I’m Aurelien, and I’ve started this newsletter because we are at a turning point in world history, and I thought I might have something useful to say. After a long professional career in government, before and after the Cold War, and in many parts of the world, I’ve been to enough places, met enough people and done enough things, to have some idea about how stuff works in real life. I’ve spent quite a bit of time since then teaching and writing, but largely to academic and professional audiences. This newsletter tries to distill a lifetime of experience and reflection into something that people can read and benefit from. I hope you will be among them. Oh, the little image is Mercury, god of writing and communication: from thenounproject.com

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Been there, done most of it. Time to write about it now.