Hello from London. We get some of The Economist’s most cheerless stories in this newsletter. Last week, in concert with our health team, I covered the sad and mysterious death of a lab technician at Siberia’s Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute, and nodded to a long and murky history of Russian bioweaponry.

Now we have the execution by firing squad of former US Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan, which is scheduled to be livestreamed in December. In November 2009 he carried out an Islamist-inspired shooting spree at Fort Hood, a huge military base in Texas. He killed 13 people and injured more than 30 others. Mr Hasan was shot by police, and is now paralysed from the waist down. His execution will take place on the same base where he committed the atrocity.

It will be America’s first public execution since the 1930s. If you want toabout why the country is making a spectacle of Mr Hasan’s death, I encourage you to Here I want to take a closer look at this anachronistic and peculiar form of execution.

Although militaries around the world have their own legal frameworks, when service personnel commit capital offences they are often passed to civil authorities. The US Army last executed a service person in 1961 (death by hanging, for rape and attempted murder). It has not used a firing squad since 1945 because the method is generally associated with wartime offences, such as the murder of prisoners, spying, mutiny, desertion and cowardice. Firing squads predate gunpowder (bowmen were once used) but became much more common once firearms arrived. In the second world war the practice was still included on American military statutes as “to be shot to death by musketry”.

Historically, then, some might call it a soldier’s death for soldierly crimes. However, the defining feature of a firing squad in the armed forces is not its victim, but the executioners: soldiers drawn from ordinary rank-and-file. The logic of firing squads was to bind soldiers into the martial codes they lived by. It is a method that combines deterrence with a targeted complicity.

For this reason, there are some peculiar conventions to firing squads. First, there is the large number—typically 12—of trigger-pullers. It requires a team of soldiers for the frequent occasions when someone misses—either deliberately or accidentally. To ensure a quick death and give the shooters a clear target, a white patch is often placed over the heart of the condemned, who is also hooded or blindfolded. The head-covering dehumanises the prisoner for the firing squad, while offering some dignity for the condemned.

It has also become customary to introduce a few blank rounds at random. This gives the firing party a chance to believe they might not fire a fatal shot (and the absence of recoil confirms it for the lucky few). Rifles are pre-loaded, issued by supervisors or placed on a rack and selected haphazardly. Records are also not kept of who served in a firing party, to protect the executioners from later judgment.

The Trump administration’s decision to livestream Mr Hasan’s execution is even more surprising than the choice of method. The Pentagon may want to make the deterrent effect stronger. It’s not the first time this administration has glamourised punishment: the Department of War released video clips of “narco-terrorists” being killed at sea. But by broadcasting this type of punishment, the state is undermining the logic behind it. The event is no longer about complicity but spectacle. It becomes more vengeful than martial. And how will the firing party feel about the publicity, even if they are off-camera and drawn from volunteers?

Public executions are usually associated with the authoritarian and oppressive regimes that American forces confront in the name of liberty. You might expect it from North Korea or Iran—but not Uncle Sam. A video of a paralysed man being carried into an execution chair has all the hallmarks of murderously inventive Islamist propaganda. The world’s foremost army has always strived to put honour in its front rank. Not a camera.

Now to your questions. Clare asks about the quality of Russian troops fighting in Ukraine. The short answer is that quality appears low, and has been for some time. The best of the country’s pre-war army has long since been ground away. Vladimir Putin’s regime seems reluctant to draw upon the country’s educated youth, so it recruits the old and poor prisoners. It then treats infantry as cannon fodder, which creates perpetual inexperience. Only specialist units (like drone operators) appear to have built and protected effective corporate knowledge.

If you want toon this topic look out for an imminent article in the Europe section about a potential expanded mobilisation of Russian society. John is curious about the shape and wisdom of a trilateral agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom and America—known as AUKUS—to build nuclear attack submarines. We are preparing a story on this, which you will see in the coming weeks. In the meantime, this week we covered the question of why America withdrew its B-1 strategic bombers from RAF Fairford, a British forward operating base.

Thank you for reading. If you want to reach me, you can at thewarroom@economism.