Today in the Cosmopolitan Globalist

Kahn's ladder. What we don't know about the war in Europe.

… as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

You might think, writes Robin Häggblom in the magazine today,

if you tune in on Twitter, that every aspect of Putin’s war on Ukraine is being live-streamed. In earlier wars, we’ve seen embedded journalists get close access to combat units. These days, professional journalists—local and foreign, with both demonstrating great courage—are joined by countless civilians who share images, texts, and videos from their neighborhoods. Because of this, people outside of Ukraine (and to some extent, inside) risk mistakenly thinking that they know exactly how the war is going.

Actually, we know nothing of the sort. Häggblom catalogues the known unknowns for the Cosmopolitan Globalist in THE THINGS WE DON’T KNOW.

I read Herman Kahn on thermonuclear war when I was about nineteen. I concluded he was an utter madman—Claire.

Then read Joshua Treviño on Herman Kahn and escalation dominance in KAHN’S LADDER:

… Within this framework, Kahn posited the concept of escalation dominance—‘a capacity,’ he wrote, ‘other things being equal, to enable the side possessing it to enjoy marked advantages in a given region of the escalation ladder.’ Escalation dominance applies to contention within specific rungs—perhaps one side is better at Level 8 (Harassing Acts of Violence) than the other—and it necessarily also applies directly to movement from rung to rung. That movement changes the correlation of forces and the probabilities of success. For example, in the present Russian war upon Ukraine, you may understand the Russian decision to invade as a deliberate movement from a rung on which Ukraine enjoyed escalation dominance, Level 4 (Confrontation of Wills) to one on which Russia believed it enjoyed escalation dominance—a non-nuclear version of Level 19 (‘Justifiable’ Counterforce Attack), or simply level 12, (‘Large Conventional War’). That belief having been falsified, Russia has since moved to the non-nuclear version of level 28 (‘Exemplary Attacks Against Property’).

READ ALL ABOUT IT IN THE COSMOPOLITAN GLOBALIST. CLICK HERE TO GET TO THE MAGAZINE.