• seriously. that seems to have been The Move for so long now: to press for a diplomatic “pause” to redeploy resources for another major, coordinated strike with all the fancy, expensive weapons and then strike when damage potential is at a maximum.

    as it turns out, this repeated use of such a perfidious tactic has now broken the lever of conflict in the “on” position and exposed an exploitable weakness of imperial power: it lacks the capacity for sustained conflict against a regional power and has lost the illusion of control over a major geographic pressure point.