iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 5h

I can write an essay about this. No idea who'd ever read it. Been like a hobby of mine. Lots of reasons: rural unemployment and mass migration to cities, corrupt machine politics in cities, inequality, lack of planning, weak state capacity in delivering services. Then there's issues with education.

060

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 7h

Ethnic stacking creates great civil-military relations and an effective fighting force. Said nobody ever. Doesn't prevent leaders from trying it all the time.

2253

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 7h

Populist Latin American regime messing around with the military organization and senior officers: we know how that usually ends. While also engaged in an unpopular stalemated war? Now, that's a new one.

161

Reposted by Vasabjit Banerjee

UofL Center for Asian Democracy @asiandemocracy.bsky.social · 10h

Pakistan shuts down roads into the capital in preparation for the PTI’s protest march. The march will demand the freedom of the party’s former leader, Imran Khan, from prison. Khan remains Pakistan’s most prominent opposition leader despite his imprisonment. www.aljazeera.com/news-analysi...

aljazeera.com

‘Source of anxiety’: Pakistan cracks down before march to free Imran Khan

The government has blocked highways to the capital and set up container barriers in preparation for the PTI protest.

002

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 18h

Commonwealth! It's a thing. People love to hate it, but still it's a real thing.

030

Reposted by Vasabjit Banerjee

Wes Flinn (now with new trombones!) @wesflinn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

“I only read it for the articles.”

011

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Liberal profs laughing right until they realize these are some of their former students from universities and Liberal Arts colleges. What are we teaching them on their subjects of specialization? What are we teaching about research and analysis in general? It's not just ideological.

030

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I read Janes for the latest in ghillie suits.

140

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It's moments like these* when I miss cigarettes because you can then slowly light one up to calm down before telling people they are genuinely daft. The whole lighting up ritual, like an ancient incantation, convinces the most hardened duffer. *context in thread.

292

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Y'all think it's funny until you meet a young staffer who says he doesn't read women's magazines like Janes for information on defense equipment.

35916

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Hire incompetent internet edgelord congressional staffers in haste: repent at leisure on national media.

1182

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

If anyone is connected to NATO that follows me here, India defense experts should be contacted about the Suwalki Gap. They have a similar problem with China in their corridor to the north east. There are short term (military) and long (political) term solutions. united24media.com/war-in-ukrai...

united24media.com

Lithuania and Poland Map Out Emergency Routes as Tensions Mount Near Kaliningrad

Lithuania and Poland are preparing joint civilian evacuation plans across the 100 km Suwalki Gap.

012

Reposted by Vasabjit Banerjee

Nikolas Gvosdev @fpriorbis.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

From my @fpri.bsky.social colleague Hong Tae-hwa: “Deterrence by uncertainty works when capability and preparation are certain and intent alone is veiled.” www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/09...

japantimes.co.jp

Can South Korea stay out of war over Taiwan?

While Seoul has traditionally played things safe on the issue, that discretion is becoming harder to sustain.

042

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I am possibly the only non-white and non-Black man who's done extensive research on the Rhodesian Bush War and published on it because I didn't realize what a touchstone of racial politics in America it would ever become. It was just a super interesting case. I took a bus to Zimbabwe for field work.

050

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It's amazing to me how apartheid South Africa learnt there's gotta be a political solution based on compromise and exit by the dominant power in late- and post-colonial insurgencies in Angola and Namibia. But the U.S. didn't: how did our political leaders not learn the political lesson from Vietnam?

081

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

There is a direct line from the failure to learn the core political-military lesson of the Rhodesian Bush War, which arose in turn because Rhodesians ignored the lesson from their time in Malaya, to U.S. failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the long term destabilizing effects of arming proxy groups.

3103

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I don't trust the opinion or pre-electoral polls. I think, the mid-term elections will solidify GOP support or will wreck the GOP generationally. If the Latin American populism comparison holds, regardless of outcome, there'll be violence between the left and the right and also intra-right. 1/3

210

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Russia's strategy to control Europe will be akin to China in the 1950s-1970s in Asia. A think tank or university should host a workshop on Cold War-era Asian insurgencies and COIN lessons for Europea. A special issue of a policy or scholarly journal from the presentations would be most helpful.

010

Reposted by Vasabjit Banerjee

Nicholas Brown @nicholasabrown.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

(Bloomberg) - Donald Trump and Xi Jinping discuss Taiwan arms sales every time they get together but the American stance on the self-ruled island remains unchanged following the Chinese leader’s state visit to Washington last week, the US president’s top envoy to Beijing said.

bloomberg.com

US Policy Stance on Taiwan Unchanged After Xi Visit, Perdue Says

Donald Trump and Xi Jinping discuss Taiwan arms sales every time they get together but the American stance on the self-ruled island remains unchanged following the Chinese leader’s state visit to Wash...

033

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The Trump admin. has to talk with rival China because it is a near peer Super Poower. They have to both threaten and talk with dictators with nukes and populations from whom groups can start attacking Americans because that's what they've been elected for and are paid to do.

010

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The international system is bipolar. It's not multipolar. U.S. power has relatively decreased as China's has increased. China's economy now is larger than the USSR's. Its military is growing but untested. Regional powers are banding with one or the other. The rest is cheap talk.

060

Reposted by Vasabjit Banerjee

670rv @670rv.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Roughly 53 insurance companies that claimed a collective $432 million in losses in Florida were actually transferring $1.3 billion to out-of-state affiliate companies that they owned.

121

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Major insurance scandal erupting in Florida. It involves the current administration.

131

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

India's domestic politics won't allow massive increases in defense spending. Now that PM Modi has tied foreign policy to domestic politics, it also won't allow India to make effective alliances and adopt strategies like an inferior economic and military power to China.

1153

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

There's no multipolar world. There's a bipolar one with regional or middle powers aligned with a pole. There are winners like China, Iran, and Poland; losers like US, Russia, S. Africa, and India for different reasons; and about the same like Britain, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, and Australia.

240

Reposted by Vasabjit Banerjee

Brian Farrell 🇨🇦🇺🇦 @hisbpf.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

But they require statesmanship, courage, and resilience. That has to start with a leader standing in front of a national population and saying we must set these things aside for now, so we can do this. That’s happening in 🇨🇦🇵🇱🇸🇪🇳🇴🇩🇰🇫🇮 and to some extent in the 🇬🇧, but it won’t happen in the 🇺🇸. Way it is.

011

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Putin's Russia isn't unique. There are diplomatic and military ways to handle it.

150

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Austrian, Ottoman, German, Russian, Manchu/Qing, Mughal, Qajar: all land empires whose collapse was slow, created internal violence between the empire and rebels or different imperial groups, and interstate wars between the declining empire and other states and between third states over spoils.

040

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Poor man said, bronzer not Bronze Star. lol

000

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

This. It's the reason why they effectively have two armies and still don't want to ever mobilize. The lessons from Egypt (and Iraq?) are for real.

011

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

TIL that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was in Pres. Reagan's Office of Legal Counsel and supported the Unitary Executive Theory on record. Huh!

051

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I don't think the American left and the right are ready for the Carter Doctrine's collapse and the end of American hegemony in the Middle East after Iran's stalemate. I expect it to come at the behest of the GOP. Much like the Suez Crisis arrived under Tories in Britain with similar longrun effects.

040

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Take it from someone whose family was involved in the exhibition side of movies for 80+ years: loss making movies can be a massive money laundering and tax evasion channel. You layer your black money to produce it, inflate the production costs, and then run it to guarantee losses. It's an old one.

081

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Why do we need AI to write papers? Why cede thinking and writing? That's like all we academics have beyond teaching. I don't get it.

151

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Perfidious Albion's strategy of granting an island independence before global warming removes it from the map, making the consequences someone else's problem, is scotched by Yankee earnestness about having a base that will soon cease to exist. lol

021

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Five weeks is a lifetime in electoral politics.

230

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

If Dems win in November, the last chance for Trump to put ground troops in Iran is after the elections and before the new Congress is seated. In which case what is Iran's strategy to impose costs on the U.S.? Escalate before or after the election? IMO pre-elections because Trump's hands are tied.

140

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Another failure in India's defense indigenization efforts. As someone who wrote an article on this topic: the problems with the Defense Industrial Base is only partly with the defense firms. The civilian industrial sector is too weak. timesofindia.indiatimes.com/defence/news...

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Zorawar light tank faces 2-year delay after Army demands heavier armour - The Times of India

The Times of India brings the Latest & Top Breaking News on Politics and Current Affairs in India & around the World, Cricket, Sports, Business, Bollywood News and Entertainment, Science, Technology, ...

040

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

BTW, there's a whole set of impoverished British blue bloods and ex-politicos on the American speaking circuit. If you should ever need an affordable speaker for some campus occasion, you could get yourself a Marquess or Baron or former MP. No jokes this.

0112

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

China should agree to the U.S. exporting any 55 weapons systems that it chooses to Taiwan. Then the U.S. should stop exporting any more: Taiwan won't need them anyway.

static.klipy.com

Ron Swanson's Evil Mwahaha Smile

ALT: Ron Swanson's Evil Mwahaha Smile

000

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

My only close interaction with a Brexit personality was a former MP who was grinding it out in a Mississippi think tank. He seemed like a man from the 1930s posted in Rangoon or Calcutta because of their sins in London. It was genuinely hilarious.

2352

Reposted by Vasabjit Banerjee

Anjali Dayal @anjalikdayal.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I'll be live-posting through part of today's General Debate at the United Nations General Assembly--at least through the first few speeches (UN Secretary General, Brazil, US, etc)

923477

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Mamdani's turning into a 21st Century version of a Labour Lion was entirely predictable if you know anything about the British Empire and post-colonial elites beyond bandying about Oppression, Appalling, and Poverty. There are drawbacks to this too, but that's another story.

071

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

New Yorkers be New Yorking. They hate each other, but not more than they look down on the rest of the country. Theirs is a club of restaurants, bars, and cafes, small and big parks, and inside jokes about people and places no outsider can grasp. This was, is, and will be. Y'all need to know that.

020

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

If the U.S. increased potash imports from Belarus, it may raise fertilizer prices in India and China which import from Belarus. OTOH, it can increase supply of Canadian potash because U.S. imports from there. Question then is whether Canadian or Belarusian price per ton is cheaper?

110

Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Oil from Pakistan, potash from Belarus: I wonder whether we will have a deal with India to export gold and diamonds to the U.S..

020