Julian Waller 📖
@JulianWaller
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Ph.D, Pol-Sci. Research Analyst, CNA | Adjunct Prof, GWU. Authoritarianism, Illiberalism, Pol-Mil, Russia/Eurasia, etc. BOOK:
Washington, DC
Joined June 2009
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My 2023 year in review mostly revolves around getting married. But I did write a lot, nevertheless. If your interests include authoritarianism, dictatorship, Russia, the Russo-Ukrainian War, modern illiberal ideologies, and so on... do I have a list for you. 👇🏼
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The eccentric lord mayor of New Amsterdam potentially being an Ottoman asset is a really fun plot twist, you have to admit.
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I asked the Bing AI image generator to make 'democracy vs authoritarianism' and I think it got confused...
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Waittt no one told me Bukele is dressing like a sci-fi aristocrat now. Strong 'holding the baronetcy of a minor feudal planet for the Imperium' vibes.
In El Salvador for the inauguration of President Nayib Bukele.
He defeated his principal opponent, Manuel Flores, in February’s presidential election.
To the best of my knowledge, Bukele made no attempt to imprison Flores.
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A few thoughts on the Tucker-Putin interview:
Having watched the interview last night, I've been very interested in seeing the reaction here on this site. A lot of people have focused on 'Putin as an autistic history nerd' (good memes here), while others have stuck to variations
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Just discovered a peer-reviewed paper arguing that because the US is "experiencing democratic backsliding," Canada should be looking to...wait for it... CHINA... for more reliable democracy-based multilateralism and trade opportunities. I actually laughed out loud. 😆
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J.D. Vance is a millenial fully aware of and in many cases conversant in neo-reaction, vitalism, postliberalism, tech-futurism, anti-managerialism and the broader American illiberal ideological constellation. Very exciting news for the research program ngl.
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Love it when an academic article is just a direct *f-you* to various scholarly enemies.
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Democracy scores can get *really* messy when you dig into individual country-cases. This is why friends don't let friends naively use those regime-type maps and declare that it's The Settled Science.
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Was just introduced to a fascinating schema for (Anglo-American) illiberal ideational currents from an anon S**stk. He terms this the "Rightosphere," which he divides between a "Third New Right" and a "Dissident Right." Honestly it's pretty good and tracks with my own work.
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Fantastic. Responses and QTs have been everything I hoped they would be. 😂
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Do you know the story of
@CNA_org
's Soviet studies group and the USSR Navy? I only learned when I joined - it's a real banger. Tl;dr is that we figured out what the Soviet sub strategy during the height of the Cold War entirely through open sources. But no one believed us.
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The Emperor has not been seen since before the events of the Day of Cream & Ice. His designated Constitutional Regent confers with the donor and financier clans. Rumors abound that the Minister of Transport or several aspiring provincial prince-administrators will be called to
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First VP candidate to have Curtis Yarvin's number in his cellphone, to know who Adrian Vermeule is for non-lawyer reasons, and quite possibly to have listened to BAP clips.
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Hi, authoritarianism scholar here! 👋🏻
This is not how one convinces people that democracy is a better system of government. Or avoids throwing further fuel on the fire of an ongoing political legitimacy crisis in the US. Nor is it even empirically accurate. Hope that helps!
Jon Stewart unironically tells Tucker Carlson that the reason why the US can’t have clean functioning subways or cheap grocery prices like they do in Moscow is “the literal price of freedom”
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This, for what it's worth, is what the generational change from the Boomers is actually going to look like.
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@PopovaProf
Yeah more or less, although I don't rule out a formal or de facto partition in lieu of a kind of vassalization. But that's all speculative.
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Reupping given Mr. Carlson's teaser video. Hint: it wasn't NATO expansion and it wasn't Ukrainian democracy. It was the evolving historical-ideological views and unique, isolated freedom of sole decision-making held by Vladimir Putin himself.👇🏻
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One of my Strong Opinions for undergrads at DC unis doing anything 'international affairs'-y is if you don't plan on building a stats/'data science' skillset in your coursework (i.e., most of you), then you MUST carve out credits for a language (3x years of it, specifically).
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Proper use of AI image generation, this.
The Great Emu War: In 1932, the Australian government declared “war” on emus due to crop damage. The Australian army was called in to use machine guns against the emus, but the flightless birds fought back and won.
At the negotiating table, the emus took a third of Australia.
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In exciting news, I've been sanctioned by the Russian government.
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Gm. I'm pleased to share my debut essay in Foreign Affairs. With this, I plant my analytic flag in the 'brittleness vs. resilience' debate. Enjoy!
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The best way to read the academic literature is to have a little bird on your shoulder that whispers "between 1945 and 2020" or "since the Cold War (i.e., the last 30 years)" every time you read a strong assertion about democracy or authoritarianism. That really helps, ngl.
A more fundamental flaw lies behind this: that authoritarian regimes are inherently unstable, an accident of history that must work harder against entropy than other regimes merely to exist.
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A fascinating article on Dugin, Ukrainian nationalism, and (real-deal) esoteric Rightism from
@arisroussinos
. He follows this closer - and has the conceptual background and interest - than almost anyone else I know of writing in English.
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An exciting weekend. Theresa and I got engaged! Grainy selfie > planned photoshoot, ofc. 💍
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The key to making sense of the Prigozhin Rebellion is that it wasn't a coup, but an attempt at a hostile, armed negotiation between what amounted to a semi-feudal vassal and his lord. It did not succeed, but it's legible with that framework. Regime overthrow just doesn't fit.
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Should Americans live under an authoritarian regime? Most would say no. Yet a small, but growing group of dissident writers disagree. Linked here, you'll find the first comparative study on their vying theories of authoritarian rule. Comments welcome!
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Gm. If you're following Russian politics and aren't tracking the public academic fight over the future use of nuclear weapons, I suggest you take a look - although not quite for the reasons you might expect. 👇🏻
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Flagging the new Russia Program hosted at GWU - it's going to be a central node for all those working on Russia-related topics. Wide applicability for scholars, journalists, gov't officials, think-tankers, and beyond. A few highlights below ⬇️
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This year, I was lucky enough to get engaged, confirmed, and doctored. I also managed to write a bit. To round out the year, I'm happy to offer a reading list - from Russia to theories of authoritarian regimes to the political uncertainties of modern America, and then some. 👇🏻🧵
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Welcome professional news: I've been promoted to Research Analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses (
@CNA_org
). I'm maintaining the same work portfolio on Russian political-military affairs, Eurasian security dynamics, and related adversary analytics issue-areas. So that's good!
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Reading the comments on my interview thread, I'm getting dinged a bit for using such evocative and extremely academic terms as 'butthurt' and 'booming.' The price of terminological innovation!
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Undervalued academic skillset is acquiring normie habits. You should watch football. Learn to grill. Take vacations to a beach nearby. Dislike taxes. Have at least one Marvel movie you enjoy. This is the only way to counteract the creeping madness inherent to the profession.
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Happy Easter everyone! Oh, and for what it's worth... last night I was confirmed and received into the Catholic Church. 🙃
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Gm. Two months ago I published my entry in the debate about the causes of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It's been well-received, but one comment I've gotten a few times is I didn't cover one particular alternative. A few thoughts on this below... 🧵👇🏻
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Forgot to post these earlier, but our team at CNA is hiring two junior positions for the Russia Studies Program - apply soon!
Assoc. Research Analyst:
Research Asst:
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For your reading pleasure, btw. It's a little older, but the update has been sitting in academic peer review forever.
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Pleased to share a working paper/preprint version of a new chapter on authoritarianism as a social science concept in relation to illiberal ideologies today. What is authoritarianism - political regime, personality type, or policy characterization? 😏👇🏻
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Reminder that two major reports on the 🇷🇺 Russian military logistics system and its wartime performance have come out from the Center for Naval Analyses (my org) and the RAND Corporation. If you're tracking the war, you should read both! Here's ours:
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‼️ As a Friday treat, the excellent
@MarkGaleotti
has posted 3x short reports on Russian security orgs/institutions (Rosgvardiya, Spetsnaz, & the Security Council Secretariat). These had been *not for public release* - great to see them out in the open!
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@PabloPeniche
If you're ultimate political goal is to strategically counter all the forces saying 'for climate your children are going to have to give up real meat forever' this is a sensible move given the salami tactics and TINA arguments by the other side.
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Happy to announce my article on delineating the concepts of 'illiberalism' and 'authoritarianism' is now out in OnlineFirst format. Read on to find out why not everything bad in the world is illiberal authoritarianism, or authoritarian illiberalism. 😉
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Stephen Kotkin is an historian who often thinks like a (comparative) political scientist, which makes his foreign policy essays always worth reading. This one is no exception, although admittedly it's a little weird! A few thoughts...
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A few thoughts on Alexei Navalny
It's important to honor and respect the dead, so I held off from commenting last week. But there's a few key points that I think are worth keeping in mind as we reflect on and ponder his legacy.
Btw, link below to the best book on the man if
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Kevin Vallier has written an important book on integralism. I've been on the integralism beat for a while as a side-project, exploring it as a case of illiberal ideological development. As I've just finished KV's book, a few thoughts below. 🧵👇🏻
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I really like his broad distinction between two trends within this developing illiberal ideational ecosystem, which is a core point that I've made in several papers (some of which are still under review). So I will have to cite Mr. Arcto in the future, and look forward to more.
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Hint: if you can't imagine your organization without grants and/or grant-writing salaried employees, it's not real civil society.
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We're hiring!!! 🚨 CNA's Russia Studies Program (i.e., our team) is hiring two (2x) junior research positions specifically for our Russian political-military portfolio. One (Assoc. Research Analyst) is MA-preferred, the other (Research Analyst) is Ph.D-preferred.
We want
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There are many reasons why this analogy doesn't work well (just think about the relationship between state-recognized ethnonational groups and internal borders in the USSR vs. any kind of US equivalent), but I admit the visual is helpfully intuitive (and fun).
When the USSR fell, Moscow's empire instantly lost -48.6% of its population -38.8% of GDP.
For comparison, this is how it would look if the U.S. broke apart with the same ratios today.
I think this more than anything explains why KGB officer Putin is so fixated on Ukraine: 🧵
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Gm. A new piece on the causes of the war for
@RiddleRussia
. Why did RU invade UKR in 2022? Many use structure to explain, but I argue we must foreground Putin and his particular grievances, info environment, & isolation in the pre-war period. A brief 🧵👇🏻
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Just sent the defense copy of the dissertation to external readers. Defense scheduled for the end of the month. Is it good? No, certainly not. Does it somehow have 796 footnotes and 268 pages (1.5 space)? Yes. 🤪
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The quietude of the Emperor continues into a new day. The summer heat bathes the Imperial Capital in humidity, while the Constitutional Regent receives formal accolades from every prince-administrator loyal to the Imperial demesne across the so-called Blue Provinces. New banners
The Emperor has not been seen since before the events of the Day of Cream & Ice. His designated Constitutional Regent confers with the donor and financier clans. Rumors abound that the Minister of Transport or several aspiring provincial prince-administrators will be called to
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As a scholar of authoritarianism this is deeply familiar. This is an attempt by a grifting academic to pathologize unpleasant or oppositional politics as fascist - thus the extreme framing of 'hearing slogans' somehow the same as a cult.
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I was still a touch feverish from the 'rona the other day, but my doctoral diploma came in the mail so the gf made sure to snap this pic.
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I gained a lot of followers from that Tucker-Putin poast. Fwiw, this account is a mix of Russian/Eurasian politics, academic musings on authoritarian regimes and illiberal ideologies globally, general self-promotion, millenial cynicism, and personal life here in DC. Enjoy! 🙃
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Many strands of ideological creativity on the Right today can be characterized as 'illiberal.' But for years, these ideas and frameworks have been relegated primarily to curious corners online. This is changing. A new short paper by me at
@ILLSP_GWU
. 👇🏻
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My Russian Politics class starts tonight at GWU. Realizing that I probably should mention I'm on Russia's persona non grata sanctions list. That's a flex, right? 🤦🏼♂️
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Me submitting a draft paper 2500 over the word count (again) thinking footnotes don't count this time (they do).
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I know the political theorists will get mad at me, but I find it puzzling when ppl suggest the left-right divide can be characterized by views on 'hierarchy.' Hierarchy is inevitable, what's distinct is who's on top and why.
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The key takeaway here, beyond the actual nuke discussion, is a reinforcement that we need to take the illiberal cultural-civilizational turn in Russia very seriously - not least because that is now the primary rhetorical framework through which policies are debated.
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I'm excited to announce that GWU's
@ILLSP_GWU
is putting together a new scholarly project on 'postliberalism' in the United States. First up is a call for papers, open to academic writing on the subject from all viewpoints.
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Pleased to announce the latest public report from
@CNA_org
's Russia team, on the Russian military logistics system and its performance in the first year of the Russo-Ukrainian War.
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When you finally read the articles that've been stuck in your tabs for months.
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My unsolicited advice to PhD candidates that nobody wants to hear is that yes, you really do need to be writing and publishing as much as possible. Get the life isn't fair thing out of your system over biers with your cohort and then just do it. 🤷🏼♂️
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If anything, his categories may be a bit too granular. When you get so far down the ladder of abstraction it's less a conceptual grouping and more individual authors for some of these. But there's a place for that too. As a researcher, thanks to
@NewRightPoast
for flagging this.
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These 'présidents as comic book villains' are all epic, but I would point out that this is just regular TR.
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This of course is one reason why comparisons between Hungary and, say, Russia, are simply not valid.
The size of today's anti-Orban rally in Budapest was insane.
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@dbaten3
His social circle is not happy about a certain ruling, thus we get The Parable of Elves and Hobbits. 👍🏻
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Fun fact, you don't have to *become fascist* to oppose communism. Hope that helps!!!
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Very exciting to see *almost fisticuffs* on the House floor last night. Plenary violence has been a tradition in legislative chambers since their very inception, and tend to happen when emotions are high, the vote is extra-meaningful and the numbers are tight. 👇🏻
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I waded into the debate about the causes of the Russo-Ukrainian War for
@RiddleRussia
today - enjoy!
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In Jan, I suggested Prigozhin and Kadyrov were "political-military barons" that were changing the nature of RU pol authority through a special form of autonomous, armed vassalage. An insurrection targeted to induce personnel change in Moscow fits...well.
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@yuanyi_z
@si_rubinstein
Historians arguing about what is historiography and whether u have the requisite license to historiograph in a public-oriented online pub is a hidden gem of a Twitter genre. Fantastic.
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🚨 Our book is out! 🚨
Go pick it up today!
That is all.
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Wedding photos trickling in. I've been authorized by my wife to poast a few.
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We are approaching publication day for our new book, so I thought I'd say a little something about it. Next week I'll give you all the full rundown, but for now let me tell you how it came to be... 👇🏻🧵
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"The only person on Earth with any political agency, it would seem, is Vladimir Putin, whose omnipotence makes the world go round." Devastating review of a book I was really counting on not having to read.
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Bukele has our number. Can you imagine walking up to the local hipster coffee shop and surreptitiously asking for a cup of the millennial authoritarian artisanal press? We won't be able to resist.
In other news, I’ve created my own coffee brand.
This has nothing to do with politics; it’s been my passion project this last year.
Our only goal: making the best coffee in the world, 100%
#MadeinElSalvador
🇸🇻
If you’re in the U.S., you can purchase our coffee on our website:
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@dr_lukianoff
As a simple rhetorical point, it's bad practice to suggest that the thing you are defending (a democratic political regime) is inherently associated with bad and widely-disliked societal outcomes (crime, civic disorder, dysfunctional public infrastructure).
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