Newsletter #436— March 19, 2026

by Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess

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Highlighted Links

A few suggestions about links that we think are especially interesting.

• Israel / Hamas War
  Niall Ferguson: Could This Be the Start of World War III? — For those looking for something really big to worry about, thoughts about how the war in Iran could escalate into something genuinely cataclysmic. 
• Superpower Conflict
  Are we in the foothills of World War 3? — Another especially good effort to place the Iran war in a larger, and more worrying context.
• Israel / Hamas War
  Information warfare: how narratives are shaping the Iran conflict — From one of the few war correspondents with a genuine military background and a military focus in their reporting, a look at the nature of the information war surrounding the war in Iran.
• Israel / Hamas War
  Trump’s Way of War — From Foreign Affairs, an effort to get beyond partisanship and analyze the Trump administration's military strategies and their likely effectiveness.
• Saving Democracy
  War and Peace Cannot Be Left to One Man — Especially Not This Man — An exploration of the far-reaching implications of a system in which the President alone can commit the nation (and the world) to a large-scale war -- an exploration that goes beyond the merits of the Iran war itself.
• Israel / Hamas War
  An Air-Campaign Primer — Despite superficial, outward appearances, the war in Iran is, in many important respects, unprecedented in the history of warfare.
• Israel / Hamas War
  An Achievable Goal in Iran — From Dennis Ross, a man with exceptionally long experience in Mideast peacebuilding efforts, thoughts about bringing about positive end to the war.
• Israel / Hamas War
  The Iran debate says more about the West than about the war. — An analysis of Iran-related war news and an assessment of how our own political tensions are affecting the way in which we think about the war.

Reader Suggested Links

Highlighting links suggested by our readers. Please send us links to things that you find useful.

• Saving Democracy
  Assembly Required: A Conversation with Lorelei Kelly on Deliberative Technology and Congressional Reform — In this conversation with Elana Banin, Lorelei Kelly argues that rebuilding democratic resilience requires redesigning the institutional infrastructure connecting citizens to Congress.
• Israel / Hamas War
  Anti-Semitism Is Becoming Mainstream: The Michigan attack shows that anti-Jewish terror is spreading — An update on the evolving threat of antisemitism -- a threat that has emerged following October 7, 2023 and the wars that followed.
• Israel / Hamas War
  From October 7 to Killing Khamenei — A retrospective look at the complex and chaotic events that followed the October 7 attack on Israel and a reminder of just how unpredictable and dangerous war really is.
• Israel / Hamas War
  The Bibi-Made-Trump-Do-It Canard — The supportive (and doubtless controversial) exploration of the nature of the US-Israeli alliance.
• Disinformation
  Don't be fooled by Iran in English. — While it is important to understand what an adversary says to you, it is even more important to understand what they are telling their own people.
• Developing a Unifying Vision
  Reimagining democracy for the next generation — Democracy 2076 provides strategies to inspire renewed faith in pro-democratic,futures that move people to action in service of a resilient democracy.

Colleague Activities

Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.

• Civil Society
  What Civic Renewal Actually Looks Like — Daniel Stid introduces the new Art of Association Podcast. This first episode reflects on the animating question behind the show: what does civic renewal actually look like in practice?
• US Politics
  The Tides Are Turning This Election Season — Primaries used to be the sad side salad of American democracy — technically part of the meal, but largely ignored. Now everyone wants a bite. And that shift could change everything about who ends up on your November ballot.
• Theories of Change
  Organizing Under Political Stress: Structural Clarity Before Engagement Is a Governance Imperative — A comparison of national democracy engagement strategies with local engagement strategies. The assumptions and approaches of each are different, and they don't necessary "play well" with one another.
• Developing a Unifying Vision
  As America Turns 250, It’s Time to Begin Again — Americans need a new moral vision that helps us “begin again.” In doing so, we can forge a more promising start to our next 250 years.
• Peacebuilding
  Peacecrafting: Turning conflict into collaboration — Dr. Paul Zeitz, a physician and epidemiologist who calls himself a civic healer, draws on deliberative democracy and neuroscience to show how communities can move from division to collaboration.
• Saving Democracy
  Americans Do Not See Their Government as a Democracy — This Navigator Research report covers Americans’ views of democracy, authoritarianism, and the federal government.
• Theories of Change
  The Seven Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems — Daniel Stillman, of the Conversation Factory, has a conversation with Adam Kahane about what it means to live in a system and how we can transform those systems by making little changes every day.
• US Politics
  Is "Owning the Libs" Worth the Cost? — From the toll of new global conflicts to the psychological weight of keeping up with a chaotic administration, questions about whether even the right is doing well under Trump 2.0?
• Saving Democracy
  Why Pro-Democracy Forces Keep Losing - and the Strategy That Can Change That — Scot Nakagawa offers a spring and river metaphor to explain how different movements can work together to strengthen democracy. This blog post links to a longer white paper and discussion guide.
• Saving Democracy
  Digital Democracy Network — Carnegie’s Digital Democracy Network is dedicated to generating original analyses and enabling cross-regional knowledge-sharing with the goal of filling critical research and policy gaps.
• Saving Democracy
  Welcome to Movement Time — The big question: Are we still on Earth One, where American representative democracy can still function? Or are we on Earth Two, where the Constitution no longer applies?
• Non-Violence
  The Minneapolis Model — Scott Nakagawa reflects on how Minneapolis resisted a federal occupation and what the pro-democracy movement should learn from this experience.

News and Opinion

From around the web, more insight into the nature of our conflict problems, limits of business-as-usual thinking, and things people are doing to try to make things better. (Formerly, Beyond Intractability in Context.)

• Israel / Hamas War
  Iran’s Risky Gamble — An analysis of the way in which the Iranian government is responding to the US/Israeli attack and speculation about the likely success of the Iranian strategy and the possibility that it will spark a wider confrontation.
• Authoritarianism
  The End of “Legitimacy” — Questions about the degree to which US prestige and legitimacy has been damaged by the fact that President Trump initiated the war with Iran without first obtaining either international or Congressional support.
• Superpower Conflict
  The End of Strategic Ambiguity — War has a way of forcing people to pick sides in ways that undermine efforts to avoid conflict by making everyone think that you're on their side.
• Superpower Conflict
  Six-Chart Sunday – The “China” Theory of Everything — A surprisingly persuasive set of charts that try to explain most everything that the Trump administration is doing in terms of the US/Chinese geopolitical rivalry.
• Israel / Hamas War
  There Is One Crucial Reason We’re Talking About Boots on the Ground — An assessment of the factors that may soon force the US to use ground troops as the only way to achieve key objectives.
• Israel / Hamas War
  Expecting Iran to Unconditionally Surrender Is a Fool’s Errand — An explanation of why it is unrealistic to expect the war to end in a quick and decisive victory for the US and Israel.
• Israel / Hamas War
  U.S. and Iran Predicted a Very Different War Than the One Now Being Waged — It is said that no war plan survives first contact with the enemy. This article explains why this particular war is no exception to this time-tested principle.
• Israel / Hamas War
  Just Don’t Say the W-Word — Reflections on the semantic conundrum caused by a Constitution that gives the Congress the power to declare war and a President who wants to overthrow a foreign country on his own authority.
• Interstate War
  The Weapons of War — The war in Iran is different. A big part of what makes it different are the weapons being used and the cost of those weapons. This primer explains what most everyone ought to understand.
• Effective Problem-Solving
  Elizabeth Warren’s Housing Coup — At a time when it was assumed that Congress couldn't pass anything remotely bipartisan, a surprising story about the new (and still controversial) housing bill.
• US Politics
  Why People Don’t Like Talking About Politics — One of the big obstacles to having constructive political conversations is the fact that people have had so many destructive conversations that they don't want to have conversations at all.
• Interstate War
  War Reveals the Truth: Russian and Chinese Weapons Are Outmatched — The strength of militaries and the value of weapons systems is very hard to assess in peacetime. War, sadly, provides a much more accurate test of relative military strength.
• Social / Economic Complexity
  America’s Bills Will Come Due — Another warning about the possibility that our tendency to solve problems by borrowing against the future will come back to haunt us.
• Authoritarianism
  What Justice Gorsuch Fears — For those who think that the Supreme Court ought to do more to restore the system of checks and balances and curtail the power of the President, an article about one way that one person is trying to address the problem.
• Israel / Hamas War
  Winning the air war, losing Iran — From a military perspective, a fairly honest look at what air power can and cannot be expected to achieve.

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About the MBI Newsletters

Two or three times a week, Guy and Heidi Burgess, the BI Directors, share some of our thoughts on political hyper-polarization and related topics. We also share essays from our colleagues and other contributors, and every week or so, we devote one newsletter to annotated links to outside readings that we found particularly useful relating to U.S. hyper-polarization, threats to peace (and actual violence) in other countries, and related topics of interest. Each Newsletter is posted on BI, and sent out by email through Substack to subscribers. You can sign up to receive your copy here and find the latest newsletter here or on our BI Newsletter page, which also provides access to all the past newsletters, going back to 2017.

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