In this special edition of The Republic’s Conscience, Nicolin Decker advances The Moral Equation of War Doctrine by introducing the Incentive Drift Model (IDM)—a systems-based framework for understanding how institutional, economic, political, and societal forces interact over time to shape the environment in which war authorization decisions are made.

This episode establishes that war does not emerge as a singular event, but from a dynamic system that evolves across decades. The model is structured across four domains: Moral Origin Alignment, Economic Reinforcement, Political Institutional Absorption, and Societal Authorization Tolerance. Together, these variables illustrate how repeated interaction across systems can gradually influence the conditions surrounding future decisions.

Two key components define the mode ...