disease Model

The mathematical formulae that describe people’s movement through global air travel could be harnessed to control the spread of deadly diseases such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) or influenza, researchers say.

Asabiya

In the second century BC, the Greek writer Polybius proposed that societies are like organisms, which are born, grow, age and die, leading him to predict the decline of the Roman Empire 600 years before the event. The idea of a mechanical science of history became popular in the 18th century, and by the 19th century was held by most "progressive" thinkers. Turchin's title (War and Peace and War) alludes to Tolstoy's speculations in War and Peace that history is deterministic, directed by "forces" such as those invoked by Isaac Newton.