Nik Vacano discusses Russia’s pioneering of modern cognitive warfare. He then discusses the globalization of their techniques and warns of cognitive warfare’s potential to undermine international stability and democracy.

The US-Israeli war with Iran has seen the Trump administration pursue regime change through a form of direct, unilateral military action that is highly novel in the post-World War II international system. Nik Vacano explores how this reflects a turn back to 19th-century gunboat diplomacy and argues that the strategic shortcomings of this approach make it highly inadvisable.