I did not expect to be finishing the manuscript while watching that argument play out in real time.
I am writing a historical fiction thriller, The Belfast Doctrine. The novel grows out of decades of research into how the British state managed the conflict in the North of Ireland -not simply the street violence or the bombings, but how the institutions are set up. What began as a piece of historical fiction is now uncomfortably contemporary.
The argument behind the fiction is straightforward, if uncomfortable: Britain developed a model of warfare in which operational violence could be outsourced to proxies, deniability could be built into legal and civic structures, and the directing hand of the state could remain insulated from accountability even when events on the ground became impossible to defend.
I did not expect to be watching elements of that logic play out over the Middle East while I was still editing the final chapters.
What interests me is not a simple claim that one conflict is the same as another. It is that certain strategic principles travel. They reappear in changed form, under different flags, in different regions, and under different ideologies. The names change. The architecture does not.
What the doctrine is
The Belfast Doctrine is not simply about the use of proxies. States have always used proxies. What made the North of Ireland model distinctive was the sophistication of the surrounding system -the degree to which violence could be embedded within structures that also legitimised, explained, or obscured it. Security forces. Legal frameworks. Intelligence channels. Civic bodies. Community intermediaries. The violence was real. The fingerprints were managed.
That is the doctrine as I understand it. It is not just a method of coercion. It is a method of plausible deniability.
It remains one of the most adaptable models ever developed by a Western democracy for how weaker states can challenge stronger ones through irregular tactics.
Enter Professor Malik Karz
An important character in The Belfast Doctrine is a strategist called Professor Malik Karz. He is not there to lecture the reader. He is there to embody an idea. The principle he works by is simple: minimum input for maximum effect.
You do not need to destroy your enemy directly. It’s not about winning outright -but stretching US and Israeli resources until they begin to fail.
The most accessible historical illustration remains Sarajevo in June 1914. One assassination did not ‘cause’ the First World War by itself. The structural tensions were already there. But one act, at precisely the right pressure point, unlocked a chain reaction that produced four years of industrialised slaughter and the collapse of empires.
Karz understands that logic. What he does with it is the engine of the novel.
I questioned: what if Britain wasn't trying to solve instability but learning how to weaponise it within acceptable levels of violence?
Pressure Points in the Present War
That question feels uncomfortably current because the present Iran war has exposed, in stark form, the strategic power of pressure points. The US/Israeli assault that began on 28th February 2026 has produced exactly the indirect escalation that weaker actors seek when they cannot win a conventional contest on equal terms.
The first pressure point is cost asymmetry. Iran need not defeat Western and Israeli air defence systems outright. It only has to force them to use exponentially more expensive rockets intercepting comparatively inexpensive Iranian drones.
The second pressure point is the Strait of Hormuz. Roughly 20% of global petroleum liquids consumption passes through the strait per day, making it one of the world’s most consequential energy chokepoints. Iran is using the oil route itself as a strategic lever against materially stronger opponents.
The third pressure point is regional spillover. Iran does not need every action to be decisive. It needs enough simultaneous strain -on shipping, on energy, on allied air defence, on neighbouring states’ political calculations, diplomacy -to widen the field of crisis and raise the cost of escalation for everyone else. That is precisely the concern highlighted by current analysis of Turkey’s position: Ankara spent months trying to avert a wider war and now finds itself pulled toward one anyway.
The doctrine's fourth pressure point is distributed violence through regional proxies - forces that share ideological alignment and strategic direction while maintaining operational separation, creating the same plausible deniability that characterized earlier institutional models. Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping have disrupted global trade routes and forced expensive Western naval deployments, at a cost to Iran of nothing beyond training, weapons transfers, and ideological alignment.
This is what minimum-input strategy looks like at scale. The object is not victory in the old sense. But pressure on the whole system.
From Belfast to the Gulf
There is another layer to this that makes the comparison with the North of Ireland more than superficial.
In the late 1970s the IRA shifted away from older, more easily penetrated military style structures and toward smaller Active Service Units. The strategic logic was plain enough: a flatter, more cellular organisation could survive arrests, infiltration, and disruption better than a single exposed hierarchy. Strategic direction remained central, but operational knowledge became more compartmentalised.
Analysts now describe Iran’s wartime “mosaic defense” in similar structural terms. With senior Iranian leadership decimated, local IRGC commanders have been given more latitude to continue operations under decentralised conditions. That is the resilience advantage of cellular design. It allows a system to keep functioning after the command layer has been hit.
But decentralisation has a second function too, and it matters.
Missiles that crossed into Turkish airspace and were intercepted by NATO defences are the kind of escalation that decentralised command structures can produce, where local units may act independently while the state keeps diplomatic ambiguity about intent. Turkey says NATO has now intercepted multiple Iranian missiles, while Iran has denied targeting Turkey directly. That is precisely why decentralised violence is so useful: it can generate pressure, danger, and political effect even when deniability remains contested.
Systems built on dispersed command can create a zone of plausible deniability around escalation. The state may benefit from the consequences whether or not every act was centrally ordered.
The doctrine travels. The discipline does not.
That is the distinction that matters. A cellular structure built slowly through organisational learning is one thing. A decentralised wartime system activated under decapitation pressure is another. The architecture may look similar. The quality of control is not.
Who Still Benefits?
What the current conflict illustrates, with uncomfortable clarity, is that the Belfast Doctrine and the minimum-input principle are not separate ideas. They are two layers of the same architecture. One manages deniability. The other manages effect. Add a resilient IRA-style cellular structure and the system can continue functioning even after its visible leadership is attacked.
That is why the present moment feels less like news to me than recognition.
The architects of such systems are rarely exposed in full. Individual outrages may be investigated. Particular operations may be condemned. But the deeper institutional design -the structure that makes deniable coercion sustainable -is seldom named in public, let alone dismantled.
That is the question the book asks. Not how the doctrine works. But who is still protected by it. And why.
There's one twist my novel never imagined: what happens when a powerful state turns the Belfast Doctrine logic inward on its own national security interests? The Trump administration has decimated every sector of its own national security infrastructure and interests, from sacking all its experienced generals to gutting the FBI counter-terrorism, intelligence, cyber, and critical incident response units. The FBI has also reassigned between 25 and 45 percent of its agents who handle counter-terrorism to immigration control. With national counter-terrorism capacity dismantled against adversaries using cellular structures, the ASU logic of the Belfast Doctrine, the detection of ‘sleeper cells and lone wolves’ becomes a matter of luck rather than capability. Through self-sabotage the US has made itself more susceptible to minimum-input disruption than at any point since those structures were constructed post 9/11.
I am writing a historical fiction thriller, The Belfast Doctrine. The novel grows out of decades of research into how the British state managed the conflict in the North of Ireland -not simply the street violence or the bombings, but how the institutions are set up. What began as a piece of historical fiction is now uncomfortably contemporary.
The argument behind the fiction is straightforward, if uncomfortable: Britain developed a model of warfare in which operational violence could be outsourced to proxies, deniability could be built into legal and civic structures, and the directing hand of the state could remain insulated from accountability even when events on the ground became impossible to defend.
I did not expect to be watching elements of that logic play out over the Middle East while I was still editing the final chapters.
What interests me is not a simple claim that one conflict is the same as another. It is that certain strategic principles travel. They reappear in changed form, under different flags, in different regions, and under different ideologies. The names change. The architecture does not.
What the doctrine is
The Belfast Doctrine is not simply about the use of proxies. States have always used proxies. What made the North of Ireland model distinctive was the sophistication of the surrounding system -the degree to which violence could be embedded within structures that also legitimised, explained, or obscured it. Security forces. Legal frameworks. Intelligence channels. Civic bodies. Community intermediaries. The violence was real. The fingerprints were managed.
That is the doctrine as I understand it. It is not just a method of coercion. It is a method of plausible deniability.
It remains one of the most adaptable models ever developed by a Western democracy for how weaker states can challenge stronger ones through irregular tactics.
Enter Professor Malik Karz
An important character in The Belfast Doctrine is a strategist called Professor Malik Karz. He is not there to lecture the reader. He is there to embody an idea. The principle he works by is simple: minimum input for maximum effect.
You do not need to destroy your enemy directly. It’s not about winning outright -but stretching US and Israeli resources until they begin to fail.
The most accessible historical illustration remains Sarajevo in June 1914. One assassination did not ‘cause’ the First World War by itself. The structural tensions were already there. But one act, at precisely the right pressure point, unlocked a chain reaction that produced four years of industrialised slaughter and the collapse of empires.
Karz understands that logic. What he does with it is the engine of the novel.
I questioned: what if Britain wasn't trying to solve instability but learning how to weaponise it within acceptable levels of violence?
Pressure Points in the Present War
That question feels uncomfortably current because the present Iran war has exposed, in stark form, the strategic power of pressure points. The US/Israeli assault that began on 28th February 2026 has produced exactly the indirect escalation that weaker actors seek when they cannot win a conventional contest on equal terms.
The first pressure point is cost asymmetry. Iran need not defeat Western and Israeli air defence systems outright. It only has to force them to use exponentially more expensive rockets intercepting comparatively inexpensive Iranian drones.
The second pressure point is the Strait of Hormuz. Roughly 20% of global petroleum liquids consumption passes through the strait per day, making it one of the world’s most consequential energy chokepoints. Iran is using the oil route itself as a strategic lever against materially stronger opponents.
The third pressure point is regional spillover. Iran does not need every action to be decisive. It needs enough simultaneous strain -on shipping, on energy, on allied air defence, on neighbouring states’ political calculations, diplomacy -to widen the field of crisis and raise the cost of escalation for everyone else. That is precisely the concern highlighted by current analysis of Turkey’s position: Ankara spent months trying to avert a wider war and now finds itself pulled toward one anyway.
The doctrine's fourth pressure point is distributed violence through regional proxies - forces that share ideological alignment and strategic direction while maintaining operational separation, creating the same plausible deniability that characterized earlier institutional models. Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping have disrupted global trade routes and forced expensive Western naval deployments, at a cost to Iran of nothing beyond training, weapons transfers, and ideological alignment.
This is what minimum-input strategy looks like at scale. The object is not victory in the old sense. But pressure on the whole system.
From Belfast to the Gulf
There is another layer to this that makes the comparison with the North of Ireland more than superficial.
In the late 1970s the IRA shifted away from older, more easily penetrated military style structures and toward smaller Active Service Units. The strategic logic was plain enough: a flatter, more cellular organisation could survive arrests, infiltration, and disruption better than a single exposed hierarchy. Strategic direction remained central, but operational knowledge became more compartmentalised.
Analysts now describe Iran’s wartime “mosaic defense” in similar structural terms. With senior Iranian leadership decimated, local IRGC commanders have been given more latitude to continue operations under decentralised conditions. That is the resilience advantage of cellular design. It allows a system to keep functioning after the command layer has been hit.
But decentralisation has a second function too, and it matters.
Missiles that crossed into Turkish airspace and were intercepted by NATO defences are the kind of escalation that decentralised command structures can produce, where local units may act independently while the state keeps diplomatic ambiguity about intent. Turkey says NATO has now intercepted multiple Iranian missiles, while Iran has denied targeting Turkey directly. That is precisely why decentralised violence is so useful: it can generate pressure, danger, and political effect even when deniability remains contested.
Systems built on dispersed command can create a zone of plausible deniability around escalation. The state may benefit from the consequences whether or not every act was centrally ordered.
The doctrine travels. The discipline does not.
That is the distinction that matters. A cellular structure built slowly through organisational learning is one thing. A decentralised wartime system activated under decapitation pressure is another. The architecture may look similar. The quality of control is not.
Who Still Benefits?
What the current conflict illustrates, with uncomfortable clarity, is that the Belfast Doctrine and the minimum-input principle are not separate ideas. They are two layers of the same architecture. One manages deniability. The other manages effect. Add a resilient IRA-style cellular structure and the system can continue functioning even after its visible leadership is attacked.
That is why the present moment feels less like news to me than recognition.
The architects of such systems are rarely exposed in full. Individual outrages may be investigated. Particular operations may be condemned. But the deeper institutional design -the structure that makes deniable coercion sustainable -is seldom named in public, let alone dismantled.
That is the question the book asks. Not how the doctrine works. But who is still protected by it. And why.
There's one twist my novel never imagined: what happens when a powerful state turns the Belfast Doctrine logic inward on its own national security interests? The Trump administration has decimated every sector of its own national security infrastructure and interests, from sacking all its experienced generals to gutting the FBI counter-terrorism, intelligence, cyber, and critical incident response units. The FBI has also reassigned between 25 and 45 percent of its agents who handle counter-terrorism to immigration control. With national counter-terrorism capacity dismantled against adversaries using cellular structures, the ASU logic of the Belfast Doctrine, the detection of ‘sleeper cells and lone wolves’ becomes a matter of luck rather than capability. Through self-sabotage the US has made itself more susceptible to minimum-input disruption than at any point since those structures were constructed post 9/11.
⏩ Christy Walsh was stitched up by the British Ministry of Defence in a no jury trial and spent many years in prison as a result.
The problem with the Provisionals adopting the small ASU style of unit was that the British didn't NEED to have turned someone inside it, they could easily mark them down in orders and watch them. They then would have turned people in the 'logistics and support' which helped fill in the blanks.
ReplyDeleteCase in point would be Gibraltar. Once McCann, Farrell and Savage were simply noticed as not being around ( none of them were turned) immediate red flags went up.
When it comes to Iran it's a bit of an unknown as to the depth of Intel the Israeli's and US have down to the ground level. I get your view of decentralised continuity, but this also plays very much into the strategic plans of Israel who would much rather an incohesive array of groups chipping away at an attempted war of attrition, because what inevitably happens is that they become rivals and attack each other. We've seen this in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This will be particularly true when the ability to keep the water on bites as Tehran is in a horrific drought at the moment which I've no doubt prompted the Israelis and US to attack. This won't be mentioned in the Western media. No doubt Washington and Tel Aviv have in the back of their mind the Battle of Singapore when the Japanese simply attacked the water supply prompting immediate British surrender.
I'll be buying your book when it's published Christy , sounds like a good read.