Socially conservative left-liberal neoconservative progressive (not a centrist)
Jan 18 • 37 tweets • 6 min read
So do Trump's threats against Greenland undermine the political science consensus on the Democratic Peace Theory?
I don't think so, but let's explore this question.🧵
The Democratic Peace Theory posits that liberal democracies have an unusually low tendency to go to war with each other. Though this empirical observation seems to be very overwhelming, the supposed mechanisms to explain it are extremely vague and unconvincing.
Feb 20, 2025 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
I'm sorry: I have crunched some numbers and Kamala Harris was officially a weak candidate.
In this thread, I will aim to disentangle candidate strength from "national environment" (i.e. how well Democrats or Republicans are doing generally).🧵
Looking at House election results in 2024, Kamala Harris performed at about the 51.8 percentile among House Democrats in the two-party vote share, adjusted for incumbency, suggesting that she was essentially dead-even in candidate strength with Trump.
Jan 28, 2025 • 37 tweets • 6 min read
I used to think the Palestinian cause was completely inexplicable and idiosyncratic because, anathema to almost every other national liberation movement, they made absolutist demands instead of the normal pragmatism that comes with desperately fighting for an independent state.🧵
In this thread, I contrasted the uncompromising nature of the Palestinian cause with the Irish and Timorese liberation movements:
When a country withdraws from a disputed territory while other disputes remain unresolved it does not always fail and lead to war. Many times, it succeeds. So what happened in Gaza?🧵
Indonesia has been at peace with East Timor since its independence in 1999, in spite of continuing Indonesian rule over other Christian-majority territories including West Timor. Since the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, Ireland has never tried to violently retake Northern Ireland.
Oct 13, 2023 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
I will argue in this thread that Palestinian radicalism stems in large part from the situation of the Palestinians.🧵
This is a painful argument for me to make right now. The overwhelming impulse of most people after such horrific violence as we just saw is to express unreserved solidarity with Israel.
Sep 21, 2023 • 30 tweets • 4 min read
Did the US support for the Afghan Mujahideen in the 1980s contribute to the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s? Let's evaluate this controversial claim.🧵
A common misconception is that the US backed the Taliban against the USSR. This is a conflation of the various Mujahideen warlords who fought against the USSR with the Taliban, which did not form until 1994.
Apr 14, 2023 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
Given that we appear to neither be pursuing a policy of returning to the Iran deal nor regime change in Tehran, it seems that we have more or less acquiesced to a nuclear-armed Iran in the near future. Let's see what that looks like.🧵
The optimistic (and I think likely) interpretation is that Iran is seeking to acquire nuclear weapons as a defensive hedge against a US-backed regime change. This is essentially the same strategy as North Korea.
Apr 13, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
My answers to these questions:
- None, the US clearly *could* abandon Taiwan, and may very well.
- Yes, because under the current US-led liberal order, they will eventually be deposed in a popular revolution, and Xi Jinping reversed any hope of the CCP willingly liberalizing.
- Economic growth could just as easily be a net-negative for the CCP. Development *increases* the probability of revolution in the long run; see North Korea's approach to the issue. They really only care about economic growth because it allows them to build up their military.
Apr 13, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I have also considered this. Some thoughts:
- Yes, it is a possibility. We must take even unlikely security risks seriously.
- North Korea will only roll the dice on such a move if they think they can win the war, not just to do a favor for the CCP.
- North Korea would be favored to lose such a war, so it seems unlikely that they would attempt such a risky endeavor. However, America may be too bogged down in Taiwan to quickly come to South Korea's aid, giving North Korea the best shot they could ever hope for.
Apr 12, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The largest language groups tend to be associated with some ancient technological innovation that allowed for dramatic expansion:
Domestication of horses in the Eurasian steppe: Indo-European, Turkic, Mongolic
Advanced boat technology in Taiwan & Philippines: Austronesian
Are there any other examples?
Mar 22, 2023 • 31 tweets • 5 min read
Recently, Sweden, Finland, and Norway have all adopted highly restrictive standards towards minors transitioning in response to rising concerns of a social contagion of transgender self-ID. In this thread, I will caution against these policies being widely adopted.🧵
Understanding the experience of gender dysphoria is more or less impossible for anyone who does not have it. The common explanation that "I feel as if I am a woman trapped in a man's body" obviously makes no sense, metaphorically or otherwise.
