iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by John Sjoholm

Tapani Hopkins @tapani-hopkins.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Good to see some concrete suggestions as to a strategy! Although I do wonder: if we develop covert abilities to damage Russia, should we limit ourselves to responding to Russian attacks? Seems like there'd be a temptation to go all in even if Russia wound down their attacks. 🤔

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John Sjoholm @johnsjoholm.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

My friend @paultlevin.bsky.social and I have discussed how Europe should respond to Russia’s hybrid campaign. A good conversation should lead somewhere, and ours did. We propose credible, asymmetric and graduated deterrence, with covert action at its core and diplomacy providing the way back down.

johnsjoholm.substack.com

Towards a European Hybrid Warfare Strategy

How to Deter Without Escalating

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Reposted by John Sjoholm

Paul T. Levin @paultlevin.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Together with @johnsjoholm.bsky.social, I've been working on a proposal for a forward-leaning European hybrid warfare. It is just now out! We propose a covert-action-centered strategy that emphasizes credibility, asymmetry in retaliation, and graduated imposition of costs.+

paultlevin.substack.com

Towards a European Hybrid Warfare Strategy

How to Deter Without Escalating

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John Sjoholm @johnsjoholm.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Russia spends considerable resources projecting power beyond its borders. Perhaps we should become more interested in how much of that power can be made to turn inward. johnsjoholm.substack.com/p/fracture-f...

johnsjoholm.substack.com

Fracture, Friction, Fatigue.

Кончится лето

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John Sjoholm @johnsjoholm.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Valet 2026: Pyrrhussegrar och konsten att vinna utan att segra. Några tankar om valet, och om varför en valseger inte nödvändigtvis innebär att man har vunnit särskilt mycket. Om Metternich och faran med att förväxla modellen med verkligheten. johnsjoholm.substack.com/p/valet-2026...

johnsjoholm.substack.com

Valet 2026: Pyrrhussegrar och konsten att vinna utan att segra

Revision ∞, mistakes were made.

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Reposted by John Sjoholm

Sven-Erik Volberg @volberg.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

🇷🇺 political scientist and former intel officer Andrey Bezrukov stated at the SPIEF that russia "will live under wartime conditions for several more decades. The world is already in a phase of global conflict, and the next 20 years will be a time of constant confrontation🧵 1/3 t.me/streetwall/3...

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John Sjoholm @johnsjoholm.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Clausewitz and Western strategic approaches war as a continuation of politics through other means. Russian strategic thinking inverts this: politics is the continuation of war through other means. johnsjoholm.substack.com/p/politics-a...

johnsjoholm.substack.com

Politics as the Continuation of Conflict

Messner, Managed Instability, and the Russian Understanding of War

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John Sjoholm @johnsjoholm.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

The issue is no longer ideology, but reliability. When multiple crises converge, American security guarantees increasingly appear subject to redistribution, delay, and domestic political tempo. Europe is beginning, slowly, to notice. johnsjoholm.substack.com/p/the-reliab...

johnsjoholm.substack.com

The Reliability Problem

On Strategic Dependence in the Backwater of the Trump–Xi Meeting

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Reposted by John Sjoholm

Paul T. Levin @paultlevin.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

My bold (and, in a double sense, offensive?) recommendations for how European actors can develop hybrid-warfare deterrence capabilities vis-à-vis Russia (and others).

open.substack.com

Taking the Fight to Putin

Closing Europe's hybrid warfare capabilities gap

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Paul T. Levin @paultlevin.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

I long ago promised a follow-up to my five-part Substack series on Russia's hybrid war against democracy in the West & beyond. Here's the first of two posts exploring Europe's hybrid warfare capabilities. In this post, I argue that Europe's focus so far amounts to getting better at taking punches.+

open.substack.com

Europe’s hybrid deterrence gap

Why we are fighting a war unarmed

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Sven-Erik Volberg @volberg.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Secretary of the Army Driscoll: "Ukraine's Delta common operating system, their modular open system architecture, C2 system is absolutely incredible. It fully integrates every single drone, sensor, and shooting platform into just one single network. Ours does not." Ukraine is the future! 🃏

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Kaja Kallas @kajakallas.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Deterrence works if it is credible. Showing weakness only invites aggression. That’s why we need to close defence capability gaps through faster arms production, cheaper arms, and more rapid delivery. Extract from my press remarks following today’s Foreign Affairs Council on Defence ↓

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John Sjoholm @johnsjoholm.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

Mstislav Rostropovich: A profile of the cellist, conductor, exile, and prestige artist who refused to become harmless. open.substack.com/pub/johnsjoh...

open.substack.com

Guarding the Guard: When the Cellist Held the Rifle

A profile of Mstislav Rostropovich: cellist, conductor, exile, and the refusal to become harmless.

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John Sjoholm @johnsjoholm.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Russia increasingly appears less interested in reconciling with Soviet repression than in subsuming it beneath patriotic mythology and anti-fascist state narratives. Historical memory is reorganised not merely as remembrance, but as political infrastructure. johnsjoholm.substack.com/p/russian-im...

johnsjoholm.substack.com

Russian Imperative (Русский императив)

National Myth and the Management of Collective Emotion

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John Sjoholm @johnsjoholm.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

In 2008, Beirut sought to apply monopoly-state logic to an environment that had long ceased functioning monopolistically. Hezbollah operated according to the realities that actually existed. open.substack.com/pub/johnsjoh...

open.substack.com

Lebanon: Inside the Shell

States Are Not Supposed to Retreat From Themselves

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John Sjoholm @johnsjoholm.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

"The Western Balkans increasingly illustrate the continued effectiveness of legacy Soviet and Russian Active Measures (Активные мероприятия), adapted to modern operational environments.[...]The aim is not dominance, but friction. Not control, but position." johnsjoholm.substack.com/p/stably-uns...

johnsjoholm.substack.com

Stably Unstable: The Architecture of Russia’s Hybrid War in the Western Balkans (2026)

Stability is not the objective. Predictable instability is.

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Reposted by John Sjoholm

Paul T. Levin @paultlevin.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Nothing to see, just a Russian bomber carrying a nuclear-capable missile over the Baltic Sea today. (And the Swedish Air Force intercepting it.)

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Reposted by John Sjoholm

Paul T. Levin @paultlevin.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz reignites plans for alternative transportation routes, many of which include Turkey’s, whose geography “condemns the country to geopolitical significance,” as one diplomat eloquently puts it. (🎁 article.)

giftarticle.ft.com

Turkey promotes ‘Middle Corridor’ as Strait of Hormuz alternative

Officials plan to reopen frontier with Armenia to unlock a Trump-backed trade route between Europe and Asia

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John Sjoholm @johnsjoholm.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

(Repost due to PEBCAK) ”Power in Lebanon is therefore not removed through kinetic pressure. It is displaced through governance replacement.” ”In Lebanon, durable influence accrues not to the actor capable of applying force, but to the actor capable of governing.” open.substack.com/pub/johnsjoh...

open.substack.com

Lebanon: Beirut and the Polycentric Reality

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John Sjoholm @johnsjoholm.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

@robertscotthorton.bsky.social good to see you again Scott. Fb was just not the same without you. -j

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John Sjoholm @johnsjoholm.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Consequential leadership is defined by its command of time — thinking in continuity, not moments. When tomorrow fades, strategy collapses into tactics, rhetoric overtakes calculation, and leadership loses the temporal discipline that gives it weight.

johnsjoholm.substack.com

Futura Consideranda: Consequential Leadership

A Leader Considers History

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John Sjoholm @johnsjoholm.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Russia doesn’t seek to rule over the Western Balkans; it seeks to manage predictable instability. Through energy leverage, proxies, religious networks and hybrid tactics, Moscow keeps the region aligned through friction, not force. A managed condition, not a war.

johnsjoholm.substack.com

Stably Unstable: The Architecture of Russia’s Hybrid War in the Western Balkans (2026)

Stability is not the objective. Predictable instability is.

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John Sjoholm @johnsjoholm.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

The weaponisation of the Suffering. Refugee flows aren’t just humanitarian failures. Managed displacement becomes a weapon few can stop — scalable and devastating. Hungary, Russia, Turkey and others use it with great success against the West. johnsjoholm.substack.com/p/202512281-...

johnsjoholm.substack.com

Human suffering scales efficiently when it is managed.

Weaponisation of the Suffering – Frozen Conflicts, Displacement, and the Utility of Human Movement

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