Insights
Notes on the work
Occasional pieces on how security capability is assessed, built and lost. Written from what we have seen rather than from what is fashionable.
The wall and the watchman
A case for fencing Nigeria’s northern border is circulating again, built on a real and worsening threat. The threat is real. The wall does not follow from it.
A wall answers a static threat. A network reroutes around it. The argument for a barrier is usually, at root, an argument for something else.Read the piece →
Earlier notes
7 piecesHolding ground
A patrol base is a manning commitment with buildings attached. The buildings are the cheap part.
03The governance vacuum
Forests are not a terrain problem. They are a space where the state is absent, and a ranger force is only worth building if it fills the absence rather than visiting it.
04Buying by the hour
Contracted capability is priced in ways unfamiliar to most security ministries. The model chosen decides who carries which risk, and it is usually settled before anyone notices it was a decision.
05Haiti and the neighbours
A state collapse exports three separate things on three separate timelines. Most regional responses are built for only one of them.
06Detection is the easy part
Border technology is bought at the front of the chain. The delay is almost always at the back.
07The price of a gift
Donated capability is rarely free. The question is not whether to accept it, but who wrote the requirement it answers.
08Borrowed capability
Why the hardest question in a security review is the one about what happens after the help leaves.