Pinned post
Notes On: The Post-Westphalian Landscape
1. The Wall Street Journal carries a piece today reporting that “more than 200 million people across 60 countries live in areas controlled or contested by armed non-state groups.” These range from areas that are totally controlled by narco gangs to nations drowning in rebel fighting and religious terrorist extremism. [wsj.com/world/africa/t…]
2. These areas span the globe. Some remain, at face value, countries. They have UN representation and recognisable systems of governance, even if underneath the sheen, it is actually a section of land run by violent & smart factions.
3. We exist in a moment of change. Technological change yes, but also a more transactional approach to violence, and a withdrawal of a sustained Western funding to police the periphery - international personnel deployed on multilateral peace operations fell 49% between 2016 and 2025 alone [sipri.org/sites/default/…] The focus now is largely directed towards current conventional wars - Ukraine, Iran and so on, with an eye on future China-related conflicts.
4. This means we have two systems at play. The first is the collection of countries that understand the world through the Westphalian lens, who play - or pretend to play - by UN and global governance rules. Let us call this the Westphalian Establishment.
5. The second is the motley collection of failed states and new groups, many of the former just arbitrarily created decades or centuries ago, which now host smart and brutal factions and non-state actors. Let us call this the Emergents, which includes this wide set of actors.
6. As with any time two parallel systems come into existence - two sets of frontiers - you will find people and ideas that bleed between them. Negotiators, merchants, dealers, miners - Forward Deployed Vagabonds. Both groups require each other.
7. The global information and media narrative is controlled by the Westphalian Establishment. The Emergents occasionally leak through onto the radar of those living under the Westphalian Establishment through clips of extreme violence going viral, or stories of significant narcotics busts, or occasional documentaries. But mostly it is out of sight and out of mind.
8. But the Emergents exist. They increasingly control sections of critical supply chains (you need to email Houthi administrators to request the ability to traverse the Straits unmolested, even in a country still nominally run by a Westphalian Establishment team), and run shadow governments from within fallen states. However, it would be foolish for the Westphalian Establishment to write off the models being pioneered by some of these groups.
9. For example: despite being swamped in civil war for the majority of my adult life, by 2019 the Houthis were global pioneers in solar power adoption with over 80% of households in Al-Bayda governorate utilising solar panels [theborys.substack.com]. Elsewhere, members of the Emergents have deployed the latest technologies to further their own systems - from Starlink aiding Myanmar’s scams, to drones across the African continent. Notably, the Westphalian Establishment has a level of tolerance for this IF it is dressed up in forms they understand - shadow companies, hidden away in havens - or if it doesn’t harm their own interests.
10. An ongoing area worth watching closely: how do the Emergents use technologies? Do they seek to apply them to good or bad ends? How much of the current ‘risk’ thinking factors this in?
11. Finally, a small handful of people I would describe with affection as Forward Deployed Vagabonds have relayed stories of the opportunities that have arisen in the grey areas between these two systems. In Somalia, traders hire brokers called dilaal to negotiate fees with Govt and al-Shabaab checkpoints along the same trade route. In the DRC, we hear of PMCs looking at mines.
After all, the Spice Must Flow.
1. The Wall Street Journal carries a piece today reporting that “more than 200 million people across 60 countries live in areas controlled or contested by armed non-state groups.” These range from areas that are totally controlled by narco gangs to nations drowning in rebel fighting and religious terrorist extremism. [wsj.com/world/africa/t…]
2. These areas span the globe. Some remain, at face value, countries. They have UN representation and recognisable systems of governance, even if underneath the sheen, it is actually a section of land run by violent & smart factions.
3. We exist in a moment of change. Technological change yes, but also a more transactional approach to violence, and a withdrawal of a sustained Western funding to police the periphery - international personnel deployed on multilateral peace operations fell 49% between 2016 and 2025 alone [sipri.org/sites/default/…] The focus now is largely directed towards current conventional wars - Ukraine, Iran and so on, with an eye on future China-related conflicts.
4. This means we have two systems at play. The first is the collection of countries that understand the world through the Westphalian lens, who play - or pretend to play - by UN and global governance rules. Let us call this the Westphalian Establishment.
5. The second is the motley collection of failed states and new groups, many of the former just arbitrarily created decades or centuries ago, which now host smart and brutal factions and non-state actors. Let us call this the Emergents, which includes this wide set of actors.
6. As with any time two parallel systems come into existence - two sets of frontiers - you will find people and ideas that bleed between them. Negotiators, merchants, dealers, miners - Forward Deployed Vagabonds. Both groups require each other.
7. The global information and media narrative is controlled by the Westphalian Establishment. The Emergents occasionally leak through onto the radar of those living under the Westphalian Establishment through clips of extreme violence going viral, or stories of significant narcotics busts, or occasional documentaries. But mostly it is out of sight and out of mind.
8. But the Emergents exist. They increasingly control sections of critical supply chains (you need to email Houthi administrators to request the ability to traverse the Straits unmolested, even in a country still nominally run by a Westphalian Establishment team), and run shadow governments from within fallen states. However, it would be foolish for the Westphalian Establishment to write off the models being pioneered by some of these groups.
9. For example: despite being swamped in civil war for the majority of my adult life, by 2019 the Houthis were global pioneers in solar power adoption with over 80% of households in Al-Bayda governorate utilising solar panels [theborys.substack.com]. Elsewhere, members of the Emergents have deployed the latest technologies to further their own systems - from Starlink aiding Myanmar’s scams, to drones across the African continent. Notably, the Westphalian Establishment has a level of tolerance for this IF it is dressed up in forms they understand - shadow companies, hidden away in havens - or if it doesn’t harm their own interests.
10. An ongoing area worth watching closely: how do the Emergents use technologies? Do they seek to apply them to good or bad ends? How much of the current ‘risk’ thinking factors this in?
11. Finally, a small handful of people I would describe with affection as Forward Deployed Vagabonds have relayed stories of the opportunities that have arisen in the grey areas between these two systems. In Somalia, traders hire brokers called dilaal to negotiate fees with Govt and al-Shabaab checkpoints along the same trade route. In the DRC, we hear of PMCs looking at mines.
After all, the Spice Must Flow.
