Editorial – Perceptions and facts – Besides the acceleration of the regionalization and internationalization of the Syrian war and quagmire, besides the futurist use by Erdogan of “hologram to address party members” (imagine a world where such practice would be common), among others, this week presents us with two very interesting instances of the importance …
Continue reading “The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly – 30 January 2014 – Perceptions and Facts”
Since October 2013, much has been going on in Syria. We shall first review major changes in the state of play for the Syrian actors, starting with the Salafi-Nationalist groups, before to re-evaluate our scenarios and their indicators in the light of recent events, notably Geneva 2. As was already underway during September, the various groups opposing the regime of Bashar al-Assad have pursued their reconfiguration, while the relationships and interactions among them have evolved. The Islamic Front A logical evolution If the “Islamic framework” (see update 21 Oct), created on 24 September 2013, was short-lived, as expected by many experts, it was nevertheless an important indication of the changes taking place on the ground, while its very composition foretold the …
Continue reading “Facing the Fog of War in Syria: the Rise of the Salafi-Nationalists?”
Editorial – The power of biases: This week strikingly underlines the power of biases and how much beliefs and wishful thinking may overtake our understanding and lead human actions, constraining among other the timeliness of ideas and policies. First, we have the sudden realization by Davos participants that yes, war between China and Japan is …
Continue reading “The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly – 23 January 2014 – The power of biases”
Adapting a famous battle between the Teutonic knights and the Russian army during the thirteenth century in his 1938 movie, “Alexandre Nevski”, Sergei Eisenstein directs one of the most famous war scene in the movie’s history: he shows the terrible armoured Teutonic Knights charging the Russian ragtag army over a frozen lake. However, such is the weight of the Knights’ armours, that, after some fights, the ice of Lake Peipous breaks up and all the Knights drown, giving the victory to the Russians. This could be a metaphor for what might happen in the Arctic during the decades to come, with an important nuance: there might be no winner in the end. Because of climate change, the Arctic is warming …
Continue reading “The Warming Arctic, a Hyper Strategic Crisis”
Editorial – Rediscovering Politics? This week is particularly interesting, especially because of the emergence of new analyses, or rather of the rediscovery of fundamental political dynamics (and, of course, by political I do not mean politician) as fitting perfectly well current and future trends. First, religion on the one hand, science in its high-tech and geo-engineering …
Continue reading “The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly – 16 January 2014 – Rediscovering Politics?”
This article is the fifth of a series looking for a methodology that would fulfil the challenging criteria demanded by our time, notably in terms of speed and resources. The previous article focused on how to build scenarios for war. Here we look at scenarios for situations qualified as non-violent crises, taking mainly as example the crisis between China and Japan in the East China Sea over the Diaoyu (China)/Senkaku (Japan) Islands. War or crisis? It is important, first, to note that the words used in political discourses to qualify a situation may create an element of confusion when we think about an issue such as crisis, conflict and war. Actors may have many reasons for using euphemisms rather than …
Continue reading “How to Analyze Future Security Threats (5): Scenarios and Crises”
Editorial – Contrasts – The year starts with interesting contrasts. On the one hand we have more than worrying trends. The Syrian conflict continues spreading as, notably, Iraq seems to be falling back into war – as could be expected from the continuously rising numbers of attacks and death over 2013 (if you have not seen …
Continue reading “The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly – 9 January 2014 – Contrasts”
In May 2013, several Asian countries obtained the status of “permanent observer” at the Arctic Council, the body that gathers the eight countries bordering the Arctic. These new “observers” are China, India, South Korea, Singapore, and Japan (Russia Today, Northern exposure, May 15, 2013). This rush of Asian (some of them tropical and equatorial) countries to the Arctic is one of the most important dimensions of the current global race to the Arctic region (see Valantin, “Arctic, the New great game”), triggered by the combination of the rapid warming of the North and the global competition for natural resources (Klare, The Race for what’s left, 2013). The new grand strategies ruling over this race to the Arctic, which combine national …
Continue reading “Arctic Warming and Eurasian Grand Strategies”
