How to Create New Civilizations (2)? Creation and Mimesis

(Art direction: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli)

How can we create new civilizations adapted to the challenges of the present and of the future? Can we do it despite tremendous pressures such as climate change, or blows such as defeat at war?

In this series of articles, we use Toynbee’s masterful A Study of History to explore the fate of civilizations and, more specifically, to understand what could happen to our 21st century civilizations (Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History, Oxford University Press, 1934 [tomes 1-3], 1939 [tomes 4-6], 1954 [tomes 7-10], 1959 [tome 11], 1961 [tome 12] – page references in the body of the text are to the abridged version we used: D. C. Somervell, A Study of History: Abridgement of Vols I-VI, with a preface by Toynbee, Oxford University Press 1946).

Following on our previous article, we focus here on the second factor that is necessary to make a society truly dynamic again and create a new civilization.

As seen, the challenges and pressures a society faces are the first factor necessary to create a new thriving civilization.These challenges, however, must have an intensity that is neither too weak nor too severe but in the “golden mean”.

As a result, facing pressures such as climate change or defeat at war may also become the beginning for something new. Indeed, once a civilization is faced with pressure, a stimulus is created that will generate a response.

This article focuses on the response to challenges and its process. Only if the answer is adequate will the process of generating a new or adequately renewed civilization be successful. If not, the society will remain petrified and disappear in the long term or, alternatively, succumb rapidly.

There can be only one

Toynbee stresses three different ways a society may choose to answer the key challenges and pressures it faces, each with different outcomes.

First comes the least favorable result. If, when faced with a civilizational challenge, a society refuses or is incapable to change anything to its way of life, habitat, organisation, economy, values, etc., then extinction follows (p.69).

Second, comes a range of average outcomes. If a society changes a series of factors mainly to avoid changing one factor it deems as key, then a series of various fates, more or less dynamic and interesting may evolve (pp. 69-70). However, none of them is optimum and leads to a higher and better adapted civilization (Ibid.).

Finally, Toynbee outlines the best possible result. If a society accepts to change everything, from its way of life through its economy to its values, creatively, in order to overcome the new challenge and adapt to the new conditions, then it evolves into something more advanced and superior (p. 70).

In this best case, then there is a supplementary condition that must be met. The various comprehensive changes the society carries out must be done in a way that does not spend all the energy of the said society. Indeed, should the efforts that lead to change exhaust the society’s energy, then the price to pay would be the creation of a new yet aborted civilization (pp. 164-186; 574-575).

Real and false growth

More generally, Toynbee defines what is a proper answer to challenges and pressures so that the response leads to civilisational growth.(1) Then he uses this approach to single out two types of responses that are commonly believed to bring growth, but actually lead only to “false growth”.

Real growth

According to Toynbee, the proper answer to challenge and pressure that leads to real growth takes place when, through the “overcoming of the material obstacle”, a society releases its energy “to make responses to challenges which henceforth are internal rather than external, spiritual rather than material” (p.576). The author names this process “etherialization”.

In other words, the successful response does not only imply overcoming an external challenge but also demands a shift in energy towards transforming one’s society into something better adapted to the challenge. It implies a displacement of energy from one area that is external, to another that is internal (pp. 198-199).

For example, at the end of the first millenium, in Europe, overcoming the Viking onslaught could take place, among others, thanks to the creation of the feudal system (p. 202). Meanwhile a complex system involving spiritual and secular powers and relationships evolved, for instance, with the creation and development of castles (castrum) and advowson (advocatus) (Brigitte Meijns, “Les premières collégiales des comtes de Flandre, leurs reliques et les conséquences des invasions normandes (IXe-Xe siècles)“, Revue belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, Année 2007  85-3-4  pp. 539-575). Hence, an external threat the Viking attacks – was not met only through external means, such as military defense. Actually, the external threat was answered by an internal response, the political and religious organisation of society.

As an illustration for the 21st century, let us take the example of the hyper industrial and consumer society faced with climate change. We may recall that our era is also now known as the anthropocene. This very name highlights that “Our new geological period is … defined as being “anthropos” (meaning “human”) driven, because humankind has become the major geological and biological force on Earth” (for a detailed explanation of the anthropocene, Jean-Michel Valantin, “The Anthropocene Era and Economic (in)Security – (1)“, RTAS, 19 September 2016). Hence, this implies that human societies – or rather the majority of scientists as well as concerned people – have started understanding that climate change is not something external to 21st century human civilizations, but internal to them. We have thus come part of the way, if we do not want our civilizations to break down but, wish, on the contrary to see renewal and real growth in the wake of this immense challenge.

Having the proper understanding, in Toynbee’s perspective, we can now create the proper answer. The response that must be given, and that is indeed imperatively demanded of all civilizations is internal: reduce GHG emissions (e.g. see all the IPCC reports). If Toynbee is correct, then it is highly likely that reducing GHG emissions will be and need to be part of far ranging changes and shifts, involving all components of our civilizations, as seen above.

As a civilization ages and grows, then challenges must increasingly be handled internally. This is also the case even if a new civilization has to be created by secession to face pressures, leaving behind the part of civilization that does not want to change and is thus doomed to fail.

False growth

Real growth, thus, does NOT take place when a civilization only develops an increasing control over the external environment. The two cases Toynbee studies are first conquest and military attacks (notably pp. 189-192), and second technical innovation (pp. 192-197). Using various counter-examples from various civilizations, he shows that neither one nor the other leads to a higher and better civilization. For him, limiting a response to these two aspects is inadequate.

Considering 21st century beliefs in the virtue of technical innovation and thus how counter-intuitive Toynbee’s findings are, we highlight now why the author stresses that technical innovation does not lead to real growth for a civilization.(2)

Using historical cases, Toynbee shows that some civilizations have known periods of continuing technical innovation in some areas, while the corresponding civilization was not growing. For example, in Hellenic society, a century of war “from the outbreak of the Atheno-Peloponnesian war to the Macedonian victory …(421-338 B.C.)” had as outcome an improvement in the technique of war while the Hellenic civilization also broke down (pp. 194-195).

Similarly, always in the case of the Hellenic or Graeco-Roman civilization, the author stresses that the technique of agriculture improved as decline gathered speed. For example, in Attica, approximatively during the late 7th to 6th century B.C., the transformation from mixed farming to specialised agriculture for exports was first followed by a boost of energy that could make believe that the response was adequate. Yet, the next stage, which was the development of mass production through slave labour, brought about so many negative social and moral consequences over four centuries it contributed, according to the author to the “general social débâcle of the third century after Christ” (pp. 195-196).

As Toynbee showed with counter-examples that technical innovation alone led to growth that could also be correlated or even contribute to decline and break-down, then it implies that the growth deriving from technical innovation alone is not real in the sense that it does not lead to a better, higher and more evolved civilization.

Notably for the tech savvy 21st century civilizations, Toynbee’s findings on technical developments are key.

Indeed, 21st societies tend to believe that technology is a universal saviour, and that no effort other than technological innovation is required. For example, for some people, carbon sequestration and elimination along various high tech devices of geo-engineering still to be created or manufactured are meant to be THE solution to climate change. Yet, if we follow Toynbee, whatever the importance of solutions such as carbon elimination, which must indeed be endeavoured, it is certain that only trying to find technical solutions to climate change will not allow us to use the pressure of climate change to grow and develop a better civilization. This finds an illustration in the report “How to avoid carbon removal delaying emissions reductions” (Carbon Gap, 27 September 2023), as both emissions’ reductions, which will necessitate many fundamental changes, and carbon removal are necessary (e.g. Nathalie Mayer, “Nous n’arriverons pas à éliminer les 10 milliards de tonnes de CO2 par an annoncés pour 2050“, 7 October 2023). Carbon removal’s technical innovation alone will not be enough.

Following Toynbee, if we decided to count only on technical innovation to answer the challenge of climate change then we could focus on an inadequate answer for a very real pressure. As a result, such a response could contribute to see the 21st century civilizations break down.

On the contrary, a response designed to include creative internal changes, as we saw previously, as well as, why not, technical innovation, could be the adequate way forward.

Now we have seen that multi-dimensional changes to our 21st century civilizations are necessary and that these must involve primarily internal changes, thus fundamentally novel ways and values, how can we imagine and create these changes? How can we design such a response to the many challenges we face?

Responding to Pressures: a two stages process

1st stage – Creation and the creative group

“The responsibility of a few”

For growth to happen, to answer challenges and pressures, thus, a society needs to see truly creative ideas, taking into account all factors and elements constituting both the challenges and the society.

Building notably upon the philosopher Bergson (Les Deux Sources de la Morale et de la Religion), the author insists that the creative process is “the responsibility of a few”, who are sole able to carry out this process. Not to succumb to their genius notably because of rejection and incomprehension, the creators will need, later on, to teach the new ways to the “uncreative masses” (pp. 209-216).

For the stage of creation, imagination and design, creative individuals (pp. 217-230) and creative groups (pp.230-241) need to withdraw from society to carry out the necessary creative process. Sometimes this withdrawal may be forced upon them (ibid.). Withdrawal is necessary to be away from distractions and social obligations (ibid.).

As examples of creative individuals, Toynbee refers to what he calls “great pioneers”, such as “Saint Paul, Saint Benedict, Saint Gregory the Great, The Buddha, Muhammad, Machiavelli, Dante” (pp. 217-230).

As far as creative groups are concerned, Toynbee refers to sub-societies, “constituent parts of societies”. He gives among other examples Italy “in the second chapter of the growth of Western Society”. Then, between the middle of the 13th century and the end of the 15th, Italy withdrew from the “tumultuous feudal” strife, which allowed for the development of the intensive and “greatest achievements of the Italian genius” across all arts, which then could spread (pp 231-233). Another example is Athens during the second period of growth of the Hellenic Society. Athens had to overcome the challenge of over-population in the 8th century B.C. and created an original solution over two centuries, which led to a new more vibrant, influential and involved role, starting in the 5th century B.C. (pp. 230-231).

We deduce from Toynbee’s examples that the “creative group” may be different entities, of different size, with different characteristics. It needs, however, to be organised – even informally – enough to then allow for the next stage of the process to happen.

We also have to consider, however difficult it maybe for our 21st century thinking, that the creative processes Toynbee addresses were long, and lasted a couple of centuries. This question of time, considering the urgency of the challenges the 21st century civilisations face on the one hand, the perceived acceleration of time, on the other, deserves further reflection and research.

The uncreative power of the dominant group

Even though we have past historical examples showing the success of creation in answer to civilizational challenges, there is actually no fortunate fatality in seeing a creative individual or group succeed when facing such pressures. If creative individuals and groups fail to find the adequate creative response to the challenges faced, then the civilization will succumb (pp.214-243, 245).

If ever the creative group were to lack proper creative power and be unable to design a truly creative and adequate answer, then what was initially the creative group would become a mere “dominant” group (p.246).

Using history as previously, Toynbee explains that, most often, the creative group that successfully solved past challenges is rarely the one that will solve the next ones (pp. 307-317). It thus becomes a dominating group and not a creative one, which leads to the break-down of a civilization.

It is thus key, considering the number of challenges and pressures the 21st century faces (see article 1), that true creativity be fostered in our civilizations, however difficult this may be. Without being pessimistic, we may wonder, however, if dominating groups truly can, considering the numbers and intensity of the interests at hand, allow others to develop creative solutions, and later to spread them (see Helene Lavoix, The Chronicles of Everstate – “2212 EVT: Ideological Stakes in an Outdated Worldview” and “2212 EVT: Material Stakes in an Outdated Worldview“, RTAS, February 2012).

In terms of geopolitics and international relations, Toynbee’s argument implies that the U.S., having been the architect of the Pax Americana and of the Washington consensus, and the leading power of the last forty years or so, is very likely not to be the “creative group” that will renew the world civilizations as they are confronted to the challenges of the 21st century. The U.S. have indeed not taken the lead in answering the challenge of climate change. For example, if we consider we want to limit warming to 1.5°C – assuming American emission have remained flat compared with 2019 – 2024 is the year when the U.S. carbon budget runs out (e.g. Helene Lavoix, “Climate Breakdown: Towards War to Reduce CO2 Emissions?“, RTAS, 19 September 2023). Moreover, recent international events highlight a loss of influence that tends to constantly impacts American actions, not only in Asia but also in the Middle East (e.g. Jean-Michel Valantin, “The war in Gaza and China’s pivot to the Middle East” and “From the War in Gaza to the Great U.S.-China War (2)?“, RTAS, 22 Nov and 26 Dec 2023), to say nothing of the expansion of regional bodies such as BRICS into BRICS+ (BRICS+, “Brics to add Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and UAE as new members“, 24 August 2023). These signals of an American loss of influence would tend to stress that, if the U.S. has been a creative body in the past, the third decade of the 21st century shows strengthening evidence that America is increasingly becoming merely a dominant group. We may thus expect rebellion and secession away from its civilization.

Without hindsight, it is of course harder to identify which individuals or groups are truly creative considering the 21st century challenges. It may be that they are still in the withdrawal phase and that we cannot see them. It could be that the couple China-Russia, as the U.S. fears, will be the creative group that will answer adequately the current challenges (Helene Lavoix, “The American National Interest“, RTAS, 22 June 22). However, the Sino-Russian management of the challenges of climate change does not suggest that these two countries are the obvious creative group for the future either (Helene Lavoix, “Climate Breakdown). Likely, the creative group or groups, considering the breadth of change that must be accomplished, will be entities that are not or not only modern states. A comprehensive strategic foresight exercise should be carried out on this theme.

2nd stage: mimesis

Assuming true and adequate creation has taken place in response to pressures and challenges, then the creative individuals and the creative group, must return to society to diffuse their creation (pp. 209-241).

They must make sure that the “uncreative majority” follows their lead and “breaks the cake of customs” (an expression Toynbee borrowed from Walter Bagehot(3) – pp. 214-216).

According to Toynbee, it is through mimesis, i.e. imitation, a “generic feature of social life”, that the “uncreative majority” comes to adopt the creative novel response (p.216). Examples of mimesis are fan-like behaviour, following the herd mentality, influencers and their followers, as well as automatic admiration for signs of status, attempts at acquiring such signs and reproduction of behaviour.(4) Mimesis is necessary because the creative group must not only spread entirely new – and adequate – ideas, but also real changes in values, ways of life and behaviour, sometimes in very practical, day to day, matters.

Toynbee’s succinctly describes the way mimesis takes place:

“In order to draw the inert majority along in the active minority’s train, the ideal method of direct individual inspiration has always had to be reinforced by the practical method of wholesale social drill [mimesis] – a habitual exercise of primitive mankind, which can be made to serve the cause of social progress when new leaders take command and issue new marching orders.

Mimesis may lead to the acquisition of ‘social assets’ – aptitudes or emotions or ideas – which the acquisitors had not originated and which they would never have possessed if they had not encountered and imitated those who possessed them.”

Somervell, A Study of History… p.216.

From these paragraphs we can deduce two points.

First, the creative group can trigger mimesis only from a place where it leads followers. This implies that the withdrawal the creative group operates to create does not mean an exit from society, but only a temporary retreat. The creative group likely finds back at least a modicum amount of power and status when it fully returns to life in society. Then, to become a leading group, the creative group will have to contend with other groups, which means power struggle as well as mobilization of followers, which Toynbee glosses over, but must not be forgotten.

Second, Toynbee’s argument begs a question. Why would the masses or part of them choose the novel ideas and ways over the old ones, as for both the same process, mimesis takes place. Part of the answer may be related to the new social assets that those using mimesis acquire, and that they would not have obtained without imitation. This may lead them to choose new ideas and ways over old ones, for example if old behaviour and past mimesis had not allowed them to acquire enough assets, and if they see an interest – including in meeting their needs – in acquiring the new assets.

Hence, mimesis, even if it is the only process possible to see the creative response widely adopted, appears nonetheless as fraught with uncertainty. The creative group must be able to foster mimesis and the majority must see an interest in changing the object of its mimesis.

Then, as mimesis takes place, Toynbee highlights various reactions that can be triggered that will impact both the mimetic process and the future of the civilizations as they face challenges and pressures (pp.279-307). Indeed, as we earlier wondered if existing interests groups would allow creativity and its early diffusion, we may similarly wonder how these interests would react to spreading mimetic changes related to a truly creative answer to challenges and pressure.

When the new creative elements of the response are introduced in society, new social forces, constituted according to the author by emotions, aptitudes and ideas, are unleashed (p. 279). However, the existing institutions of society, built in the past, are not made to handle these new forces. Henceforth disharmony and tension occur.

Ideally, new institutions should be built for the new ways. But this is only an ideal which is impossible in reality (Ibid.).

The best case happens when the new ways are carried out throughout society through new adapted institutions co-existing with old institutions, while the latter evolve and adjust harmoniously to novelty. In that case, a new stage of growth for the existing civilization or a new civilization, able to face the challenges and pressures at hand, emerges. Toynbee calls this case “adjustment“.

Alternatively the old institutions may be unable to handle the new ways through adjustment and block them. We then have two possibilities.

First, the old institutions finally break down. This is what Toynbee calls a “revolution”. In this case, we must face “retarded and proportionally violent acts of mimesis” (p.280). Indeed, the mimetic process for the adoption of new ways is thwarted by the old institutions. This means a delay, and as the delay lengthens, power builds up, until the old institutions cannot contain anymore the new, which erupts with violence. The obvious example chosen by Toynbee is the French Revolution of 1789, inspired by both the American Revolution and two generations of “glorification” of English achievements in France through the enlightenment (p. 280-281).

Second, the old institutions do not break down but successfully thwart the new ways. Toynbee calls such a case an “enormity”. It is equivalent to a “frustrated mimesis” (p.281). This leads to the break-down of society and civilization.

In any given society the three “adjustment, revolution and enormity” may coexist in different sectors. If harmonious “adjustment” prevails then civilization renews itself. If revolutions prevail, growth and thus survival of the civilization will “become increasingly hazardous”. If “enormity” prevails, then civilization breaks down (p. 281).

However tragic some of these futures may be, Toynbee also offers us some supplementary glimmers of hope. He explains that one may secede from a civilization heading towards its fall. We shall address the creation of a new civilization through secession in another article.

Notes

(1) Toynbee mainly describes the process of response for the stage of growth after the birth of a new civilization. However, we assume here that the process described for growth is similar to the process necessary for the creation of a new civilization. Furthermore, the insights of the author are so interesting and at times so surprising it would be wrong not to present them.

(2) On a related yet distinct topic, that nevertheless reinforces Toynbee’s argument, Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson highlight that technology alone does not bring progress; it is a tool that must be “brought under control” to obtain governing objectives such as democracy, empowerment for people or widespread prosperity, Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity, (MIT Press, 2023).

(3) Walter Bagehot, Physics and Politics, 1872: see, for example Calvet Henri, “Un économiste victorien : Walter Bagehot“, In: Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, tome 3 N°2, Avril-juin 1956. pp. 156-163.

(4), It would be interesting to consider René Girard’s mimetic theory of desire in the light of Toynbee’s work.

From the War in Gaza to the Great U.S.-China War (2)?

(Art direction: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli –
design with DALL-E 2)

Given the speed and political density of the historic sequence opened by the war in Gaza, the second article in this new RTAS series only covers the period from 27 October to 20 November 2023.

In the first part of this series, we saw how the war in Gaza accelerates a profound political recomposition not only in the Middle-East but also internationally.

Arab countries and Iran develop new relationships, while China and the Middle East and Persian Gulf countries rapidly reinforce their political ties. As a result, Israel and its U.S. ally appear as being isolated internationally (Jean-Michel Valantin, “The war in Gaza and China’s pivot to the Middle East”, The Red Team Analysis Society, November 22, 2023 .

In this context, on 15 November 2023, amid the raging battles in Ukraine and Gaza and related international tensions, Chinese President Xi Jinping met U.S. President Joe Biden in San Francisco. The two heads of state of those major great powers agreed on several topics, especially on the reopening of military to military communication channels (AAmer Madhani, Collen Long, Didi Tang, “Biden, Xi agreed to “pick up the phones” for any urgent concerns: “that’s progress”, AP, November 16, 2023).

One week later, on 20 November, the Pentagon announced that it would deploy new medium-range missile systems in the Pacific in 2024 (Patrick Tucker, “U.S to deploy new land-based missiles, Army’s Pacific commander says”, Defense One, November 19, 2023).

The very same day, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi welcomed in Beijing the high level ministerial committee of the Joint Islamic-Arab Summit. Among the delegates were the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Indonesia, as well as the Chadian Brahim Taha, head of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The delegation was in Beijing to ask China to insist on a permanent ceasefire in Gaza (Yew Lun Tian and Laurie Chen, “In Beijing, Arab and Muslim Ministers urge end to Gaza war”, Reuters, November 20, 2023).

This delegation was a follow up to the historic 11 November 2023 Islamic Arab-Iran conference. This event took place in Riyad, the Saudi Kingdom capital. Leaders of major Arab countries and Islamic powers attended this summit, such as Syrian president Bashar el Assad, Turkish president Recep Erdogan and Shiite Iranian President Raisi. Other guests were Qatar’s emir Tamim al Tani and Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority. The aim of the conference was to condemn the Israeli offensive against Hamas in Gaza while calling for a ceasefire (“Arab-Islamic reject justifying Gaza war as Israeli self-defense”, Al Jazeera, 11 November 2023).

Meanwhile, after the positioning in October of two U.S. Navy aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean Sea along the Israeli littoral, a third was positioned off the coast of Oman.

This third carrier and its combat group reinforce the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf and in the Middle East (Tara Copp, “The U.S is moving quickly to boost Israel’s military. A look at what assistance is providing”, AP, 15 October 2023 and Sam LaGrone, “Aircarft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower Now in Gulf of Oman”, USNI News, 13 November, 2023).

Thus, it is able to support the U.S. policy of deterrence against Iran as well as against the numerous militias that attack U.S. military bases in Syria and Iraq. Meanwhile, some Houti militias, which are meant to be Iran proxies, send missiles’ waves against Israel, while the Israeli Defense forces wages its war against Hamas in Gaza (Connor Echols, “Tracking the U.S Military build-up today in the Middle East”, Responsible Statecraft, October 25, 2023).

In other terms, while the war in Gaza rages, the political importance of China in the Middle East keeps on growing. Symmetrically, the U.S. military presence in the Middle East acts both as a deterrent and as an attractor for the attacks of the regional militias. Thus, the Chinese political influence versus the U.S. military one in the Middle East appears as being a new dimension of the global China-U.S. great power competition (John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Powers Politics, 2014).

In this article, we look at the development of this competition throughout the Middle East during the war in Gaza. We focus on the densification of the geoeconomic and political convergence between the Arab countries and China versus the heightening U.S. military presence.

Gaza, Riyad and Beijing: war on the Chinese Belt & Road

On 11 November, the Saudi Government held an extraordinary joint Summit of both the Arab League and the OIC. Among others, the conference gathered heads of state of Syria, Iran and of the Palestinian Authority.

The attendees used very strong language to denounce the Israeli war in Gaza, while praising Hamas (Aziz el Yaakubi and Nayera Abdallah, “Arab and Muslim leaders demand immediate end to Gaza war”, Reuters, November 12, 2023).

For example, Turkish president Recep Tayib Erdogan, asked for a condemnation of Israel and of its offensive in Gaza. He also asked for a permanent ceasefire and a permanent solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict (ibid).

Then, on 20 November, a delegation of foreign ministers of the Arab League and of the OIC went to Beijing and met with the Chinese vice-president Hang Zhen. The delegation was composed of ministers from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, from the Palestinian authority, from Indonesia and from the OIC (“Arab Muslim delegation in Beijing asks for immediate Gaza cease fire”, VOA, November 20, 2023).

The delegation, which was going to meet each member of the Security Council, started its tour in Beijing. The Saudi foreign minister declared:

“We are here to send a clear signal: that is we must immediately stop the fighting and the killings, we must immediately deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza …”

in Yew Lun Tiand and Laurie Chen, “In Beijing, Arab and Muslim Ministers urge end to Gaza war”, Reuters, November 20, 2023.

From Riyad to Beijing

From a geopolitical and strategic point of view, it is important to note that all the delegates to the 11 November and 20 November Beijing summits represent countries that are all members or partners of the Chinese Belt & Road initiative (BRI) (Jean-Michel Valantin, “Towards a US China War? (1) – The New Cold War and the Chinese Belt and Road go to the Arctic”, The Red Team Analysis Society, May 20, 2019 and « China, Saudi Arabia and the Arab AI Rise“, The Red Team Analysis Society, January 31, 2023). 

This is also true of Israel, which develops strong ties with China and expands its cooperation with the “Middle Kingdom”. Israel is already a partner of the Asian infrastructure bank, i.e. the banking entity that finances BRI projects. To reinforce the Israel-China relationship, the Israeli government also contemplates the possibility to formally join the BRI, (Jean-Michel Valantin, “China, Israel and the New Silk Road”, The Red Team Analysis Society, June 8, 2015).

Indeed, the Gaza war generates massive tensions in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. This war opposes the Hamas, historically supported by Iran and Qatar, to the Israeli military after the monstrous attacks of the 7 October 2023. Such is the scope of the conflict because of these chains of actors, that it triggers regional and world shockwaves (Bill Hutchinson, “Israeli-Hamas conflict: time line and key events”, ABC News, 30 October, 2023 ).

As it happens, this region is strategic for the BRI, because it is at the junction of the West Asian segments of the BRI and of the Mediterranean world. The BRI reinforces the political relationship between the Arab states, Iran and China.

In other words, the Gaza war is happening de facto inside a strategic regional sector of the New Silk Roads/Belt & Road Initiative.

So, for China, the Gaza war is of tremendous consequences.

It’s raining U.S. aircraft carriers

However, the war also attracts a massive U.S. military mobilization (Courtney Kube, “At least 45 service members may have been injured in Iran-linked attacks”, NBC News, November 6, 2023 and Connor Echols, “Tracking the U.S Military build-up today in the Middle East”, Responsible Statecraft”).

Two U.S. aircraft carriers operate from the Mediterranean Sea, in the vicinity of Israel, and one more positions itself off the coast of Oman. Those three U.S. Navy aircraft carriers are defining a strategic perimeter that encloses the Middle East from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. Thus, this perimeter defines the whole region as the theatre of operations of the Gaza war (“U.S. Aircraft Carriers – What they bring to the Middle-East”, Reuters, 16 October, 2023, and Sam LaGrone, “Aircarft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower Now in Gulf of Oman”, USNI News, 13 November, 2023).

In this context, the three U.S. carriers and their combat groups are deterring Lebanese Hezbollah and “other hostile third parties”, i.e, Iran. This deterrence operation aims at blocking their direct involvement against Israel. As it happens, Iran is also a member of the Chinese BRI (Sebastian Goulard, “Iran China signed a 25 years agreement: a BRI milestone”, OBOREurope, 31 March, 2021).

Attacks of the Houthis

The influence of Iran can be felt through numerous proxy actors. For example, pro-Iran Houthi rebels are launching random missiles salvos against Israel. In the Red Sea, they started operations with hijacking an Israeli-linked cargo ship.

Meanwhile, regional Iran-proxy militias target U.S. land bases as well as Israel and cargo ships in the Red Sea (Jon Gambrell, “3 commercial ships hit by missiles in Houti attack in Red Sea, US warship downs 3 drones”, AP, 4 December).

From the Persian Gulf to China: an emerging energy and AI block?

In the meantime, the conflict contributes to transform China from being an active economic actor into a political and strategic player in the Middle-East.

The ever-growing Chinese political influence in the Middle-East intricately links itself with the Chinese energy interests in the region. In the first part of this series, we have studied how Saudi Arabia and China are mutually “pivoting” towards each other (Jean-Michel Valantin, “The war in Gaza and China’s pivot to the Middle East”, The Red Team Analysis Society, November 22, 2023). We saw how it is based on the Saudi oil exports to China as well as upon the development of artificial intelligence and nuclear power in the Saudi kingdom by China.

Oil for China

The same is true for Iran, after the signature in 2022 of the Iran-China 25 Years Cooperation agreement. This signature occurred despite the current regime of U.S. sanctions, forcefully denounced by both Iran and China (Maziar Motamedi, “Iran says 25 years agreement enters implementation stage”, Al Jazeera, 15 January, 2022).

The signature of the Iran-China 25 years agreement officially brings Iran in the Chinese BRI. Under the agreement, during the next 25 years, China will invest 400 billion dollars in Iran. In exchange, it will receive a steady oil supply. This humongous investment is divided in two parts.

A first 280 billion dollars part is dedicated to the development of the Iranian oil, gas and petrochemicals sectors. The second 120 billion dollars part is dedicated to transport and communication infrastructures (Simon Watkins, “China inks military deal with Iran under secretive 25 years plan”, OilPrice.com, 2020).

It must be noted that the Chinese communication, digital surveillance and AI giant ZTE will support the Iranian government’s effort by developing a network of landline, mobile and internet communications (Ghazal Vaisi, “The 25 years Iran-China, endangering 2500 years of heritage”, March 1, 2022).

This export of Chinese surveillance and digital technology appears as a BRI framework. Indeed, the same terms of exchange “resources vs technology” is also part of other deals. It is the case with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States as well as with Serbia (Jean-Michel Valantin, “China, Saudi Arabia and the Arab AI Rise”, The Red Team Analysis Society, January 31, 2023 and  “China, Serbia, AI and the Pincer Movement on Europe”, The Red Team Analysis Society, April 2, 2023) .

It is also the case, for example, of the China-Gulf states free trade agreement that should be signed at the end of 2023 or in 2024. This deal establishes that Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Koweit, Oman and the United Arab Emirates will export gas to China (Andy Sambridge, “GCC chiefs predicts deal with China Free Trade deal signed “soon”“, Arabian Gulf Business Insight, October 23, 2023) . Reciprocally, those countries will have access to Chinese digital and surveillance technologies (Mordechai Chaziza, “China-GCC digital economic cooperation in the age of strategic rivalry”, Middle East Institute, June 7, 2022).

“In the Middle” of Iraqi Oil

In Iraq, the government signed a massive oil and gas development deals with both China and Russia, in exchange for investments in the energy sector (John Calabrese, “Beijing to Baghdad: China’s growing role in Iraq’s energy sector”, Middle East Institute, June 7, 2023). Iraq is the third oil exporter to China, with 9.9 million tons of crude oil in 2022.

The first oil exporter to China is Russia, with 15.6 million tons. The second is Saudi Arabia, with 13.9 million and the UAE is ranking fourth, with 6.5 millions tons (“Iraq ranks third in China’s oil imports”, Shafaq.com, 2023-23-21). Furthermore, half of the Iraqi oil production comes from operations that are led by Chinese companies or from operations that involve China.

As it happens, in 2022, Chinese companies won 87% of all the Iraqi contracts in the energy sector (Will Crisp, “Chinese win 87% of Iraq’s energy contracts”, MEED Middle East Business Intelligence, 07 November, 2022). Especially, those companies obtained rights for the exploration and development of numerous energy operations. Most of the Chinese investments in Iraq take place within the Belt & Road energy investment framework (Jon Calabrese, ibid).

The Oil Block

Meanwhile, the Russian companies Lukoil and Rosneft also obtained other massive contracts in Iraq. Even if the French Total Energies is still an important partner, Western companies such as Exxon are very much on the losing side in Iraq (Calabrese, ibid).

In other words, when on 20 November 2023 the Chinese vice-president received representatives of the Arab League and of the OIC, including Iran, he received de facto delegates of the main oil and gas suppliers of his country. Those delegates represent or are also part of the OPEC+, of the BRICS Organization, and of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

And as it happens, all of those are also members of the Chinese Belt & Road Initiative. In other words, the BRI has become a major vehicle for Chinese energy investments as well as for digital, surveillance and artificial intelligence in the Middle East and in the Persian Gulf.

So, all of these countries and organizations benefit from their relationships with China. In the same dynamic, China needs them for its long term strategy of development. This takes place in the context of its hardening competition with the U.S. (Hélène Lavoix, “The War between China and the U.S- The Normative Dimension”, The Red Team Analysis Society, July 4, 2022).

From the “Great Game” to the “Go Game”

So, as it happens, the pro-palestinian stance that the Chinese government adopts is also, de facto, a common political platform with the Arab states and Iran. Doing so, Beijing sends a message to Israel as well as to the U.S. This message is not “only” about the Gaza war. It is as well about the new conjoined economic, political and strategic weight of the Arabic, Iranian and Chinese convergence.

Military power vs Political influence

However, the Gaza war is also a major attractor for U.S. “crisis management” military power. But this heavy U.S. involvement triggers numerous tensions and military incidents in a region where China and Russia are rapidly developing their influence.

In this regard, the U.S. remains the main military power in the region. However, China appears as becoming a rapidly-growing economic, technological and political player. And the Middle Kingdom benefits from the repulsive effect triggered by the renewed presence of the U.S. military.

Indeed, from a Chinese point of view, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf are now particularly “useful spaces”. This notion of “usefulness” is anchored in Chinese philosophical and strategic thought. (Valantin, “China and the New Silk Road: the Pakistani strategy”, The Red Team Analysis, May 18, 2015).

That dimension is grounded in an understanding of the spatial dimension of China, in the geographical sense. Space is not only conceived as a support to spread Chinese influence and power to the “outside”. It also allows the Middle Kingdom to “aspirate” what it needs from the “outside” to the “inside”. (Quynh Delaunay, Naissance de la Chine moderne, L’Empire du Milieu dans la globalisation, 2014).

Welcome on the Go Board

Therefore we qualify some spaces as being “useful” to the deployment of the Chinese strategy. It is also why each “useful space” is related to, and is “useful”, to other “useful spaces”. Thus this “chain” of “useful spaces” relates to the China’s space. In the same dynamic, the different countries involved in the deployment of the Chinese strategy are “useful spaces” for China. 

This philosophy of space and time as flows is the basic material of the Chinese strategic tradition. As Scott Boorman, Arthur Waldron and David Lai, among others, establish quite clearly, this tradition expresses itself especially well through the game of Go.

This very ancient game emphasizes the importance not to control, but to master the space of the adversary (Arthur Waldron, “China’s Military Classics”, Joint Forces Quarterly, Spring 1994). The strategy is to “convert” that space into one’s own. To do so, one has to “surround in order to convert “ conquer” the pieces, i.e. the space of the adversary.

So, the Chinese presence in the Middle East and in the Persian Gulf may very well be understood as a “conversion” of the Arab and Iranian “spaces” into “useful spaces” for China. In the same dynamic, this “conversion” weakens the influence of its main competitor, i.e the U.S. Reciprocally, China becomes a “useful” Great power for Middle East countries.

However, it now remains to be seen if the Gaza war accelerates, or not, the heightening of tensions between China and its partners on the one hand, the U.S  and its own partners and allies on the other.

Using Videos for Scenarios: The Future Operational Environment 2035-2050

(Screenshot from the video FOE 2035-2050
Army Futures Command)

Once valid scenarios for the future are built, we still need to deliver them to policy-makers and decision-makers.

We need to understand the various challenges implied by the communication of strategic foresight products, and among them all the biases and traps that may hinder this communication, as seen in previous articles.

More prosaically, we also need to find concrete means to communicate our perfectly crafted efforts. Creating a video, assuming resources are available, may be an interesting way to do so.

We present below a fascinating example of such a video, created, true enough, thanks to the means of the U.S. Army. Our purpose is not to validate or not the methodology used, nor to approve or not the content of the scenarios themselves, but to give readers an example of what can be done to communicate scenarios.

Context of the video

The Army Futures Command was created in 2018 within the U.S. Army and its objective is to “transform the [U.S.] Army to ensure war-winning future readiness“.

As part of its mission, it explores the future operational environment. It published in the Fall of 2020, Future Operational Environment: forging the future in an uncertain world 2035-2050 (download pdf), presenting four scenarios – The New Cold War; Ascending Powers; Stable Competition; Clashing Coalitions – with the related video.

The Video – The Future Operational Environment (FOE) 2035-2050

The U.S. Army Future Command’s Future Operational Environment (FOE) 2035-2050 Video (October 2020) – shared initially on the APAN network of the Mad Scientist Laboratory.

The war in Gaza and China’s pivot to the Middle East

(Art direction and design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli)

Given the speed and political density of the historic sequence opened by the Gaza war, the first article in this new RTAS series covers only the period from 7 to 27 October 2023.

Introduction: A new war in a new Middle East

On 27 October 2023, Israel’s military launched a massive offensive against Hamas in Gaza. The Israeli offensive is the response to the 7 October formidable attack by land, sea and air by hundreds of Hamas commandos in the depths of Israel. That operation, the killing of 1400 Israeli people, and the taking of 237 hostages, destabilized the whole Middle East (Bill Hutchinson, “Israeli-Hamas conflict: time line and key events”, ABC News, 30 October, 2023). This dynamic expands globally. Adding to this explosive situation, the U.S. sent two carriers in the vicinity of Israel and Gaza, as well as military advisers to Israel (“U.S. Aircraft Carriers – What they bring to the Middle-East”, Reuters, 16 October, 2023).

This conflict drives considerable and very powerful shifts, at the regional and international levels. Those became quite obvious between 12 and 14 October, when President Biden flew to the Middle East in order to meet Israeli president Netanyahu and other regional leaders. However, in a massive political shift, the Arab heads of states refused to meet him (Naheed Ibrahim, “Biden snubbed by Middle East allies as Arab world seethes over Gaza hospital blast”, CNN, October 23).

In the same time, the Chinese high level diplomat Zhai Jun toured the Middle East, was in contact with Arab leaders, as well as Israeli and Palestinian leaders, in order to prevent the emergence of a large-scale armed conflict in the Middle east (John Calabrese, “The war in Gaza as a major test of China’s Middle East diplomacy”, Middle East Institute, October 19, 2023).

Towards the Flame

This emerging geopolitical reality is the de facto context of the Middle East regional conflict, which opposes directly Israel to the Hamas movement, while having the potential to attract the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement, as well as Iranian forces in Syria, which would mean deeply implicating Iran.

As it happens, this highly volatile situation triggers political reactions of a new kind, especially the emergence of a possibly common position between Saudi Arabia and Iran. In other terms, this gigantic, multidimensional crisis reveals that the international distribution of power is rapidly and deeply shifting (Jared Szuba, “Pentagon warns Iran, Hezbollah to stay out of Hamas war with Israel”, Al Monitor, October 10, 2023).

Meanwhile, the American power appears to be losing political and military influence, despite a massive force projection in the region.

Among these novel trends, we may highlight that the Middle East is now pivoting towards China, which asserts its power at the global level. This could also mean that the Middle East is also becoming a powerful attractor for the rising China-U.S. great powers conflict (John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Powers Politics, 2014).

The West and the Rest

As soon as 8 October, China intervened to urge a resolution of the conflict by asserting that:

“The fundamental way out of the conflict lies in implementing the two-state solution and establishing an independent State of Palestine. The international community needs to act with greater urgency, step up input into the Palestinian question, facilitate the early resumption of peace talks between Palestine and Israel, and find a way to bring about enduring peace.”  

Remarks at RPC Foreign Ministry Press conference, RPC Foreign ministry, 8 October 2023.

In the very same time, the U.S. took a radically different stance. The White House asserted its full political and military support to Israel, while threatening “any hostile third parties”, such as Iran, if they involved themselves in the Israel-Hamas conflict (“Statement from President Joe Biden Condemning Terrorist Attacks in Israel”, The White House, 7 October 2023).

However, during the following days, Beijing assumed a stronger and stronger stance in favour of the Palestinian “national sovereignty” and of a two-states solution, while actively promoting a rapid and diplomatic issue to the conflict (“China tells U.S that Beijing opposes ‘all actions that harm civilians among Israel’s bombing in Gaza’”, Islam Uddin, Anadolu Ajenci, 15 October 2023).

In this context, one must note that all the Middle East and Persian Gulf countries are now part of the Chinese Belt & Road initiative. As a result, this new geoeconomics and political reality deploys itself in the context of the Gaza war crisis (Jean-Michel Valantin, “China, Saudi Arabia and the AI Arab Rise”, The Red Team Analysis Society, January 31, 2023 and Khoder Nashar, “China-Arab States Expo to commemorate Belt & Road initiative 10th anniversary attracts major Companies”, Zawya.com, August 1, 2023).

Scaling wars

In other terms, the Israeli-Hamas war is taking place in a deeply and rapidly changing Middle East and world order.

This change is all the more important that the main ally of Israel in the region is the U.S. However, the White House and Pentagon’s warnings to “hostile parties” do not seem to deter the Hezbollah or Iran to be increasingly hostile to Israel (Jared Szuba, “Pentagon warns Iran, Hezbollah, to stay out of Hamas war with Israel”, Al Monitor, October 10, 2023).

So, this conflict is rapidly changing in scale and inserts itself in the dynamics that are transforming the Middle East.

In that regard, this war risks triggering a chain of interactive geopolitical conflicts at different scales. And, as David Kilcullen puts it, it may also reveal “how the rest learned to fight the west” (David Kilcullen, The Dragons and the Snakes, How the Rest Learned to fight the West, Hurst, 2020).

1. Radical War

From Massacre…

On 7 October 2023, Hamas launched a massive military and terrorist offensive in southern Israel. This offensive was defined by a long series of slaughters, acts of horror and of hostage taking. This military-terrorist sequence was prolonged through the massive use of social medias. Indeed, the Hamas militiamen used gopro cameras to record their attacks and the slaughters they commit, killing at least 1 400 people (Eric Cortellessa, “Oct. 07 revealed a Hamas new social media strategy”,Time Magazine, October 31, 2023).

Posting these videos online projects the terrible efficiency of the Hamas attack in the cyberspace. Hence, those streaming videos became a major and political dimension of this attack.

… To Hyper object

The use of social medias transformed the Hamas offensive into a performative action of global scale, which, by flooding social medias, mobilized and polarized public opinions in the Arab world, as well as in the whole world. (Matthew Ford and Andrew Hoskins, Radical War, Data, Attention and Control in the 21st Century, Hurst Publishing, 2022).

Thus the Hamas attack became a global political “hyper object” that established itself as both a common but also divisive political reference (Ford and Hoskins, ibid).

Meanwhile, Israel prepared and embarked on its large-scale attack on the Gaza strip, while launching wave after wave of air bombing there. Thus, it reaches a global audience. But this audience divides itself through its very diverse and contrasted reactions, at the individual as well as at a collective level.

The video feeds of the Hamas attack, which show monstruous slaughters, that were both live feeds and recorded for subsequent internet posting, shock and enrage immense segments of the Israeli society, of Jewish people and friends and allies. The live feeds were generated either by Gopro cameras used by the Hamas militiamen, or by the activation of the smartphones of the victims by Hamas men while assaulting villages people and families, thus live streaming the horrendous last moments of these people. Afterwards, those pictures are used to create a continuous flow of edited videos that circulate on social medias. (Staff, “Hamas launched unique terror tact: live streaming horrors on victim’s social medias”, Times of Israel, 18 October 2023 and Dr Eitan Azani, Daniel Aberfeld, Hamas Media Campaign: Al Aqsa Flood, Reichmann University, October 2023).

Meanwhile, the video feeds of the bombings in Gaza also shock and mobilize Arab opinions as well as many people staggered by the issuing dreary conditions for the Gaza civil population.

Specifically in the Palestinian case, those collective emotions mingle with the painful problem of the Palestinian issue, still “unresolved” after almost 75 years of conflict (Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall, Israel and the Arab World, Penguin Books, 2014).

Those video streams feed collective reactions, such as the massive pro-Palestinian protests throughout Europe and the Middle East. All these reactions are interacting with the Hamas videos and expand its reach and its scale of hyper object.

And the more the Israeli bombing and attacks create victims, the more they reinforce the anti-Israeli protests (“Global protests in support of Palestinians, rallies for hostages trapped in Gaza”, Reuters, October 22, 2023).

However, Hamas undoubtedly prepared itself to the gruesome urban and subterranean battle. Those combats may be quite costly to the Israeli forces. Hence, it is quite possible that forcing the IDF to intervene into Gaza was one of the main objective of the slaughter/performative initial attack of the 7 October (Nathan Rennolds, “It’s a trap, warns UK warns UK spy chief, as Israel prepares for months of brutal urban warfare against Hamas in bombed-out Gaza”, Business Insider, 15 October 2023).

Thus, the Gaza war itself becomes a performative cyber and political battlefield on the global scene.

A new level of information strategy

If the ground attack by Hamas is a large scale asymmetric and low-tech tactical sequence, it roots itself in an information strategy (For a strong development about information warfare: Hélène Lavoix “Information warfare and the War in in Ukraine”, The Red Team Analysis Society, May 24, 2022). This multi-domain strategy inserts the Hamas production of images in the global information / on-line streaming video infrastructure. Thus, the Hamas “streaming strategy” becomes a “global attention capture” strategy (Ford and Hoskins, ibid).

Giant rivers of streaming

Retroactively, the protests are filmed by dozens of thousands of people as well as by TV reporters. Thus, they create new “affluents” of the online streaming giant “rivers” of images. Those are conflictually interpreted by crowds and individuals all around the world.

As a result, this installation and the full use of the interactive power of the social media matrix at the global, national and personal levels of the Hamas-Israel war becomes a mammoth driver of political emotions at the global scale (Lawrence Freedman, The Future of War: a History, Penguin Books, 2017, and David Kilcullen, The Dragons and the Snakes, How the Rest Learned to fight the West, Hurst, 2020).

This strategy then is prolonged by the flow of images, commentaries and interpretation of these online video streams at a global scale. Indeed, those video streams hybrid themselves with the explosive content of the political and affective collective memories of the Palestinian history “versus” the Israeli and Jewish history.

So, the information war strategy of the Hamas triggers an enormous and emotionally turbo-charged “conflict of interpretation” of these video streams, that infuses and immerses through constant dialectics the different levels of political and military decision-making processes (Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis by Kenneth N. Waltz, New York, Columbia University: 1959).

Being a small giant power

Thus, in itself, this performative/political efficiency becomes a driver of the Israeli political-military decision-making process. In effect, it infuses the public opinion with the images of the attack. Those images trigger very painful emotions in the population. They are also being deeply humiliating for the Israeli security and defence forces. This way, the Hamas performative strategy fed the massive scale of the Israeli war preparation against the Hamas in Gaza (Tariq Dana, “Israel Palestine war: this humiliation has shaken Israeli psyche to its core“, Middle East Eye, 10 October 2023”).

The power of this military/terrorist/ performative strategy is growing by the day. For example, on 17 October 2023, the bombing of the Al Arabi Hospital in Gaza and its hundreds of victims came with the downloading of videos of the burning hospital and of the wretched Palestinian victims.

As of now, the only certainty is that a missile hit the hospital and killed and wounded hundreds of people. But, during the minutes following the strikes, the competition for interpretation started.

Hamas rapidly accused the IDF to strike at Palestinian people, while the IDF soon counter-reacted by asserting that the missile hitting the hospital was very probably a misfired missile sent by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad ( Paul Brown, Joshua Cheetham, Sean Seddon, Daniele Palumbo, “Gaza Hospital: what video, pictures and other evidence tell us about Al-Ahli hospital Blast”, BBC Verify, 19 October 2023 and “What is Islamic Jihad, The Organization that Israel Holds responsible for the Bombing of the Gaza Hospital?”, The Statesman, October 18, 2023).

In other words, on the information / social media plan, the Hamas and the Israeli Government are, at the very least, an equal impact power. So, this way, if Hamas remains a small non-state actor hidden in the Gaza urban dystopian battlefield, it also becomes a political performative hyper-power on the international scene.

The Hamas strategy forces each and every government, in the Middle East and elsewhere, to quickly align itself on one side or on another of the world scale “conflict of interpretation”. 

2. From the cyberworld to the political word

If the installation of the Gaza war in the cybersphere becomes a political force multiplyer for Hamas, it also has a political weakening effect on the U.S., the principal ally of Israel.

Indeed, for instance, on 13 October, a civil convoy left north Gaza. A strike killed at least seventy people while dozens of others were terribly wounded. The event was recorded and the videos quickly uploaded.

Hamas asserted that IDF stroke deliberately at Palestinian civilians, while the Israeli authorities accused Hamas of using civilians as “human shields” (Paul Brown & Jemimah Herd, “Strike on civilian convoy fleeing Gaza: What we know from verified video”, BBC Verify, 16 October 2023, and “70 Killed after convoys of evacuees in Gaza hit by Israeli airstrikes”, NBC News, Updated October 2014).

A few hours after this bombing and its transformation into a new social network hyper object, the king of Jordan refused to meet with U.S President Joe Biden, cancelling an emergency summit between the Egyptian, Jordanian, Palestinian and U.S. leaders (Naheed Ibrahim, “Biden snubbed by Middle East allies as Arab world seethes over Gaza hospital blast”, CNN, October 23). Thus, Abdallah of Jordan inflicted a massive blow to the political American influence in the Middle East, despite the mammoth U.S. presence and influence in the region since 1944 (Andrew Bacevich, America’s War for the Greater Middle east, A Military history, Random House, 2016).

Then, on 13 October, the Saudi Arabia Kingdom announced putting on hold the diplomatic talks about the normalization between Israel and the Saudi kingdom. This happened despite the huge pressure applied by the U.S. to keep the talks alive (Reuters and Ben Samuels, “Reports: Saudi Arabia freezes normalization talks with Israel amid ongoing war with Hamas”, Haaretz, October 13, 2023).

However, it is interesting to note the United Arab Emirates strongly condemned Hamas. As such, they were true to their political stance of fighting Islamist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood. As of this writing, while they denounce the Israeli ground offensive in Gaza, neither the UAE or Bahrain, have reneged on their signing of the Abraham accords, which aim at “establishing diplomatic relations between Israel and its neighbours in the region” ( Rachna Nuppal, “UAE, after Israel-Gaza conflict, says it does not mix trade with politics”, Reuters, October 10, 2023 and  “UAE condemns Israeli ground operations in Gaza strip”, Reuters, October 28, 2023). Since their start, those accords are strongly supported by the U.S (James F. Jeffrey, “The Abraham Accords: a three-year success now at crossroads”, Wilson Center, September 14, 2023).

On the opposite side, Qatar, which supports Hamas as well as the Muslim Brotherhood, strongly denounces Israel.

The “New” Middle East political and energy dynamics

While the IDF started striking Gaza, on 12 October Mohamed Ben Salman, acting ruler of the Saudi Arabia Kingdom and Ibrahim Raissi, President of the Republic of Iran, had their first phone call. They discussed the fact that both their countries, being regional powers, had a role to play to solve the crisis. Albeit, they also had to support the Palestinian cause (Amelie Zaccour, “ MBS’ “Balancing act” phone call with Iran’s president”, L’Orient Today, 13 October 2023).

A Tale of Two Theocrats

On this occasion, the Crown Prince emphasized that the Kingdom is making every effort to engage with all international and regional parties to halt the ongoing escalation.

He asserted the Kingdom’s opposition to any form of civilian targeting and to the loss of innocent lives:

“[Mohamed Ben Salmane] stressed the necessity of adhering to the principles of international humanitarian law and expressed deep concern for the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza and its impact on civilians. HRH The Crown Prince also underscored the Kingdom’s unwavering stance in standing up for the Palestinian Cause and supporting efforts aimed at achieving comprehensive and fair peace that ensures the Palestinian people’s legitimate rights.”

“HRH Crown Prince receives phone call from Iranian president”, Saudi Press Agency, 12 October 2023.

In itself, this call between the two regional leaders signals the seismic geopolitical shift happening in the Middle East/Persian Gulf region. Implicitly, this conversation reinforces the dynamics of reconciliation that the two countries cultivate under the aegis of Beijing.

End of an Era, Dawn of a new one

It also reveals how quickly the two major oil producers of the Persian Gulf are aligning their positions. And they do so in the midst of this major strategic crisis, while being major energy suppliers of China. Indeed, since 2015, China imports 25% of the Saudi oil, while Asia as a whole represents 79% of Saudi crude oil exports (“Saudi Arabia”, U.S Energy Information Administration, Last Updated 11 October 2023).

In other terms, the very foundation of the Saudi-U.S. relationship based on the “oil vs security” strategic relationship, dating back to 1944, is deeply altered. Indeed, because of the U.S. shale revolution, the U.S. imports of Saudi oil have dramatically fallen (Michael Klare, Blood and Oil, the dangers and Consequences of America’s growing dependency on imported oil, Holt, 2005). They went from an all time high of 2.244 thousands barrel a day in 2005, to a paltry 392 thousands barrel a day in July 2023 (“Petroleum & other liquids”- U.S Energy Information Administration, August 2023).

In this context, it is not surprising that Saudi Arabia aims at keeping its rank as energy power. To do so, it orients itself towards China, its main customer that also happens to be a major power. In the very same time, Beijing actively supports the reconciliation of Saudi Arabia and Iran (Adam Pourhamadi, Irene Nasser, Simone Mac Carthy, “Saudi Arabia and Iran agree on reopening embassies during Beijing talks on resumption of diplomatic ties”, CNN, April 6, 2023).

Indeed, this will secure China’s relationship with major energy suppliers while turning China into the centre of Middle eastern politics. So, de facto, the Saudi-Iran reconciliation contributes to strongly reduce the influence of the U.S. in the Middle east.

This state of affairs expresses the new depth of the relationships between each of these Middle Eastern and Persian Gulf countries and China.

The Return of Bashar

For instance, in July 2023, Syria was reinstated as a member of the Arab league after an 11 years suspension.

Syria joined China’s Belt & Road initiative in January 2022. Then, in September 2023, Bashar El Assad went to China for a state visit at the invitation of President Xi Jinping. Now, all the Middle East/ Persian Gulf countries are part of the Chinese Belt & Road initiative (“Syran President Bachar el Assad is in China on his first visit since the beginning of the Syria war”, AP, 21 September 2023). In other terms, the invitation of President Bashar El Assad by President Xi Jinping is a way to reinstall Syria on the international scene.

Thus, China confers to civil and international war torn Syria since 2011 a status of equal importance as to other members of the Belt & Road, despite the intense pressure and sanctions initiated by Washington to limit the regional and international reach of the Assad regime.

Meanwhile, on 24 August, the 2023 BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) summit took place in South Africa. It ended with Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates integrating the organization. Thus, this integration creates a new geopolitical and geoeconomic common space between main Middle eastern and Persian Gulf countries and world powerhouses as China, India and Russia (Samantha Granville, “BRICS Summit: is a new bloc emerging to rival U.S leadership?”, BBC, 24 August, 2023.

Xi, Vladimir and the Belt…

Then, between 16 and 18 October, the Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomed in Beijing the high-level delegations of the 130 countries attending the Summit celebrating the 10 years anniversary of the Belt & Road initiative.

President Xi Jinping presented Russian President Vladimir Putin as a considerably important guest. President Putin was given the title of “friend” of China. Meanwhile, Russia is at war with Ukraine, as well as with NATO (Tessa Wong, “ Vladimir Putin Feted at Xi Jinping’s Global Belt & Road summit”, BBC, 18 October, 2023).

As it happens, on the eve of the summit, the two heads of state signed a mammoth bilateral trade deal. These agreements include a 12 years massive grain import-export 70 million tons of grains package. This will dramatically improve the Chinese food security as well as the Russian agricultural perspectives.

This China-Russia development happens while the trade and energy relations between the countries keep on increasing despite the trains of western sanctions imposed to Russia since February 2022 (Arvin Donley, “Russia signs grain export deal with China”, World-Grain.com, 18 October 2023).

… and the war (with U.S.)

The summit was also taking place in the context of the trade and technology war between the U.S. and China. Indeed, two days before the Summit, a new set of rules banning the export of U.S. microchips in China was put in place.

This new U.S. microchips ban includes 22 countries developing AI partnerships with China. Saudi Arabia, that develops a giant relationship with Beijing in the fields of energy and artificial intelligence, is on the list of countries banned by the United States. (Alex Wyllemins, “US expands chip export ban to China”, Radio Free Asia, 17 October 2023, and Jean-Michel Valantin, “China, Saudi Arabi and the Arab AI Rise”, The Red Team Analysis Society, January 31 2023).

And so, it begins!

Then, on 21 October, Chinese warships reached the Mediterranean Sea. They started patrolling the area where, since 10 October, two of the most powerful U.S. Navy aircraft carriers have been navigating, in order to support the Israel war effort (Tara Copp, “The U.S is moving quickly to boost Israel’s military. A look at what assistance is providing”, AP, 15 October 2023).

In the same timeline, the Pentagon sends weapons systems, men and high ranking military advisers in Israel. The U.S. political and military authorities also put on high alert U.S. embassies and the numerous military bases in Qatar, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Jordan. In the meantime, the Pentagon installs anti-missiles weapons systems in Israel (Luis Martinez and Benjamin Siegel, “US surging air defense and other munitions to Israel, Official says” ABC News, 9 October 2023).

Then, during the days following the bombing of the Gaza hospital, the Hezbollah or proxy militias of the Iranian “‘Army of Guardians of the Islamic Revolution’)” (IRCG) sent multiple missiles and drone attacks against U.S. military bases in southern Syria and Western Iraq. In retaliation, the U.S. Air Force bombed sites in eastern Syria.

On 20 October, in Yemen the Iranian-backed Houti rebels sent a salvo of missiles over the Red Sea, certainly towards Israel. The three missiles were taken down by the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Carney (Tara Copp and Lolita C. Baldor, “US Military shoots down missiles and drones as it faces growing threats in volatile Middle East”, AP, 20 October 2023). On 27 October, another missiles’ salvo failed to reach Israel (Michael Horton, “Houti missiles launches against Israel risk reigniting war in Yemen”, Responsible Statecraft, October 30, 2023.)

Those sites were said to be linked with the Iranian Army of Guardians of the Islamic Revolution. Then, on 27 October, two U.S F-15 fighter jets bombed other Iran Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps IRCG linked sites in Syria. A few hours later, the Israeli government launched a large air and ground offensive in Gaza. (Lolita C. Baldor, “U.S fighter jets srike Iran-linked sites in Syria in retaliation for attacks on U.S troops”, AP, 28 October 2023 and Carla Babb, “Pentagon: 27 attacks target U.S forces in Iraq, Syria“, VOA, 31 October, 2023).

In other terms, the Pentagon involves itself at the regional scale in order to protect Israel from strikes from Lebanon and from Yemen. Both the Israeli military mobilization and the reinforcement of the U.S. military activity all over the Middle East activate a new level of anti-U.S. military activity in Iraq and Syria, where U.S bases have been installed since the U.S. Iraqi occupation between 2003 and 2010 and since the involvement of the U.S military against Daech as well as against the Assad regime in Syria since 2013. However, as expressed by the attacks, the very presence of the U.S. bases is strongly contested, both by states and by local or regional militant militias (Jason Burke, The 9/11 Wars, 2011 and The New Threat, The Past, Present and Future of Islamic Militancy, 2017).

3. Battleground : U.N

Tipping points

So, while the Israeli Defence force bombs Gaza and prepares itself for the ground war, the whole regional and international system rearranges itself at a very high speed. These dynamics are quite strongly expressed at the U.N., where the new international distribution of power is revealed under the pressure of the Gaza war and of its multidimensional cascading consequences.

For instance, on 26 October, the adoption of a resolution calling for an immediate and sustained humanitarian truce by the U.N Assembly took place.

Out of the 193 member states of the United Nations Organization, an overwhelming majority of 120 countries, including China, Russia, France and New Zealand, voted in favour of the resolution. 10 voted against, among them Israel and the U.S. 45 abstained, among them Australia, Great Britain, Germany, Canada and Japan (“U.N Assembly adopts Gaza resolution calling for immediate and sustained “humanitarian truce”, United Nations, 26 October 2023).

The Israeli ambassador called the passing resolution a “day of infamy”. At this occasion, he showed photos of Hamas militants committing atrocities in Israel.

In other words, despite the U.S. support and the weight of the horrors inflicted by Hamas on the 7 October, the level of international support, thus the capital of international legitimacy, of Israel’s operation is very low.

From alliances to divergences

The U.N. votes also reveal important political divergences among members of U.S.-centred military alliances. Indeed, the vote reveals that the diverse member-states of NATO, AUKUS and the “Five Eyes” know new fault lines, given the different, or opposite stance adopted by their members in regard of the U.S. position. All of this happens in the midst of the world scale “performative war” that prolongs the Gaza conflict in the cyberspace.

The vote of this U.N. resolution unveils how the cascades of military and political consequences of the Gaza war from the regional to the international scales turn this conflict into a driver of the new 2023 Middle East dynamics. This regional conflict is also becoming an attractor of regional and of the U.S./China great powers competitions.

In other words, the Hamas-Israel war is a particularly dynamic matrix of the rapidly emerging multipolar world. It now remains to be seen how this regional conflict affects the international distribution of power. It will be especially important in regard of the Ukraine war.

How to Create New Civilizations (1)? Challenges and Pressures

(Art direction and design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli)

The first decades of the 21st century present human societies with many challenges. At times, it appears our very civilizations are at stake. Can we create new better-adapted civilizations? What are the alternatives? What can we learn from the works that have examined the history of civilisations?

Between the two world wars of the 20th century, British historian Arnold Toynbee wrote such a masterful history of civilizations in 12 volumes, published in 1934 and 1939 for the first 6 volumes, then between 1954 and 1961 for the last ones (Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History, Oxford University Press, 1934 [tomes 1-3], 1939 [tomes 4-6], 1954 [tomes 7-10], 1959 [tome 11], 1961 [tome 12]). In 1946, D. C. Somervell, also a British historian, published an abridged version of the first 6 volumes (the second part was published in 1957). This is the work we shall use here (D. C. Somervell, A Study of History: Abridgement of Vols I-VI, with a preface by Toynbee, Oxford University Press 1946).

Toynbee’s work was acclaimed when it was published but has long fallen into quasi oblivion, while it was also criticised. Students and researchers mention it, but few have read it, would it be only the abridged version. Yet. 

In this series of articles, we present Toynbee’s argument on the life and fate of civilizations, moving from petrification to genesis or disappearance, from genesis to growth or break down, from break down to petrification or disintegration, and finally back to genesis or disappearance. We highlight corresponding examples and cases for our 21st century world and stress lessons we could learn from Toynbee. 

After explaining briefly how a new civilization emerges, this first article focuses on one of the two series of factors that are necessary for the genesis of a civilization: challenges.(1) 

A brief outline of genesis

For Toynbee, the best unit of analysis to understand history is “societies”, understood as wholes. It is neither nations, states nor nation-states. As examples, Toynbee gives, among others, the Hellenic society, the “Orthodox Christian, the Islamic, the Hindu and the Far Eastern Societies”, etc. (p. 567).

According to him, “civilized societies” or civilizations are born out of “primitive societies”, which had become static. These “higher civilizations” are less numerous but usually far larger than their primitive ancestors. Then, some of these “civilised societies”, in turn, became static and evolved – or not – into newer societies or civilizations. For example, the Orthodox Christian society and the Western Christian society evolved out of the Graeco-Roman or Hellenic society (this does not of course rule out other types of inputs). As another example, the Hindu society evolved out of an Indic society (pp. 35-36, 12-15, 20-21; pp.567-568).

Hence, Toynbee argues that, in the course of their lives, civilizations tend to petrify, to become static. Then, pressures and challenges may provide the static society with a stimulus that allows to overcome petrification and to become dynamic anew. In that case, we have the creation of a new civilization, a genesis. This process, however, is not a fatality. The initial civilization may fail to answer properly the challenge faced and succumb (pp. 48-163).

As highlighted by the historian, being able to move out of petrification towards dynamism depends upon two factors, or rather a factor and a process (Ibid.). First, a challenge that creates a pressure need to be overcome. The existence of this challenge and its strength will determine the outcome: i.e. genesis of a new civilization or disappearance of the petrified civilization (Ibid.). The second factor (forthcoming article) is the process of response to the challenge. Its success or failure in eliciting the proper answer will lead to various outcomes.

Challenges and their strength

The “Golden Mean”

First of all, Toynbee points out that the challenges and pressures must be neither too weak nor too severe, but have a medium intensity he calls the “Golden Mean” (pp. 140-163).

For example, letting aside for now an in-depth discussion on the state of our civilization, or civilizations(1), if we think about today’s climate change’s immense challenge, we may imagine that the initial impacts brought about by the first 0.5°C of temperature rise above pre-industrial average were not enough to constitute a pressure for stimulus leading to change.

Unfortunately, the cumulated effects over time of a certain level of temperature rise – to be determined – might also prove too much.

In between, we may hope that a “golden mean” temperature increase will be achieved, which will generate the ideal stimulus.

Which “Golden Mean”?

One of the difficulties here resides in evaluating the strength of the pressure, when looking at the future. In our example, which level of temperature rise would constitute too severe a pressure and which level would be the “Golden Mean”? 

It would appear logical that the strength of the pressure varies according to previous achievements of a civilization. What may have been a perfect challenge for an early civilization, may not be anymore a challenge at all for current civilizations.

For example, facing a temperate climate with four seasons forces inhabitants, for instance, to anticipate and plan ahead, to develop storage facilities to be able to survive during winter and early spring months. However, for early 21st century civilizations, a temperate climate does not constitute anymore a challenge with related strong stimulus. This will be true as long as we can benefit from the thousands of years of achievements across all fields that allowed us to overcome the pressure stemming from a temperate climate. Nonetheless, we should neither discard nor forget this initial challenge. Indeed, current civilizations could, because of other challenges and processes, internal and external, end up losing what they achieved. In that case, the initial challenge that was not operating anymore would become salient again.

What has been close to happen in Europe during the winter 2022-2023 could constitute an example for this case. Faced with skyrocketing electricity prices owing to the war in Ukraine, the obvious and usual way to handle both winter time and goods production suddenly became far from being that obvious and led to series of challenges long forgotten.

What could be happening with the impacts of climate change, for example in terms of extreme weather events, would, similarly, question the way we have learned to handle temperate climate after millenia of experience. First, the old temperate climate may be gone, which would question the relevance of experience and achievements. Second, the habit to “just rely” on consumer goods being always available in shops and supermarkets may become obsolete, if and when supply chains break down. In that case, as consumers have been so spoiled most only know how to shop, then the ways of life allowing for survival will have to be reinvented.

As another example, following the end of World War II then of the Cold War, many came to believe that war on the territory of geographical Europe had become impossible. The war in Ukraine showed us otherwise. War does not disappear because we have a long period of peace nor because ideology wants it. The COVID 19 pandemic is also another example of a past known pressure that initially was met with disbelief, because it was unthinkable our 21st century world would know such a thing as a global pandemic (e.g. Helene Lavoix, “The Coronavirus COVID-19 Epidemic Outbreak is Not Only about a New Virus“, RTAS, 12 Feb 2020). It nevertheless took place.

Even though for a very long time a challenge and pressure have existed at an extremely low level of intensity, it does not mean that they are gone.

Meanwhile, the intensity of the challenge is dynamically relative to the achievements of a civilization.

Furthermore, we may deduce from Toynbee’s argument that the series of challenges and pressures that befall a society at the same time must not be cumulatively too severe nor too weak. 

For example, could the early 21st century civilizations face at the same time the impacts of climate change with 1.5°C of temperature rise, a world war and a pandemic more deadly than the COVID 19?

Five types of challenges and pressures

Having highlighted the importance of the relative strength of the pressure, Toynbee identifies five types of challenges that may lead to a stimulus capable of generating an answer that lifts a civilization out of its petrification. The stimulus and resulting response, then, should allow the society to become dynamic again, developing highest achievements.

Hard countries – climate change again

First, we have “hard countries”, i.e. a geographical and ecological environment that is hard and challenging for human beings, yet within the bounds of the “Golden Mean” (pp.88-98).

We can use again the example given above of climate change. In that light, and assuming we, as a species, survive, climate change and its impact on our environment could be seen as an opportunity. This would demand, however, that we make sure to keep the challenge of the resulting environment within the “Golden Mean”.  In that case, we could create new, better or higher civilizations.

New grounds – the case for outer space

Second, Toynbee stresses the importance of “new grounds”. He means that for a society to have to live or travel lengthily in new unfamiliar environments, in new spaces, generates challenges that are fruitful if their strength is located within the “Golden Mean” (pp. 99-107).

A 21st century example of such a “new ground”s” could be outer space. The efforts endeavoured by humanity to discover and understand outer space and then to travel there whatever the goal correspond perfectly to Toynbee’s challenge.

Recent feats such as China’s successful testing in August 2023 of science experiment facilities aboard China’s Tiangong space station completed at the end of 2022, India’s landing on the south pole of the Moon on 23 August 2023, the American NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission return with asteroid Bennu samples on 24 September 2023, and Chinese-led or American-led plans for unmanned and manned lunar exploration and exploitation are concrete examples of the efforts taking place in this “new ground” (Deng Xiaoci, “China space station experiment facilities complete testing, ready to support large-scale research projects“, Global Times, 29 August 2023; Mariel Borowitz, “India’s Chandrayaan-3 landed on the south pole of the Moon − a space policy expert explains what this means for India and the global race to the Moon“, The Conversation, 24 August 2023; Reuters, “China offers to collaborate on lunar mission as deadlines loom“, 3 October 2023).

Alongside these material endeavours, we find attempts to regulate human activities in space or part of it, starting with the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. On 13 October 2020, the American launched the Artemis Accords (“Principles for Cooperation in the Civil Exploration and Use of the Moon, Mars, Comets, and Asteroids for Peaceful Purposes”). Germany became the 29th nation to sign it in September 2023. Perceiving the Artemis Accords as a way to project American domination and order in space, China countered with an all-encompassing “Proposal of the People’s Republic of China on the Reform and Development of Global Governance“, notably “to prevent new ‘new frontiers’ from militarization caused by major power competition (Yang Sheng and Zhang Yuying, “China issues proposal on reform, devt of global governance“, 13 September 2023, Global Times). Incidentally, the Chinese new frontiers include “The deep sea, polar regions, outer space, cyberspace and digital technology and artificial intelligence (AI)” (Ibid.). They may all be seen as “new grounds”. Note that the Chinese new frontiers almost perfectly correspond to what we call extreme environments (see portal to Extreme Environments Security).

Activities in outer space and attempts at regulating them start outlining an original response to the challenge of outer space for human beings. That early answer could have the potential to pave the way for a new civilization, following Toynbee’s “new grounds” type of challenge.

Sudden blow – The other side of the military defeat of enemies

According to Toynbee, a “sudden crushing defeat” can “generate a stimulus for the defeated party.” The author refers to war (pp. 108-111).

One of Toynbee’s examples is the rise of Prussia. Following the defeats of Jena (1806) and notably the treaties of Tilsit (1807) during the Napoleonic wars, Prussia found the energy and way to totally regenerate its army, administration and educational system. As a result, it became far stronger and “the chosen vessel for the new wine of German nationalism” (p.110).

Tentatively, a potential example for the early 21st century of a “sudden crushing defeat” could be, for Armenia, the dissolution of the separatist government of Nagorno-Karabakh according to a 20 September 2023 agreement, and the resulting massive exodus, after Azerbaijan’s lightning offensive on 19 September 23 (e.g. France 24 “Nagorno-Karabakh announces dissolution as more than 75,000 flee separatist enclave“, 28 September 2023; Masha Gessen, “The Violent End of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Fight for Independence“, The New Yorker, 29 September 2023). Without hindsight though, it is impossible to know if we are indeed in a case relevant for Toynbee. What we may say is that a potential is there, despite the tragedy.

As another example, should a war take place between China and the U.S., the victorious country might well give its enemy a stimulus for achieving a newer and better civilization. 

Similarly, should Ukraine and NATO defeat Russia in Ukraine, then the result could be to provide Russia with a stimulus – according to the strength of the pressure – to launch a string of further in-depth reforms that would potentially make it far stronger. The alternative holds also potentially true, should Russia defeat Ukraine and NATO.

Continuous external pressure – Another look at migrants’ routes?

With the idea of a “continuous external pressure”, Toynbee refers to people who are inhabiting the margins or frontiers areas of a territory and, as a result, are submitted to constant pressures and attacks from other peoples. According to him, this type of constant pressure generates the stimulus necessary for a better development (pp. 111-125).

Tentatively, even though the circumstances are far from being similar to those described by Toynbee, we may imagine that areas constantly confronted to flows of migrants may constitute a kind of 21st century frontiers areas. 

In the case of the Mediterranean sea, the frontiers areas would be largely located as displayed on the Reliefweb/OCHA map below, not only at arrival but also departure points:

Map showing the flows of migrants across the Mediterranean sea with departure and arrival points - Jan to June 2022
Relifeweb – OCHA: Mixed Migration Flows to Europe, Quarterly Overview Maps (Jan-Jun 2022)

Similarly, in the Americas, frontiers areas could be found along the main routes, their cities and border points (see maps below from the IOM, Migration Trends in the Americas, Global Compact for Migration, Feb 2023 and March June 2023):

Recent Migration Flows in the Americas in IOM l MIGRATION TRENDS IN THE AMERICAS | FEBRUARY 2023, p.21
Key routes for Venezuelan Migration in the Americas in MIGRATION TRENDS IN THE AMERICAS IOM OFFICES IN THE AMERICAS MARCH-JUNE 2023 (pdf), p. 2

Penalizations

For Toynbee, the factor he names “penalizations” refers to groups of people who have suffered centuries of exclusion at the hand of others. He states that this “penalization” may lead those who suffer it to put exceptional energy and creativity in the only avenues open to them. In turn, this may lead to the development of higher and newer societies or civilizations (pp. 125-139). 

One of the examples Toynbee provides is the “hordes of slaves” imported by Rome in the last two century B.C. out of which arose the “Freedmen” as well as Christianity (pp. 126-128; p.572). 

In the 21st century, everything being equal, we may wonder if those who were left behind during now more than a century of urbanization consequent to industrialisation may not be considered as somehow “penalized.” Possibly, the rural migrants could also be considered as “penalized” in Toynbee’s meaning. However, in this later case, as rural migrants adapt and integrate, the penalization may not last long enough to truly create the conditions of pressure for stimulus described by Toynbee.

As another example, peoples who have yet to be recognised as such and did not succeed in getting a state on their own, such as, for example, the Kurds, who are spread over four countries (Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria), could also be candidates, potentially, for experiencing the penalization factor of Toynbee. The disparity of the Kurdish situations according to each of the four countries where they live shows the difficulty of applying the idea of “penalization” to a “people” without a thorough analysis. Beforehand, specific analyses should be done accounting notably for the birth and development of an “imagined community”, to borrow from Benedict Anderson (Imagined Communities, Verso: 1991). Nonetheless, the interesting ideas that were promoted by the Syrian Kurds in terms of economic and political development are a signal of the novelty and energy that tragic pressure may generate (see H. Lavoix, “The Kurds in Syria – State-Building, New Model and War“, 22 May 2017).

To summarize, Toynbee presents five types of challenges which, according to the strength of the pressure generated, may create a stimulus that favours the creation of new civilizations. In the first decades of the 21st century, such challenges are present and often acute, globally and locally. How can peoples build upon the stimulus triggered and turn it into an adequate response thereby building new civilizations? This is what we shall explore with the second article of this series.

Notes

(1) In a forthcoming article, we shall discuss what, in the 21st century, should be called a ‘civilisation’ or a ‘society’, in the manner of Toynbee. We will also look at the state of some of our twenty-first century civilisations.

The Red Team Analysis Society selected for Frontex June 2023 Industry Days

We are happy to share with our readers our selection for Frontex June 2023 Industry days.

Frontex explains what are its Industry days as follows:

“Frontex assists the EU countries in supporting the development of modern technologies for the European Border and Coast Community. As part of its mandate, Frontex regularly meets with industry, researchers, and experts from the Member States to provide a platform for discussion and help develop new technologies and innovations related to border control”.

Frontex, Announcements – “Report: Training and methodology consultancy on scenario building in the context of risk analysis for law enforcement”, 6 July 2023

Within the context and for these Industry days, Frontex was seeking “service providers capable of offering a tailor-made framework encompassing training, processes, methodologies, and tools in the context of risk analysis for law enforcement” (Ibid.).

We created and sent a proposal answering to the detailed request by Frontex (see Frontex, Announcements, “announcement” 23 May 2023). On this basis, we were selected for a “presentation in an online meeting” (Ibid.).

As a result, we were also selected to participate in the online Industry days of Frontex. 

Climate Breakdown: Towards War to Reduce CO2 Emissions?

(Art direction and design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli)

“Climate breakdown has begun” warned UN Secretary-General António Guterres in a statement released on 6 September 2023.

Globally, throughout the 2023 Summer, the world has lived through the beginning of the turmoil and havoc that climate change and related temperature rise bring. Repeated heatwaves, related air pollution “with knock-on effects on human health, ecosystems, agriculture and indeed our daily lives,” as stated by WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas, drought, mega wildfires, medicanes (Mediterranean hurricanes), climate-driven storms, hurricanes, devastating floods, have globally scarred the Summer (UN News, “‘Climate breakdown’ alert as air quality dips during heatwaves: UN chief” 6 September 2023).

If climate breakdown has commenced and if its start entails so many disasters, then we must imperatively begin proactive planning to protect us from havoc. Especially, we need to have a better idea of what is more likely to happen among the various scenarios and hypotheses identified and studied by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This will enable us to outline potential trends that will constrain our lives, governance, and geopolitics. In other words, we shall make a draft of the structure of the world and its polities, under likely conditions of climate change.

Thus, first, we shall stress where we stand exactly in terms of temperature rise caused by climate change. Then, using the March 2023 synthesis of the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we shall look at the climate change scenarios for the future, notably through the perspective of carbon budgets. We shall explore what that means at both the global level and individual countries’ level, with a focus on the largest emitters. Building upon this last point, we shall deduce future consequences. We shall notably wonder if, in the future, some states could try to force others to reduce their emissions rather than seek to cooperate.

Where we stand in 2023

In a nutshell, we have been living between 2011 and 2020 at 1.1°C  above the levels of temperature that existed between 1850 and 1900, which are considered as the healthy norm. In 2022, the average global temperature was about 1.15°C in excess  (UN News, “2022 confirmed as one of warmest years on record: WMO“, 12 Jan 23).

The Summer (June-July-August) of 2023 was the hottest on record globally “by a large margin, with an average temperature of 16.77°C, 0.66°C above average” (Copernicus Climate Change Service, “Summer 2023: the hottest on record“, 5 Sept 23). August 23 was the warmest August on record, and its temperatures second only to July 23 (ibid.). It is estimated to be around 1.5°C warmer than the healthy norm (ibid.).

Hence what was lived over the last years and more particularly over the Summer 23  represents the start of a very concrete experience of what we can expect next.

The near-future reality will probably be worse than what we experienced over the Summer.

Indeed, some harmful effects of rising temperatures may still remain to be discovered. For example, scientists seem to start agreeing on the possibility that the poles’ melting ice may trigger earthquakes, as well as tsunamis. Yet those would be limited to certain regions, close to the poles, and take place only in thousands of years (Anthony Kaczmarek, “Le réchauffement climatique peut-il provoquer davantage de séismes ?“, tameteo.com, 11 April 2023). Research and development of models are ongoing (Rebekka Steffen et al., “Early Holocene Greenland-ice mass loss likely triggered earthquakes and tsunami“, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 546, 2020; Rebekka Steffen, “Un lien entre changement climatique et séismes à l’origine de tsunamis inattendus ?“, Axa fund for research, 25 June 2018).

Other impacts are known, but can be insidious and will skyrocket. For example, houses so far perfectly fine, suddenly start showing cracks because of drought. This stems from the shrink-swell capacity or shrinkage and swelling of clayey soils (retrait-gonflement des argiles – RGA), one of the consequences of drought – as a consequence of heatwave – and floods on expansive soils (e.g. Géorisques). It hits all countries with such soils and dwellings built upon them are at risks. For example, in France, the government estimated in June 2021 that “10.4 million individual houses [were] potentially very exposed to the phenomenon” up from 4,27 million in 2017 (Cerema, “Phenomenon of shrinkage and swelling of clayey soils (RGA): definitions, impacts on structures and people and solutions for adaptation to climate change,” 14 April 2022). 84% of French communes have more than 50% of their houses exposed with a risk ranging from low to high (MNR, Reference systems for the resilience of buildings to natural hazards, July 2023).

As a result, direct costs in terms of reinforcement of houses or even relocation of dwellers will be high (Ibid.). Worse still, the capacity to carry out the work will need to be available in the proper timeframe, which may lead to local challenges and tensions. Furthermore indirect costs such as psychological impacts start being estimated as being far from being negligible (Ibid.) Meanwhile, roads may also be impacted, which will likely increase the challenge faced (ibid.).

The global impacts of the Summer 2023 on individual dwellings and roads are still to be evaluated.

As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assesses with high confidence:

“Every increment of global warming will intensify multiple and concurrent hazards”.

Climate Change 2023, Synthesis Report – Summary for Policymakers, 20 March 2023, p.12

Meanwhile, cascading effects are almost certain.

Where we could stand in the future: the IPCC scenarios and carbon budgets

On 20 March 2023, the IPCC released the synthesis of its Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). The latter highlights possible scenarios for climate change and temperature rise, each with varying likelihoods, according to what is potentially done in terms of emissions of carbon dioxyde (CO2) and more generally Greenhouse Gas (GHG).

Looking at climate change through carbon budgets

Carbon budgets

The simplest way to look at the problem of climate change and GHG emissions is to think in terms of carbon budget.

Imagine the planet endowed with the capability to store a certain amount of carbon dioxyde or greenhouse gas. Because it can store these gas, and as long as it can do so, then it can safely emit these gases in the atmosphere. Below a given amount of gas, which corresponds to the capacity of storage or carbon budget, despite emissions, the temperature of the planet does not change and remains within healthy norms. Once the storage has reached full capacity, then the carbon budget is spent, further emissions cannot be stored anymore and the temperature starts rising with its corollary of adverse and deleterious impacts. Hence, using this principle, for each level of temperature in excess, a remaining carbon budget, compared to what has been spent so far, is approximately calculated.

What must be understood is that the carbon budget of the planet is for ever. It cannot be exceeded without consequences in terms of temperature change. If we want to emit CO2 and other GHG again, without consequences, then the amount of GHG in the atmosphere must first be lowered, which would mean decarbonisation.

For example, if we want the temperatures to remain at 1.5°C in excess, with little or no overshoot (i.e. up to about 0.1°C above the scenario level for up to several decades), and with a 50% likelihood, then scientists best estimates tell us that starting in 2020 we had 500 GtCO2 left (AR6). If we limit in the meantime other GHG emissions, then the budget for CO2 can become 600 GtCO2 (AR6). Inversely if we emit a lot of other GHG then the budget for CO2 may become only 300 GtCO2 (AR6).

If we wanted to increase the probability to see the temperature in excess remaining within the bounds of 1.5°C, for example to 83%, then the remaining global budget would become 300 GtCO2 (Patrik Erdes, Carbon Budget Calculator).

This implies that all countries must reach at one stage net zero emissions.

What are the consequences in terms of way of life and governance?

The new art of governance for a country will thus be to integrate at all levels, in all policies and actions, a balance between the level of one’s GHG emissions with direct consequences in terms of way of life, on the one hand, and, on the other, the impact of contributing to the global overspending of the carbon budget, i.e. consequences in terms of temperature excess, climate change and then cascading and self-reinforcing effects. And that, of course, without forgetting any of the principles that historically and fundamentally rule the art of governing, such as legitimacy and providing security to citizens.

However difficult, the new art of governance under conditions of climate change, furthermore, to be efficient, demands that all countries act similarly in a considerate and responsible way.

Scenarios of temperature rise and global carbon budgets

Now, we have seen the general principles, more concretely, what are the remaining global carbon budgets for the various possible temperature increases highlighted in the AR6 until reaching net zero emissions (5 scenarios of emissions and 3 sub-scenarios) ?

Scenario descriptionLikelihood to reach the desired max warmingGHG emissions scenarios
(SSPx-y*) in WGI & WGII		Global carbon budget / Cumulative CO2 emissionsDate for net zero
C1limit warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot (+0.1°C for up to several decades)(>50%)Very low (SSP1-1.9)500 GtCO2 (SPM)[2035–2070]
C2return warming to 1.5°C after a high overshoot (+0.1°C-0.3°C for up to several decades)(>50%) 720 (WGIII SPM2 p.18)[2045–2070]
C3limit warming to 2°C (>67%)Low (SSP1-2.6)1150 GtCO2 (SPM)
C4limit warming to 2°C(>50%)1210 GtCO2 (WGIII SPM2 p.19)[2065–…]
C5limit warming to 2.5°C(>50%)1780 GtCO2 (WGIII SPM2 p.19)[2080–…]
C6limit warming to 3°C(>50%)Intermediate (SSP2-4.5)no net zero – in 2100, 2790 GtCO2 (WGIII SPM2 p.19)
C7limit warming to 4°C(>50%)High (SSP3-7.0)no net zero – in 2100, 4220 GtCO2 (WGIII SPM2 p.19)
C8exceed warming of 4°C(>50%)Very high (SSP5-8.5)no net zero – in 2100, 5600 GtCO2 (WGIII SPM2 p.19)

What does that let us expect globally ?

In 2019, global CO2 emissions from fossile fuel combustion and cement production stood at at 35,3 Gt, in 2020, because of the Covid 19, at 33,4 Gt, in 2021 at 35,5 Gt and finally in 2022, they reached 36,1 Gt ((Liu, Z., Deng, Z., Davis, S. et al., “Monitoring global carbon emissions in 2022“, Nat Rev Earth Environ 4, 205–206, 2023). 

Thus, not only we do not decrease our global CO2 emissions, but we increase them, which is exactly opposite to what should be done. In two years, we have used almost 14% of the remaining budget to have a temperature increase of 1.5°C.

The United Nations highlights the current “Climate Emergency” in their Emissions Gap Reports (link to the 2022 edition). Considering current policies, we are on track for probably worse than the 2.8°C temperature rise by the end of the century estimated by the UN (Ibid).

What does that mean for individual states?

Let us now look at the situation for some of the largest emitters, taking into account their population to estimate their specific carbon budget, using Patrik Erdes’ convenient Country Carbon Budgets Calculator (2019 population estimates).

Scenario descriptionCountryCountry carbon budget (calculated according to 2019 population)If emission remains flat compared with 2019, date at which the budget runs out (uncertainty on temperature rise as net zero was not reached)How much (in percent) must country emissions be reduced per year (starting in 2021) to reach net zero emissions before the carbon budget runs out?
C1limit warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot (+0.1°C for up to several decades) – (>50%)China81.99 GtCO220282.43% – Year the budget runs out: 2052
US18.85 GtCO2202416,19% – Year the budget runs out: 2027
Germany4.77 GtCO220278.05% – Year the budget runs out: 2033
Poland2.16 GtCO220278.00% – Year the budget runs out: 2033
India78.61 GtCO220501.70% – Year the budget runs out: 2079
Russia8.31 GtCO2202511.24% – Year the budget runs out: 2029
C3limit warming to 2°C – (>67%)China188.57 GtCO220372.86% – Year the budget runs out: 2055
US43.37 GtCO220296.45% – Year the budget runs out: 2036
Germany10.98 GtCO220363.35% – Year the budget runs out: 2050
Poland4.96 GtCO220363.33% – Year the budget runs out: 2051
India180.8 GtCO220890.732% – Year the budget runs out: 2157
Russia19.12 GtCO220324.59% – Year the budget runs out: 2042.
C4limit warming to 2°C – (>50%)China221.36 GtCO220412.43% – Year the budget runs out: 2062
US50.91 GtCO220305.44% – Year the budget runs out: 2039
Germany12.89 GtCO220392.84% – Year the budget runs out: 2056
Poland5.82 GtCO220392.82% – Year the budget runs out: 2056
India212.24 GtCO221010.622% – Year the budget runs out: 2181
Russia22.44 GtCO220343.89% – Year the budget runs out: 2046.

If countries do absolutely nothing, apart from India, it appears obvious that the largest emitters, even considering a carbon budget allowance related to their population, will all soon have spent their budget for a 1.5°C temperature increase. Furthermore, by 2030, if the U.S. does not reduce its emissions below the 2019 level, then it will also have spent its carbon budget for a rise in temperature limited to 2°C. 

If an effort is done towards reducing emissions regularly to reach net zero, then the U.S. still runs out of carbon budget in 2027 for the 1.5°C scenario, and thus is on a course for more than 2°C globally.

The disparities in time to net zero emissions and efforts to reach this state in a context of national interest, competition for power, ideology demanding an ever-lasting growth, let us expect that, most probably, most states will not willingly make the necessary effort to reduce their GHG emissions.

Possible future consequences

Thus, we need to get ready to live in a planet that knows at least a 2°C rise in temperature, which will certainly mean radical changes in our ways of life. We must prepare to adapt to live in extreme environments, as soon as possible (e.g. Extreme Environments Security; Helene Lavoix, “The Ultimate Key Technologies of the Future (3) – Extreme Environments“, RTAS, 21 June 2021).

Meanwhile, as we have seen above with the carbon budget, the new governance in a warmer world becomes more complex, with, as a result, more room for a host of tensions and challenges. 

Furthermore, countries, their citizens and governments will have to bear the brunt, in terms of survival and legitimacy, of others’ actions in terms notably of GHG emissions. 

As a result of these two nexusses, one direction that could be taken is a mammoth effort towards decarbonisation. The way the latter is endeavoured, its timeline, who is carrying it out and how, may create very different paths forward. 

Conversely, in the absence of relatively rapid and consistent global decarbonisation, with States facing duress within their borders, given the repeated failure to cooperate effectively on the issue of GHG emissions, can we imagine a future where some States try to force others to reduce their emissions? This would mean war.

Scenarios considering this possibility should be envisioned, even though they may be perceived initially as unlikely.

In examining such cases, we would also have, for example, to take into account the very cost of a war in terms of GHG emission.

One such study focuses, for instance, on the first seven months of the war in Ukraine (Lennard de Klerk et al., Climate Damage Caused by Russia’s War in Ukraine, Initiative on GHG accounting of war, 1 Nov 2022). It estimates that the cost “totals at least 100 million tCO2.”

However large, this amount only represents 1.58% of the 2018 yearly GHG emissions of the United States and 0,72% of the 2018 yearly emissions of China.

However, the study does account neither for the diminution of emissions in Ukraine – if any – resulting from industrial and agricultural destructions, nor for the increase in GHG emissions stemming from changes in patterns of international flows, new production of armaments, or destruction of carbon sinks, etc.

Yet, for our purpose, to get a real idea of the cost of the war in Ukraine in terms of GHG emissions we would also need to consider the destruction of industrial activity and food production.

For example, and to give an order of magnitude, the collapse of the Soviet Union led to a fall of approximately 40% of GHG emissions (Jean-Michel Valantin, Menace Climatique sur l’Ordre Mondial, 2005). Indeed, considering the economic collapse of the countries of the former Communist bloc, in 2007 the emissions of these states “were still about 37 percent below 1990 levels” (Bill Chameides, “Did the Kyoto Protocol Miss the Target?“, The Green Grok – Archive, 12 Oct 2009). As far as agricultural activities and food production are concerned, we now know more precisely,  that following the collapse of the Soviet Union we had a cumulative net reduction of 7.61 Gt CO2 from 1992 to 2011 in GHG emissions (Florian Schierhorn, “Large greenhouse gas savings due to changes in the post-Soviet food systems“, Environ. Res. Lett. 14 065009, 2019)

Thus, if we consider on the one hand the order of magnitude estimated by the study of the increase of GHG emissions linked to the war in Ukraine, and on the other hand possible drop in emissions over many years consecutive to a collapse, then some countries could consider that the cost in GHG emissions of a war are worth destroying industrial, energetic and agricultural activity of other large emitters. This would, of course, mean they have such states have the power to destroy the activity of others.

Specific and detailed scenarios must be created to account for the possibility to see war used as a way to reduce the GHG emissions of others. 

Climate change will bring numerous unsettling novelties, many of which will be dire. Only by lucidly anticipating and planning for these changes can we hope to survive and eventually reconstruct a more promising world.

Climate Emergency, AI and the (Necessary ?) Rise of Geoengineering

In the 2002 post-apocalyptic-movie “Reign of fire”, the last human colonies are exterminated by dragons burning the remnants of already poor crops. In 2023, the emergence of an early and powerful El Niño event amid the planetary effects of global warming raises the question of its geopolitical consequences in a world rocked by the war in Ukraine and the U.S.- China rising tensions (Nat Johnson, “May 2023 ENSO update: El Niño Knocking at the Door”, NOAA Climate.gov, 11 May 2023).

There is also a risk that potential warming effect of El Niño during the two or three next years will certainly be a dramatic driver of the impacts of climate on water and food security at the level of social cohesion in many countries.

As it happens, this El Niño event emerges while the vulnerability of societies rapidly worsens in the face of climate (Jean-Michel Valantin, “War in Ukraine, The 2023 Super El Niño and Global Disruptions – Anthropocene Wars 8”, The Red Team Analysis Society, May 9, 2023.

Thus, El Niño will also amplify the risks of interactions between its effects and current situations of wars, civil wars and migrations. Those climate-and-conflicts nexus are already creating dialectics between local, national and international tensions (Jean-Michel Valantin, “What are Climate Wars ?”, The Red Team Analysis Society, November 2, 2021 and “Will There be Climate Civil Wars?”, The Red Team Analysis Society, November 30, 2021).

In the very same time, the AI tsunami has started (Hélène Lavoix, « Exploring cascading impacts with AI », The Red Team Analysis Society, May 17, 2023 and “Portal to AI-Understanding AI and Foreseeing the AI powered world”,  “Portal to Quantum Information Science and Technology- Towards a Quantum AI World ?” The Red Team Analysis Society).

So, the El Niño-climate change and artificial intelligence multiple upheavals happen in the same time. The damages that the climate change turbocharged El Niño is likely going to inflict at the global scale is also becoming “food for thought” in the geoengineering field that is itself boosted by AI (Fleur Doidge, “Using AI and Machine Learning to Kickstart Climate Fightback”, IT Pro, July 19, 2022).

So, there is a very strong possibility that the 2023 El Niño is going to interact with the AI and political geoengineering field.

El Niño, the war in Ukraine and the great agricultural destabilization

The Reign of Fire

The great heat wave and historical drought that hammers Spain since April 2023 affects 80% of the country’s agricultural production (Jennifer O’Mahony and Joseph Wilson“Drought will causes crop failures in Spain, farmers warn“, AP, April 13, 2023). In Asia, the April-May 23 continental heatwaves put harvest under a huge thermic and hydric stress. Between April and June, a monster of a heatwave stretches from China and India to Central Asia.

From there, it spreads into the Middle East as well as Siberia and penetrates the Arctic (“Intense Heatwaves singe Asia as Summer Keeps eating into Spring”, The Federal, 16 April, 2023).

In the U.S, the historical mega drought keeps getting longer. Thus, it maintains its pressure upon the U.S. croplands in the Midwest and the Southwest (U.S Drought Monitor, 1 June, 2023). Meanwhile, in Canada, one of the world’s leading agricultural powers, mega wildfires have been ravaging the north of the country since the beginning of May. In the same timeline, the Pacific Northwest braces itself in the face of a major heatwave alert (“Canada on Track for its Worst Ever Wildfire Season”, Reuters, June 6, 2023).

It is in this climate and weather context that numerous weather centres warn of an early return of an El Niño cycle in 2023. El Niño events are cyclical climate-ocean events. They happen when the equatorial and tropical Pacific Ocean surface cyclically warms up for one to three years. The current cycle has begun as soon as June 2023. It is two to three months ahead of the March-April weather forecasts (“El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion”, Climate prediction Centre-National Weather Service-NOAA, 8 June, 2023). 

Enter the El Niño Dragon King

Regularly, those events trigger cascades of extreme climate events all around the world. The previous 2016 El Niño was historically powerful. The 2023 El Niño may very well be even more dangerous. This is because of the rapid worsening of climate change that will very possibly reinforce El Niño’s intensity. (Paloma Trascasa-Castro, “Four Possible Consequences of the El Niño Return in 2023”, The Conversation, 26 January 2023).

During an El Niño event, the equatorial Pacific Ocean may heat up to 3°, thus heating up the whole atmosphere. The singular aspect of the 2023-2024 El Niño is that it happens in a time of rapidly intensifying climate change.  The atmosphere temperature is already 1.2° above the mid-18th century pre-industrial level. So, the El Niño peak temperature may very well temporarily heighten the atmosphere’s heat around 1.5° (“Global Temperatures set to Reach New Records in Next Five Years”, World Meteorological Organization, 17 May 2023).

As it happens, this level is nothing but the upper peak limit of what climate scientists established as the upper climate security limit (Kate Abnett, “World could face record temperatures in 2023 as El Niño returns”, Reuters, April 20, 2023 and Ajit Niranjan, “How climate change affect El Niño and La Nina cycles?”, DW, 01/27/2023).

Disruptions

Historically, El Niño’s events trigger massive climate disasters. There will be droughts, floods, wildfires, vegetation stress and crop failures around the world. That’s why the 2023-24 El Niño may induce a planetary interaction between a berserker climate and massive geopolitical disruptions. (Laura Paddison and Rachel Ramirez, “The oceans just reached their hottest temperatures on record, as El Niño looms. Here are 6 things to watch for”, CNN, April 1, 2023).

In other terms, the combination of the 2023 El Niño with the already dramatic consequences of an accelerating climate change on agriculture, temperatures and water cycle has a humongous potential to place entire countries in regional or continental “danger zones” (Mark Lynas, Our Last Warning: 6 Degrees of Climate Emergency, 2020).

The geopolitical implications of this situation are gigantic.

Civil wars, migrations and international wars

As we have seen, on the international side, since its start on 24 February 2022, the war in Ukraine has disruptive effects on the international markets of cereals and of fertilizers. The war blocks the exports of an important proportion of the Ukrainian harvest. In Russia, financial sanctions have a similar effect on Russian cereals exports (Jean-Michel Valantin, “War in Ukraine, The U.S Mega drought and the Coming Global Food Crisis”, The Red Team Analysis Society, May 1, 2022).

From domestic food security tensions…

In an international context where extreme weather events hammer the crops in the main rice, wheat and maize production zones, the combination of the war in Ukraine, of climate change and of El Niño is going to exacerbate food insecurity in poor countries as well as in richer nations for the middle and lower class (Malau, “Study of ENSO on Agricultural food crop prices as Basic Knowledge to Improve Community Resiliency in Climate Change”, IOP Conference Series- Earth and Environmental Science, 2021).

Thus, the disruptions of the agricultural and food markets become the medium of domestic heightening tensions (“El Niño to Return in after a Three Years La Nina Phase”, FAO, 26 April 2023).

However, these multiple national domestic tensions, as, for example, in Myanmar, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, southern Africa, Sudan, Ukraine, Pakistan are already spilling over (“A Global Food Crisis”, World Food Program). They do so by triggering massive internal and external flows of refugees (Jordi Paniagua, Marta Suarez-Varela, Federico Carril-Caccia, “Forced Migration and Food Crisis : A Coming Catastrophe”, Social Sciences Research Network-SSRN, 26 August 2022).

As it happens, it would be a mistake to “only” consider these countries. Indeed, the climate crisis is already fuelling the massive migration crisis that extends itself from Central America to the U.S border. As it happens, the climate crisis is literally desiccating Central America. It is driving hundreds of thousands of poor farmers as well as desperate urban poors to leave profoundly dysfunctional and dangerous countries to go North.

And from there, the migration flows spreads into the North American hinterland (Francesco Faimia and Caitlin Werrell, “Central American Climate Migration is a Human Security Crisis”, The Centre for Climate and Security, July 13, 2021.

…To continental international crisis

This migrant crisis is rapidly saturating the absorption capacities of the border camps as well as of a growing number of U.S cities and megapolis, such as New-York, Los Angeles, Chicago. This massive and uninterrupted flow turns the migration issue into a particularly dividing political issue. In this context, the political conflict between conservatives and liberals reaches historically and dangerously high levels (Claire Kobucista, Amelia Cheatam, Diana Roy, “The U.S Immigration debate”, Council on Foreign Relations, 6 June 2023.

However, one must keep in mind that those feedback loops between geopolitical and domestic tensions in a time of climate change are not new but has already started previously (Jean-Michel Valantin, “What are Climate Wars ?”, The Red Team Analysis Society, November 2, 2021 and “Will There be Climate Civil Wars?”, The Red Team Analysis Society, November 30, 2021).

Indeed, our planet is already 1.2° hotter than during the eighteenth century. As we have seen, there is a high risk that El Niño pushes this thermic ration higher. Thus, in a span of two to three years, global temperatures may climb from 1.2° to 1.5°. In that case, all the aforementioned tendencies will be exacerbated.

So, this dynamic will certainly trigger violent competitions in order to access food, water as well as colder latitudes. Those competitions will be “channeled” through those domestic-international dynamics and put them in overdrive (David Wallace Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth, Life after Warming, 2019).

Thus, the potential for, for example, “water civil wars” in the Middle East will combine with flows of refugees from Central Asia and Africa. Those refugee flows will try to reach Europe, Turkey and Russia. In America, the Central American refugee crisis will interact with the El Niño dry spells in a time of mega drought (Paloma Trascasa-Castro, “Four Possible Consequences of the El Niño Return in 2023”, The Conversation, 26 January 2023). And this “El Niño-mega drought nexus” will also interact with the overheated politics of the U.S 2024 presidential election.

In other terms, the world is on the verge of entering a global and planetary danger zone. Facing the rapidly escalating consequences of the El Niño interaction with our overheating planet, the issue of “emergency responses” appears as a very strong possibility.

Burning World meets Geoengineering

From Earth to “Burning and Flooding World”

However, as the Earth turns into a new planet. Called “Burning World” by Hélène Lavoix, we build upon her concept and turn it into “Burning and Flooding World” (Hélène Lavoix, “When Denial and Passivity Verge on Stupidity” – The Red Team Analysis Weekly – 9 January 2020 and Jean-Michel Valantin, « Adapting to the Burning World », The Red Team Analysis Society, November 9, 2020).

The basic characteristics of the Burning and Flooding World is that the biological beings, the habitats and the ecosystems are now fuel for the Burning World or potential drowning wrecks. As a result, this helps us to understand the coming new geography of our Burning and Flooding World.

For example, in a few year’s time, through the combination of accelerating climate change and El Niño, California, the West Coast of North America, the Amazon Basin, and Australia risk becoming zones of ash and soot. Those massive climate destructions will trigger immense geopolitical upheavals (Gwynn Dyer, Climate Wars, The Fight for Survival as the World overheats,  2011).

For example, the Amazon basin risks dessication and burning beyond any resiliency. If that happens, the planet loses a major water cycle regulator and biological reservoir. Thus the riparian countries will also lose the plantations forcibly installed through the burning of the primal forest (Mark Lynas, Our Last Warning: 6 Degrees of Climate Emergency, 2020).

Losing this agricultural capacity will have massive consequences for China, because it imports massive quantities of Brazil soybean. Thus, it will put under stress the social cohesion of the 1.4 billion strong Asian giant (Cede Silva, “Lula and Xi sign 15 agreements on trade, agriculture, new satellite”, The Brazilian Report, April 14, 2023 and Genevieve Donnellon-May and Felipe Porto, “Brazilian soybeans and China’s food security”, The Strategist, 21 April 2023).

It’s in this new world that the AI revolution emerges and spreads. It transforms the world, again as coined by Hélène Lavoix, into “AI world” (Hélène Lavoix, “Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning – The New AI World in the Making”, The Red Team Analysis Society, December 18, 2017).

The emergence of survival politics

This will certainly entail emergency and survival politics (David Wallace Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth, Life after Warming, 2019). Those would be based on the combined imperatives of of the biological and social survival of nations and people. This follows the transformation from Planet Earth into “Burning and Flooding World” planet.

Indeed, through the cycle of the starting El Niño, there is a very high risk that Humanity is going to experience, at a global and collective level, what runaway climate change actually means.

AI World and the geoengineering issue

In this context, the “AI world” and its political, technological and industrial actors is going to defend itself. As a result, it will also protects the life conditions upon which it depends. One must keep in mind that the main AI actors are also quite keen at geoengineering schemes. Those are planetary technological schemes and devices.

They aim at reducing the quantity of sun radiation and heat that the Earth system absorbs (John Shepherd et al. “GeoEngineering the Climate: Science, Governance and Uncertainties”, The Royal Society, 2009 and Clive Hamilton, “Geoengineering and the Politics of Science”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 1, 2014).

For example, certain avenues of research are exploring the possibility to inject sulphur in the stratosphere. Other investigate the possibility to install space mirrors between earth and the sun, among other impressive projects (Clive Hamilton, Earthmasters – The Dawn of the Age of the Climate Engineers, Yale University Press, 2014).

One must keep in mind that experimental geoengineering schemes are currently massively proliferating. Indeed, dedicated research centres are installed in major universities such as Oxford, Harvard, and the University of Victoria in British Columbia. At the international level, the United Nations and other international bodies call for advanced research in the field (Alejandro de la Garza, “A Controversial Technology is Creating an Unprecedented Rift among Climate Scientists”, Time, March 17, 2023.

The same is true of the U.S. Biden administration (James Temple, “The U.S Government is Developing a Federal Solar GeoEngineering Research Plan”, MIT Technology Review, July 1, 2022). A few private experimentations are being led even though some of these are shut down by governments that didn’t give their authorization (Cassandra Garrisson, “How two weather balloons led Mexico to ban solar geoengineering”, Reuters, 27 March, 2023.

In India, China, Vietnam, the debate on geoengineering is raging. Meanwhile, geoengineering projects are also of utmost interest to oil and gas companies. This is especially true in the carbon capture field, as those companies expand their activities in Africa (GeoEngineering Monitor).

Many research bodies, as the IPCC, after having been strongly opposed to geoengineering, are now, cautiously, advising to study. They do so, as well as a growing number of scientists, because of the increasing danger posed by the climate crisis turning rapidly into a “long emergency” (Fred Pearce, “Geoingineering the Planet? More Scientists now say it Must be an Option”, Yale 360°, May 29, 2019).

Tipping point(s)

In this context, the exponential emergence and diffusion of AI is a tipping point. Indeed, it generates new capabilities in order to calculate and to industrially master very complex mega projects. AI also generates piloting tools for very large scale technological devices (Hélène Lavoix, « Exploring cascading impacts with AI », The Red Team Analysis Society, May 17, 2023 and “Portal to AI-Understanding AI and Foreseeing the AI powered world”,  and “Portal to Quantum Information Science and Technology- Towards a Quantum AI World ?” The Red Team Analysis Society. Thus, the AI development is of direct interest for geoengineering actors.

Furthermore, geoengineering projects and the technological spectre are intersecting with other fields in the wide domain of geo-technics such as mining, space exploration and satellite installation. As it happens, AI is already deeply embedded in theses ventures (Nguyen et al. Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Mining, Geo-technical and Geoengineering, Elsevier, 2023). It is also already and used by mining as well as by space companies.

However, the interactions between geoengineering projects and the mammoth complexity of the Earth-system and its crisis will certainly have unintended consequences. That’s why, since 2009 and the first sweeping academic report by the Royal Society, geoengineering has appeared as being potentially quite worrying. For example, one wonders what would be the consequences of solar “dimming” on the vegetation (Alistair Doyle, “Dimming Sunlight to Slow Global Warming May Harm Crop Yields: Study”, Reuters, 8 August 2018) ?

But, on the other hand, what will be the consequences of having no “planetary emergency measures” while El Niño fans the flames of “Burning World”?

Towards new international hierarchies

Moreover, the El Niño-climate change nexus turbo-charging geopolitics, geoengineering will be the equivalent of planetary politics led by an as yet unknown number of nations and industrialists. Thus, it will have tremendous geopolitical impacts. Indeed, it will create new divides between “pros” and “cons”, “haves” geo-engineering” and “haves not” and the “helped ones” and the “suffering ones”.

In this context, the AI power will be a powerful tool to help anticipating and mitigating those impacts. In other terms, the “AI world” will have to mobilize carefully a geoengineered world, in order to try to reduce the worst of “Burning World”.

And, as geoengineering systems will be “desperate measures for desperate times”, their conception begs the question of the politics and geopolitics of “what comes next”, in terms of political decision-making about geoengineering as in the strategic question of “what about the climate crisis after geoengineering”?

Featured image: by PIRO of Pixabay

Challenge Your Beliefs with the AI Sphinx

(Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli)

We created Sphinx, an AI assistant that will be your own personal “devil’s advocate”. Sphinx will assist you in challenging your assumptions and reinforcing your arguments, positions and sets of scenarios. Sphinx is now based on OpenAI’s GPT4-Turbo model*, further trained with The Red Team Analysis Society’s methodology and knowledge.

Start challenging your own assumptions with Sphinx. Don’t forget to also read why a devil’s advocate matters, and discover how Sphinx challenges us on climate change. Please note that OpenAI GPT4 -Turbo models ended their training in December 2023, and that for now, they do not browse the internet. Thus, apart from knowledge conveyed through RTAS articles, the AI assistants are not aware of news having taken place after December 2023.

Challenge your assumptions with Sphinx

Tips:
* Check how to maximise interactions with AI.
* Try! The first 4 queries (across all our AI assistants) are complimentary.
For guests: in a form (Pithia), one click on submit [red button] = 1 query – In a chat (Aria, Calvin, Kai, Regina, Sphinx), 1 question and 1 answer = 2 queries.

For additional use, purchase credits access to our AIs. Existing users should log in to their account.

Assumptions, devil’s advocate and AI

Being able to see different perspectives is key for strategic foresight and warning, for example to develop scenarios.

It is crucial for communication to allow for proper exchanges and constructive behaviour. 


Pithia 		Initiation, explorationDefine your concern, scenario and image
Cascading impacts

Calvin 		AdvancedIndicators, drivers, factors, variables, causal links, models, and graphs.

Kai 		AdvancedScenarios narratives

Regina 		ScienceGeopolitics, international relations, political science 
SphinxBiasesChallenge your assumptions and beliefs, devil’s advocate
Tip7 Tips for Effective Communication with Chat AI Assistants

Being able to challenge one’s hypotheses is indispensable in science. Indeed, in science we use falsification, i.e looking for an element, a fact, an event that would prove our hypothesis or explanation wrong. This is the only way to make sure our explanations, understanding, theories are valid (see, for example, Helene Lavoix, “Useful Rules for Strategic Foresight and Risk Management from Taleb’s The Black Swan“, The Red Team Analysis Society, 28 January 2013).

It is also fundamental, in strategy, to win.

One way to challenge our assumptions, is to use what is called a “devil’s advocate”. The term “devil’s advocate”, advocatus diaboli in Latin, also known as “Promoter of the Faith”, promotor fidei, comes from the practice in the Catholic Church, according to which

A dignitary “critically examined the life of and miracles attributed to an individual proposed for beatification or canonization… his presentation of facts included everything unfavourable to the candidate in order to uncover any character flaws or misrepresentations of their life of heroic sanctity.”

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia, “devil’s advocate,” Encyclopedia Britannica, August 9, 2022

In contemporary usage, the term “devil’s advocate” refers to someone who plays a similar role in debates or discussions, by taking a position that is contrary to the majority view in order to identify weaknesses or flaws in the argument. As a result, s/he helps strengthen the overall position.

Facing an advocatus diaboli allows for challenging assumptions and stimulates critical thinking. In the context of strategic foresight and early warning, it is important to have a devil’s advocate perspective in order to identify potential blind spots or risks that may not be immediately apparent, and to ensure that all possible scenarios and outcomes have been thoroughly explored.

AI assistants that are built out of Large Language Models (LLMs) to hold conversations with human beings are very useful to play the “devil’s advocate” role. Furthermore, because they are not real people, then the emotional difficulty that may go with seeing one’s assumptions and beliefs challenged may be lessened. As issues of power and domination are removed when exchanging with an AI assistant, then we can more calmly ponder and reflect upon our ideas. As we get used to controversy and build more powerful arguments, then not only our cases, theories or strategies become more robust, but also, potentially, we may become stronger, calmer, more lucid and less stressed when facing opposition.

Case study: an AI devil’s advocate perspective on climate change

As example, we show here a session we had with Sphinx, challenging a belief, that is probably present in many people, regarding climate change:

User’s assumption: “Human beings have always overcome problems and our current civilisation is very advanced and enlightened. Thus, we shall have no difficulties continuing as we do and overcoming climate change.”

Sphinx: Let’s examine the hypothesis that human beings have always overcome problems and that our current civilization is advanced enough to overcome climate change. While it’s true that humans have a long history of overcoming challenges and progressing, it’s important to challenge this hypothesis and explore different perspectives. Here are some alternative viewpoints and questions to consider:

  1. What if climate change is different from previous challenges that we have faced, both in terms of scale and urgency? Climate change is a planetary condition that impacts the entire biosphere and all human societies. Its effects will last for centuries, if not millennia. What if we are facing a challenge that requires unprecedented levels of global cooperation and collective action to address?
  2. What if our current civilization is not advanced enough to overcome climate change? While our technological and scientific progress has been impressive, it has also created many of the problems we now face. Climate change is a symptom of a larger problem, which is the unsustainable use of natural resources and the degradation of ecosystems. What if we need to fundamentally change our economic and social systems to address the root causes of climate change?
  3. What if we are already experiencing the impacts of climate change, and they are worse than we expected? The increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and biodiversity loss are all signs that the impacts of climate change are already being felt. What if we are underestimating the scale and urgency of the problem, and need to take more radical action to avoid the worst outcomes?
  4. What if there are political and social barriers to addressing climate change that are difficult to overcome? Climate change is a deeply political issue, and requires concerted action by governments, businesses, and civil society. However, there are many interests that stand to lose from efforts to mitigate climate change, such as fossil fuel companies, and some governments and political factions. What if these interests are able to block or delay the necessary changes, making it difficult to address the problem adequately?

These are just a few alternative viewpoints and questions to consider when examining the hypothesis that human beings will be able to overcome climate change. It’s important to approach complex issues like this with an open mind, and to consider multiple perspectives and scenarios to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the situation.

*via API through AI Engine.

Exploring cascading impacts with AI

Evaluating possible impacts is a key component of strategic foresight, early warning and risk management. It is crucial in strategy and, as a result, for strategic planning.

Go directly to Pithia to explore cascading impacts.


Pithia 		Initiation, explorationDefine your concern, scenario and image
Cascading impacts

Calvin 		AdvancedIndicators, drivers, factors, variables, causal links, models, and graphs.

Kai 		AdvancedScenarios narratives

Regina 		ScienceGeopolitics, international relations, political science 
SphinxBiasesChallenge your assumptions and beliefs, devil’s advocate
Tip7 Tips for Effective Communication with Chat AI Assistants

Very often we limit ourselves to thinking about the direct impacts of an action or of an event. Yet, impacts, most of the time, go on. We face cascading effects. For an event, a decision, we thus should consider first the direct impacts, then the second-order impacts (the direct impacts of the direct impacts), then the third-order impacts… until the nth-order impacts.

In terms of strategic foresight and early warning, the capacity to explore these nth order impacts is in-built into the use of a proper model. However this assume that such a model has been developed (see our related training course and how our AI assistant Calvin can help you in this regard), which is not always the case. 

As an introduction to the importance of considering cascading impacts, we created an AI-powered form that allows you to explore some direct, second and third-order effects for an event or decision. 

Pithia assists you in exploring 1st, 2d and 3rd-order impacts

Identify the primary decision or event and its context: the basis for your scenarios

Start by clearly defining the primary decision or event that serves as the basis for your scenarios. You can add context or constraints to obtain something more interesting.

For example, the primary event, decision or objective could be:

An EU’s pro-Taiwan stance within the context of Europe’s need for critical commodities.

or more simply US default on its debt

or Very rapid (less than 6 months) adoption of a generalised use of generative IA across companies, NGOs, governments, administrations and public services in the Western world

Determine the immediate or first-order effects

Use the AI assistant to identify direct and immediate effects of the primary decision or event. These effects should be directly attributable to the chosen objective or event. Find out what some of these effects could be:

Explore second-order effects

Next, consider the ripple effects or consequences that arise as a result of the immediate effects. These are the second-order effects. They may emerge as a response or consequence of the immediate effects.

Among those suggested by the AI, choose the immediate or direct effect you wish to explore, cut and paste it in the field below, amend it as you wish. You can also add a direct effect that was not mentioned by the IA. For example, your input could be:

EU’s pro-Taiwan stance: Improved European access to Taiwanese critical commodities: Taiwan is a key producer of critical commodities such as semiconductors and rare earth elements. The EU’s pro-Taiwan stance will improve access to these commodities, which are essential for European defense capabilities.

US default: Internationally, there would be a shift away from the US Dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

Generative IA adoption: Massive loss of jobs for humans. In general higher paid jobs would be more impacted than lower paid manual jobs notably of a craftsmanship type. The effect could be aggravated by the speedy adoption of AI, which would not give people enough time to adjust to the changes.

Discover third-order effects

Repeat the process by identifying additional effects that stem from the second-order effects. These effects should be logical extensions of the second-order impacts, considering the evolving dynamics and interdependencies between various factors.

Choose the second-order effect you wish to explore, cut and paste it in the field below, amend it as you wish. For example, your input could be:

EU’s pro-Taiwan stance: An increase in competition among other global players who rely on these Taiwanese critical commodities.

U.S. default: Significant diminution of the geopolitical power of the U.S.

Generative IA adoption: The employment situation could further exacerbate the already existing wealth gap between different groups in the society 

Tips: Try! The first 4 queries (across all our AI assistants) are complimentary.

For guests: in a form (Pithia), one click on submit [red button] = 1 query – In a chat (Aria, Calvin, Kai, Regina, Sphinx), 1 question and 1 answer = 2 queries.

For additional use, purchase credits access to our AIs. Existing users should log in to their account.

Tips: Training and examples
We trained and tested the AI many times, notably on three issues. These are used as examples to guide you in the AI form. 

  1. An EU’s pro-Taiwan stance within the context of Europe’s need for critical commodities.
  2. U.S. defaults on its debt.
  3. Very rapid (less than 6 months) adoption of a generalised use of generative IA across companies, NGOs, governments, administrations and public services in the Western world.
    We pasted below the answers we received for this third example, with comments, considering the wide-ranging effects. The results the AI gives us are just elements of cascading impacts. A proper and real strategic foresight and early waning work should be built on a fully developed model.

Nota: This is an experiment with varying results. Some results given by the AI were excellent, others were less so. For example, it seems that the AI provided best results first. Then, if one asked the same question again, the results obtained did not improve massively or could even be less interesting. Comments and discussions on the results you obtained are welcome! 

What about impacts further away?

Identify 4th to nth order effects

Current GPT-based apps break in terms of logic, consistency and ability to combine factors on different levels starting from the 4th-order effects. This appears to us as logical because they are “only” based on AI language models. As a result, even though GPT-based apps may appear able to reason, actually they cannot really provide analysis, which requires subjective reasoning. Nonetheless, as they are, GPT-based apps can already yield interesting results, which may become tools – to be checked and verified – for human beings. 

The GPT4 model has increased capabilities and advancements but we are not yet into models with real reasoning capabilities. The future nonetheless may surprise us…

Evaluate the long-term implications

Consider the long-term implications of the scenario by examining how the multiple orders of effects interact and influence each other over time. Assess the potential outcomes and consequences on a broader scale, such as geopolitical realignments, economic shifts, or changes in regional dynamics.

Only you can do that, using all the tools available to us, and notably modeling. Maybe an AI in the future will also be able to do it, one day…

Case study – Cascading impacts for a very rapid adoption of generative AI

Output on cascading effects from Pithia (17 May 2023 – using previous GPT3.5 model)

Comments

speaking, keynote, speaker, conference, Red Team, Red Teaming, quantum, AI, climate change, risk, external risk, strategic foresight, futurism, warning, red team, analysis society, consultant, researcher, expert Input Primary Event:

Very rapid (less than 6 months) adoption of a generalised use of generative AI across companies, NGOs, governments, administrations and public services in the Western world.

Pithia:

The direct and immediate effects of a very rapid adoption of a generalised use of generative AI across companies, NGOs, governments, administrations, and public services in the Western world could include:

Test 1

  1. Massive displacement of jobs: AI could automate many jobs, leading to a significant loss of jobs for humans. The effect could be aggravated by the speedy adoption of AI, which would not give people enough time to adjust to the changes.
  2. Increased productivity: AI could boost productivity in various sectors, leading to an increase in output and efficiency. Companies that adopt AI quickly could have a competitive advantage over those that don’t.
  3. Privacy concerns: AI could collect vast amounts of data on individuals, raising concerns about privacy and surveillance. The speedy adoption of AI could exacerbate these concerns, as there may not be enough time to develop and implement privacy regulations.
  4. Cybersecurity risks: AI could introduce new cybersecurity risks, as cyber attackers could use AI to launch more sophisticated attacks. The rapid adoption of AI could limit the time available to develop and implement effective cybersecurity measures.
  5. Ethical concerns: AI could raise ethical concerns, such as bias in decision-making algorithms and the potential for AI to be used for harmful purposes. The speedy adoption of AI could exacerbate these concerns, as there may not be enough time to develop and implement ethical guidelines.
  6. Economic benefits: The use of AI could lead to significant economic benefits, such as increased economic growth and reduced costs. The speedy adoption of AI could accelerate these benefits, leading to faster economic growth and development.

In summary, the very rapid adoption of a generalised use of generative AI across companies, NGOs, governments, administrations, and public services in the Western world could have significant and wide-ranging effects, including the displacement of jobs, increased productivity, privacy concerns, cybersecurity risks, ethical concerns, and economic benefits.

Test 2

The direct and immediate effects of very rapid adoption of a generalised use of generative AI across companies, NGOs, governments, administrations, and public services in the Western world would be significant and far-reaching. Here are some possible effects:

  1. Job Displacement: The adoption of generative AI on a large scale will lead to the displacement of many jobs that are currently done by humans. This displacement will occur across all sectors, including manufacturing, services, and knowledge work. The impact will be felt across all levels of the workforce, from manual laborers to highly skilled professionals.
  2. Increased Productivity: Despite job displacement, the adoption of generative AI will lead to increased productivity and efficiency in many areas. For example, tasks that are currently done manually, such as data entry or basic customer service, can be automated with AI, freeing up human workers to focus on more complex tasks.
  3. New Business Models: The adoption of generative AI will enable new business models that were not previously possible, particularly in areas such as personalized medicine, online education, and predictive maintenance. These new models will create new opportunities for entrepreneurs and disrupt existing industries.
  4. Regulatory and Ethical Challenges: The rapid adoption of generative AI will raise significant ethical and regulatory challenges that will need to be addressed. These include issues such as data privacy, bias in AI algorithms, and the potential misuse of AI for malicious purposes.
  5. Geopolitical Implications: The adoption of generative AI by governments and military organizations could have significant geopolitical implications, as countries race to develop and deploy AI-powered weapons and surveillance systems. This could lead to increased tensions and a new arms race, as well as new challenges for international security and diplomacy.

Overall, the very rapid adoption of a generalised use of generative AI across companies, NGOs, governments, administrations, and public services in the Western world would bring both significant opportunities and challenges, with consequences that would be felt across all levels of society.

We knew the model used by GPT 3.5 was closed in September 2021, however our article Foreseeing the Future with ChatGPT? included the latest findings (March 2023) by OpenAi on the matter. Hence, beside testing the capabilities of the AI to identify cascading impacts, the question also allowed us to test the capacity of our IA to consider new knowledge existing on our website. 

In general, the results obtained with the AI are interesting.

Notably in test 1 it accounts for the speed of adoption, but does not look at the geopolitical side, and does not detail the types of jobs that could be lost.

Test 2, for its part, specifies better the types of jobs impacted, but does not account for some of the findings of OpenAi: for example manual jobs will likely be less impacted than knowledge jobs. Yet, after checking the logs the AI indeed had access to this knowledge.

Test 2 mentions geopolitics but in a very general way.

Test 2 does not consider speed as a key factor.

Hence to obtain the best result we would need to mix the answers obtained with test 1 and test 2, added to our own specific knowledge and understanding. AI, as often in our case, is a tool that can help us and that we can usefully integrate within our work, but not a definitive panacea… at least not yet when using GPT-3.5.

speaking, keynote, speaker, conference, Red Team, Red Teaming, quantum, AI, climate change, risk, external risk, strategic foresight, futurism, warning, red team, analysis society, consultant, researcher, expert Input direct effect: Massive loss of jobs for humans in the Western World. In general higher paid jobs would be more impacted than lower paid manual jobs notably of a craftsmanship type. The effect could be aggravated by the speedy adoption of AI, which would not give people enough time to adjust to the changes.

Pithia:

The massive loss of jobs for humans in the Western world due to the adoption of AI could have several significant impacts or consequences. Firstly, it could lead to a sharp rise in unemployment rates, which could result in social unrest, poverty, and inequality. This situation could further exacerbate the already existing wealth gap between different groups in the society.

Secondly, the economic impact could be significant, as the loss of jobs would mean a reduced purchasing power for consumers, leading to a decrease in demand for goods and services. This could result in a slowdown of the economy and reduced economic growth, which may cause ripple effects throughout the whole world.

Thirdly, the loss of jobs could lead to political instability, as people who are unemployed or underemployed may become more susceptible to extremist ideologies and populist movements. The rise in populist movements could cause political polarization and social unrest, leading to a breakdown in social cohesion and stability.

Furthermore, the adoption of AI could also have significant geopolitical implications. Countries that are less developed or have a lower level of technological advancement could be left behind, leading to an increased disparity between developed and developing nations. This could lead to a shift in global power dynamics, as countries with advanced AI capabilities may have a significant advantage over those that do not.

In conclusion, the rapid adoption of AI could have significant consequences for the Western world, including economic, social, and geopolitical impacts. These impacts could cause significant uncertainty and instability, and it is important to carefully consider the potential consequences of AI before implementing it on a large scale.

Here we have truly interesting potential second-order effects, that should definitely be taken into account worldwide by political authorities.

However, as far as our IA is concerned, we observe some difficulties to combine different second-order effects: for example, if in the Western world – those countries that adopt rapidly generative AI – the massive job displacement especially of better paid jobs leads both to unrest and to economic downturn, then will the countries having massively adopted AI still have a geopolitical advantage? Further, is it the very way we conceive the international society and the world order that could change?

Again, we are at too general a level to be able to truly use the results obtained to steer policy, yet, what our AI Pithia highlighted is definitely  worth considering and incorporating in our analyses.

speaking, keynote, speaker, conference, Red Team, Red Teaming, quantum, AI, climate change, risk, external risk, strategic foresight, futurism, warning, red team, analysis society, consultant, researcher, expert Input second-order effect:  The employment situation could further exacerbate the already existing wealth gap between different groups in the society

Pithia:

The rapid adoption of generative AI across different sectors in the Western world could exacerbate the existing wealth gap between different social groups. This could happen as a result of massive loss of jobs, especially among those in higher-paying positions. This situation could be aggravated by the quick adoption of AI, giving people little time to adapt to the changes.

The consequences of this scenario could be far-reaching and complex. It could lead to social unrest and political instability, as people who have lost their jobs struggle to make ends meet. There could also be an increase in poverty and inequality, as well as a decline in the standard of living for many people.

Furthermore, the rapid adoption of AI could have geopolitical implications. Countries that are unable to keep up with the pace of technological change could be left behind, leading to a shift in the balance of power. This could result in increased tensions between nations, as well as a rise in protectionism and nationalism.

In order to address these potential consequences, it is essential for governments, policymakers, and businesses to take a proactive approach to managing the adoption of AI. This includes investing in education and training programs to help people acquire the necessary skills to adapt to the changing job market. It also involves being mindful of the potential social and geopolitical implications of AI, and taking steps to mitigate any negative effects.

Here the AI summarises well the situation, then stops short of truly continuing to look at specific and detailed consequences.

GPT 4 -Turbo (actual model – 16 Feb 2024) could be better at this task, or/and we need to improve how we handle the AI model to get better and more specific answers. Alternatively, LLMs – for now – may just not be able to properly handle such tasks and we would need different types of models.

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