ISA Virtual Conference 2026 Proposals
Two proposals under consideration for the International Studies Association's Virtual Conference in June 2026.
The International Studies Association is holding its latest Virtual Conference in June 2026. This is particularly helpful for Global South scholars and for those who do not have access to institutional support for travel funding.
My two submitted proposals which are both under consideration are below.
Old Myths, Nearly Dead: Why The Rules-Based International Order Is No Longer Credible
In early 2026 the second Trump administration of the United States launched Special Operations Forces in Venezuela; began an Iran war that triggered volatility in energy / oil markets; and released its National Defense Strategy. Russia continued its conventional war with Ukraine. China flexed its growing sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific—and, together with Russia and the United States—underpinned continued shifts in nuclear tripolarity.
These catalyst events all highlight that the rules-based international order touted by middle powers like Australia is an aspirational myth that is no longer credible. Yet it is also time to move beyond outdated classicist historical narratives such as frequent reliance on analogical reasoning with Thucydides, the Stoics, and Augustine (in political philosophy). Economic statecraft, denial strategies, and weaponised interdependence as prioritised policy instruments now requires more contemporary frameworks, found in the study of coercion, special operations instruments (beyond direct action / surgical strikes), space-based strategy, burden-sharing in strategic alliances like the AUKUS security compact, and geopolitical risk arbitrage.
Disorder, disruption and volatility are often fetishised: this paper seeks to go beyond outdated paradigms.
Strategic PSYOP for Advancing Impellance-Based Crisis De-Escalation and Facilitating Positive Peace
On 2nd December 2025, the United States Secretary of War Pete Hegseth signalled in a widely circulated memorandum for Senior Pentagon Leadership that he would revert to the prior designation Psychological Operations (PSYOP) from the prior Obama administration’s shift to Military Information Support Operations (MISO). Secretary of War Hegseth signalled this transformation of PSYOP doctrine, campaigns, and instruments prior to recent operations in Venezuela and Iran, and public controversy over the Pentagon, Anthropic, and Palantir Technologies.
Informed by decade-long doctrinal reform debates in what is now the PSYWAR School at Fort Liberty (formerly Fort Bragg), this paper establishes an agenda-setting initiative that restores PSYOP to its strategic level over MISO’s far more limited tactical emphasis. Integral to this strategic level PSYOP re-emphasises on indirect, diachronic, longitudinal, non-kinetic, shaping forms of diplomatic, information, military and economic (DIME) instruments for the title’s identified two core strategic objectives. I go paradigmatically beyond Vallely/Aquino (1980) and Aquino (2013, 2016) oriented MindWar frameworks, to integrate strategic doctrinal insights from Sun Tzu, Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart, John Boyd, Gene Sharp, Johan Galtung, Sohail Inayatullah, and William T. Vollmann.