Editorial – Si vis pacem para bellum (If you want peace prepare for war) and biases – The continuous escalation in East Asia is worrying to say the least. We have increasingly stronger signals pointing towards the possibility of war, including considering Japan’s challenging domestic situation. Windows of opportunities to de-escalate are most likely to open too in …
Continue reading “The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly No128, 28 November 2013”
Since the “Arab spring” in 2011, one has seen a series of old and entrenched dictatorships topple (Georges Corm, Le Proche-Orient éclaté, 2012), from Tunisia to Yemen, or, as in Syria, being replaced by a monstrous civil war. However, the very complex political forces thus unleashed, are not only rooted in the changing social, political and religious Middle-East context. New socio-environmental dynamics have also appeared, which reveal the dire vulnerability of some of these societies, about to lose the very resources upon which they depend. So, they struggle to find new resources, or new ways and means, in a very tense strategic context. These new trends are particularly impressive around the Red Sea, where Middle-East power relations are deeply transformed by …
Editorial – This week, three main themes stand out. They are unsurprising as we have been following them for a while, yet they show how difficult it may be to warn about an issue, i.e. to convince a client or an audience that a signal is neither noise nor anymore weak but strong (e.g. changes …
Continue reading “The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly No127, 21 November 2013”
In this day and age of speed, not to say haste, unequally shared resources and wish to relatively easily obtain answers to complex questions, we are faced in strategic foresight and warning analysis (or political risk analysis) with a very serious challenge. We must choose a methodology that: allows for a “good enough” analysis (Fein, 1994), …
Editorial – Below the horizon? The current tragedy of The Philippines, hit by the typhoon Haiyan “is the very model of a modern environmental catastrophe”, as underlined by Reuters’ blogger Philip Simon in his “Cat bonds wouldn’t have helped the Philippines.” This is certainly not below the horizon; it seems obvious, and is displayed on …
Continue reading “The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly No126, 14 November 2013”
On 15th September 2013, saboteurs blew up the pipeline linking Yemeni oil fields in the North to the Hodeidah export terminal, on the Red Sea coast. It was the third time in two months. In the meantime, the Yemeni political life was also marked by a deluge of US drone strikes against militants of “Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula” (AQAP). On 18th October, a militia of armed and well-organised Islamist militants attacked a Yemeni military base in the Southeast, preceded by a car bomb suicide attack, which killed five soldiers. The two following weeks saw endless attacks and manifestations, against the government as well as sectarian violence, leaving dozens dead. In the meantime, on the other side of the Gulf of …
Continue reading “Surviving the Gulf of Aden: a New Strategic Paradigm for the Future of the Region”
EEAS (EU) Event: High Level Conference on Managing Complex International Crisis To inform those of you who would be interested in attending (registration needed) to this very interesting forthcoming high level conference, to which we participate by moderating (and contributing to the organization of) a session. Click on image to register (closing 15 November 2013).
The Million Mask March organized by Anonymous on 5 November as a day of global protest received little attention in the media and mobilized, according to photos, less than what could be seen previously with Occupy. However, it can nevertheless be taken as an indication of a generalized discontent, even if it is neither mobilized …
Continue reading “The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly No125, 7 November 2013”
This post is an update for the State of Play: The Kurds in the Syrian civil war. It can be read independently, but readers will be able to refer to the initial post for background. A general call to arms to fight Jihadis – Since first clashes erupted on 12 July 2013, intensifying on 16 July, notably over and in the city of Ras al-Ain, the YPG (The People’s Defence Units – see updated mapping of actors below) has been fighting Jahbat-al Nosra (JAN) and the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS or ISIL) (van Wilgenburg, Al-Monitor, July 16 2013). At the end of July, fighting was raging in the area of the oil fields of Rmeilan “around the …
Continue reading “Facing the Fog of War in Syria: The Tragedy of Kurdistan”
