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I admit I wondered multiple times whether this book could provide an adequate reasoning for it's horrid premise, but it did eventually deliver. It allows the reader to observe an alien culture together with it's protagonists, and then slides in the key bit of context to turn it into a faith-distilling tragedy.

This was a tough read. It wasn't bad. But because however clever the protagonists are, their enemies have cruel logic in their actions as well. No plan survives contact with the enemy, and these occasions come early and often.

The author couldn't decide whether to make a textbook or a book-length rant against political opponents, so he did both at the same time. Bonus shoutout to the endorsement of neomonarchism in the middle of talking about the importance of the non-aggression principle.

In the preamble, the author wonders why more pop-sci books don’t post their references exclusively online. Two words: Link rot. Sure, a reference to an online source might rot too, but if you at least know the URL you might still find it from one of the archival services.

Mika Aaltola is a researcher for the Foreign Policy Institute, and attempted to convert his musings around the flareup of the war against Ukraine into a presidential bid. Now that the effort seems doomed, I took a look at the collection of those musings. It’s fine as a political analysis, but the President’s thought leadership responsibilities are not limited to foreign policy. And his grasp there is more tenuous.