Every answer and its explanation appears here once you have finished the path. Each one then links to the matching glossary entry, where the concept is set out in full with its worked example.
1. How does the breadth of cover vary with the severity of the event, and is that a drafting flaw?
It is broadest on the smallest disturbances and narrowest on the event that actually destroys: a mutualization constraint, not a drafting flaw
A riot mutualizes, a war does not: one event strikes every insured in a country at once, and no market carries a perfectly correlated loss. Grasping that stops you expecting from a negotiation what it cannot give, and moves the effort toward defining the exclusion rather than removing it. The answer seeing a flaw under correction is the most tempting because it leaves room for hope, and it wastes the placement window.
Glossary entry →2. What decides whether one and the same damage is covered or excluded, and why is that a problem for the insured?
The identity of the author: attribution is the pivot, and it is information the insured cannot establish
A warehouse destroyed by a riot is covered, the same warehouse destroyed by a regular unit is not, and the difference turns on military intelligence a commercial insured never holds. It is that gap between what the clause requires and what the insured can know that makes the whole module. The other answers name elements the insured can indeed establish, which is precisely why they are not the pivot.
Glossary entry →3. What are deniable forces, and why do they fall in the worst place?
A military doctrine designed to be unprovable, and it falls exactly on the boundary the policy draws
The difficulty is not accidental: these forces exist so that attribution is impossible, and the policy makes cover depend on attribution. An insured therefore has to establish what a state organized to remain unestablishable, and the only thing that shifts the balance is the drafting of the clause, not investigation. The answer filing them automatically under covered political violence is the one you would wish for, and the definition extended to actions on behalf of a sovereign power exists precisely to rule it out.
Glossary entry →4. Who bears the burden of proving the war exclusion, and what qualifies that advantage?
On the insurer, but the definition extended to actions on behalf of a sovereign power widens what it must prove about
The burden is indeed on the right side and it comforts less than it appears: the wider the definition, the more routes the insurer has to satisfy it, and a clause reaching actions on behalf of a sovereign power lets it capture what no intelligence ties directly to an army. Retaining the burden without the definition, as another answer suggests, leads to underestimating the exclusion by trusting a procedural rule. Reading it the other way, on the insured, is the module's substantive error.
Glossary entry →5. A clause makes official statements conclusive in classifying the event. What must be checked, and why?
Which authorities it makes conclusive: a commercial claim then depends on a diplomatic communiqué
The clause looks objective and hands classification to actors who are not thinking about the claim as they write: a state classifies or refuses to classify an event for diplomatic reasons, and the indemnity follows. Checking which authorities the clause makes conclusive is therefore a placement step, because between the host state, the insured's state and an international organization the incentives are not the same. The other answers propose criteria that look like safeguards and leave untouched the question of who speaks.
Glossary entry →