Investigating the Rise of Populism – A Perfect Definition?

This article and the next focuses on the “rise of populism”, the second explanation given for two of the major recent political and geopolitical surprises – i.e. the Brexit and the election of Donald Trump as U.S. President.

Populism and its rise are potentially at the heart of a possible crisis in Europe, and world-wide, should “populist” and anti-European parties be successful enough in the 2017 elections to be able to implement their program. The fear is high enough in Europe to lead in the Dutch parliamentary elections held on 15 March 2017, their opponents to astonishingly hail as a “terrific” victory the loss of eight seats by the centre-right VVD party, remaining nonetheless the first political force in the country with 33 seats, while the “populist enemy” won five seats to reach 20, becoming the second force in the country ex-aequo with the Christian Democrats (CDA) (BBC News, “Dutch election: Wilders defeat celebrated by PM Rutte“, 16 March 2017; Reuters, “Top Merkel aide welcomes ‘terrific’ Dutch result“, “France’s Macron hails Dutch stand against ‘extreme right‘, 16 March 2017; AAP, “Hollande congratulates Rutte on election“, 16 March 2017, SBS). The concern is not limited to Europe but is also major, for example, in China, including because of the Chinese holding of euro bonds and wishes to promote a multipolar world, even though the Chinese ambassador to France underlines they are ready for all scenarios and, valuing bilateral relations, will maintain strong relations with France for example, in all cases (Wendy Wu & Laura Zhou, “How could a win by far-right French candidate Marine Le Pen cost China?“, 11 March 2017, South China Morning Post).

Whatever the result of these 2017 elections, the conditions that led to citizens’ discontent and to the so-called “rise of populism” cannot be ignored. Failure to do so could lead to even worse consequences in terms of polarization, instability, and spreading multi-level violence, not only domestically but also internationally. For example, the March 2017 diplomatic crisis, fraught with many dangers, and the accompanying high level of tension between the Netherlands, some supportive European member-states including Germany, on the one hand, and Turkey, on the other (e.g. BBC News, “Turkey-Netherlands row: Dutch warn citizens after Erdogan threat“, 13 March 2017), are most probably heavily related, on both sides, both to this “rise of populism” and to the conditions that made this rise possible.

It is thus crucial to understand better what is meant by this “rise of populism” and to find out what it covers to be able to anticipate potential evolutions and impacts.

This article is part of a broader series, where we identify emerging new elements that should allow us reducing political and geopolitical uncertainty regarding most particularly the international order and the main socio-political systems inhabiting it. Using the largely unforeseen Brexit and President Trump victory and their aftermath as case studies, we seek to understand the deeper forces and processes at work and their potential longer-term impacts. We previously addressed the “anti-globalisation” framework and identified, behind it, the emergence of a possible trend towards a revised “nationalised globalization” supported notably by large American financial and corporate interests.

Here, starting to investigate what is meant by “the rise of populism” and in which way it applies to the current and ongoing situation, we shall present first the scholarly definition of “populism”. We shall then point out that that definition indeed fits many of the explanations given not only for the Brexit and the election of President Trump and their aftermath, but also for the success of Turkish President Erdogan. Finally, we shall underline that, nonetheless, if facts are examined, the definition of populism is finally less representative of reality than thought at first glance. We shall turn to further complete the definition of populism and to other explanations for the cases at hand with the next article.

Consensual definition and cases of populism

If nationalism is a well researched and understood political phenomenon and process, populism does not benefit from the same accumulated knowledge and understanding. Neither “populism” nor “populist” are even entries in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (search for ‘populism’, for ‘populist’, 14 March 2017).

Yet, the beginning of the 21st century, witnessing the rise of new political parties and movements, which became dubbed as “populist”, has seen a renewed interest in the idea.

As a result of this academic effort, as pointed out by Deiwiks (“Populism“, Living Reviews in Democracy, CSS-ETH Zurich, 2009), following Panizza (Populism and the Mirror of Democracy, 2005), a consensus on what is populism has started emerging, as shown by the two definitions below. Populism is thus defined as:

“An ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.”(Cas Mudde, “The Populist Zeitgeist“, 2004: p.543)

“An ideology which pits a virtuous and homogeneous people against a set of elites and dangerous ‘others’ who are together depicted as depriving (or attempting to deprive) the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, identity and voice. (Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell, “Introduction: The Sceptre and the Spectre“, 2008).

According to Deiwiks, the historical cases usually considered as exemplifying “populism” – or which populist “credentials” are discussed – are narodnichestvo, an agrarian socialist movement in Russia among the intelligentsia in the 1860s and 1870s (e.g. Walicki 1969, Canovan, 1981; Taggart, 2000); the American People’s Party between 1891 and 1919 (e.g. Hofstadter, 1969; Canovan, 1981; Ware 2002); Peronism in Argentina starting from 1946 (e.g. Butler, 1969; James, 1988; Weyland 1999 and 2001).

The end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century saw a multiplication of cases and interest as stressed above: the Bolivian Movimiento al Socialismo of President Evo Morales, the Venezuelan Movimiento V República of President Hugo Chávez (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2011); in Europe notably the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ) in Austria, the Schweizerische Volkspartei (SVP) in Switzerland, the Lega Nord in Italy, the German Republikaner, the Front National in France, the People’s Party’s in Denmark, Vlaams Blok in Flanders (e.g. Mudde and Kaltwasser, Deiwiks, bibliography of Albertazzi and McDonnell ed. 2008; Hubé and Truan, 2016).

A perfect definition not only for the Brexit and the election of U.S. President Trump, but also for the success of Turkish President Erdogan

The definitions outlined above fit quite well the popular or widespread understanding explaining not only the happenstance of the Brexit and the victory of President Trump, but also the risk weighing upon the European Union. A sample of these explanations may be read in the following texts: Ronald F. Inglehart and Pippa Norris, “Trump, Brexit, and the rise of Populism: Economic Have-Nots and Cultural Backlash“, Faculty Research Working Paper Series, Harvard Kennedy School, 29 July 2016; Anatole Kaletsky, “Trump’s rise and Brexit vote are more an outcome of culture than economics“, The Guardian, 9 Nov 2016; Catherine De Vries, “Populism on the rise? The Brexit and Beyond“, OxPol, December 20, 2016; Oscar Williams-Grut, gathering a compendium of financial analysts judgement in “Brexit and Trump are just the start — populism will strike Europe next“, 10 Nov 2016, Business Insider UK; Léonie de Jonge, “First Brexit and now Trump: what is populism and how might we view it?“, 24 Jan 2017, University of Cambridge Research, etc.

Beyond Europe and the U.S., these definitions are also used to explain, for example, the success and strengthening of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, as shown by Jan Werner Mueller, “Erdoğan and the Paradox of Populism“, Project Syndicate, 11 August 2014, when he states, for instance:

“Such figures [populist leaders] start out attacking their opponents’ corruption and accuse them of hijacking the state for a self-serving political establishment that excludes the interests of ordinary people” (Mueller, Erdoğan and the Paradox of Populism”).

We also find as another example, S. Erdem Aytaç and Ziya Öniş “Varieties of Populism in a Changing Global Context: The Divergent Paths of Erdoğan and Kirchnerismo“, Comparative Politics, October 2014) who seek to identify and characterise different strands of populism at work in what they call “the age of the post-Washington Consensus” in the “emerging South”. They use as definition “A mass movement led by an outsider or maverick seeking to gain or maintain power by using anti-establishment appeals and plebiscitarian linkages” (Barr, 2009), which may be broadly seen as belonging to the same family of definitions, although with a different focus (there on ideology and its content, here on movement and leader).

Cracks under the surface

However, in the Brexit case, how are the consensual definitions of populism to account for the fact that many “members of the establishment” supported the Brexit, indeed part of the Conservative party, as well as some peers and wealthy individuals (Marta Cooper, “A quick review of the UK Conservative party psychodrama that spawned the Brexit vote“, Quartz, 22 June 2016); “Europe. How Conservative MPs break down. Final Remain estimate – 185 Tory MPs, 91 on the payroll, 94 not,” Conservative Home, 23 June 2016; Nick Clegg “Brexit Lords have a cheek to complain about EU democracy“, 6 June 2016, Evening Standard; Adam Lusher, “More than half of donations to EU referendum campaigns came from just ten wealthy donors“, 6 October 2016, The Independent)?

In the U.S. case, the less than adverse interactions between the financial and business leaders and the Trump administration we identified previously are also puzzling from the point of view of the definition of populism.

Nonetheless, the definitions focusing on the ideological component of “populism” fit obviously Donald Trump’s discourse, as candidate then President, as exemplified by his inaugural speech (20 January 2017, Full text, The Guardian):

“We are transferring power from Washington DC and giving it back to you, the people. For too long, a small group in our nation’s Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished – but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered – but the jobs left, and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country….” (President Trump Inaugural Speech, 2017).

It is however less clear that we are faced with populism and not rather nationalism with the following sentence:

“At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other.” (President Trump Inaugural Speech, 2017).

Indeed, here, unity within the nation rather than antagonism is stressed.

Thus, could the above definitions however consensual and practical they appeared at first, would it be only because they give us a foundation for trying to understand a phenomenon, actually miss something? Should these definitions be revisited, maybe completed, or should we abandon considering populism as a valid, useful and explanatory concept to examine the phenomenon at hand? If so, then what should we choose, how could we proceed, and most importantly what could it tell us about the future?

This is what we shall examine with the next article.

Featured image: Trump Rally at US Bank Arena, Cincinnati on 10/13/2016. By Bill Huber from Goshen, United States (IMG_20161013_195654) [CC BY 2.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons.

About the author: Dr Helene Lavoix, PhD Lond (International Relations), is the Director of The Red (Team) Analysis Society. She is specialised in strategic foresight and warning for national and international security issues.

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Abridged bibliography for references not fully given in the text

Albertazzi, Daniele; McDonnell, Duncan, Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy, ed. Palgrave MacMillan, 2008.

Barr, Robert R. “Populists, Outsiders and Anti-establishment Politics,” Party Politics, 15 (January 2009), 29–48.

Butler, David J., “Charisma, Migration, and Elite Coalescence”, Comparative Politics 1 (3) 1969: 423-439.

Canovan, Margaret, Populism. New York: Harcourt Brace Javonovich, 1981.

Dahrendorf, Ralf, ‘Acht Anmerkungen zum Populismus’, Transit. Europäische Revue, 25, 2003.

Deiwiks, Christa, “Populism”, Living Reviews in Democracy, Center for Comparative and International Studies, ETH Zurich and University of Zurich, 2009.

Hofstadter, Richard, “North America”, In Populism – Its Meanings and National Characteristics, edited by G. Ionescu and E. Gellner, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969.

Hubé, Nicolas and Naomi Truan. “The Reluctance to Use the Word Populism as a Concept. Populist Political Communication in Europe. A Cross-National Analysis of European Countries”, Routledge, 2016.

James, Daniel, Resistance and Integration – Peronism and the Argentine Working Class, 1946-1976, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Mudde, Cas, “The Populist Zeitgeist”, Government and Opposition, 2004: 541-563.

Mudde, Cas, and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, “Voices of the Peoples: Populism in Europe and Latin America compared,” Working Paper #378, Kellogg Institute, July 2011.

Panizza, Francisco, “Introduction”, In Populism and the Mirror of Democracy edited by F. Panizza, London, New York: Verso, 2005.

Taggart, Paul, Populism, Buckingham PA: Open University Press, 2000.

Walicki, Andrzej, “Russia”, In Populism – Its Meanings and National Characteristics, edited by G. Ionescu and E. Gellner, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969.

Ware, Alan, “The United States: Populism as Political Strategy”, In Democracies and the Populist Challenge, edited by Y. Mény and Y. Surel. New York: Palgrave, 2002.

Weyland, Kurt, “Clarifying a Contested Concept: Populism in the Study of Latin American Politics,” Comparative Politics 34 (1) 2001: 1-22.

Weyland, Kurt, “Neoliberal Populism in Latin America and Eastern Europe”, Comparative Politics 31 (4) 1999 :379-401.

Militarizing the Chinese New Silk Road (part 1)

There are (more and more) missiles on the road.

What we call here “the great roads” are created as answers to the necessity for Russia and China to connect Asian countries with resources from and markets of Russia and Europe. After having seen the ways the Russian are militarizing their Northern Sea Route (Jean-Michel Valantin, “Militarizing the Great Resources Roads- Part 1 – Russia”, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, February 20, 2017), we shall focus in this article on the militarization of some maritime segments of the Chinese New Silk Road and what it means for the economic and social development of the “Middle Kingdom”. We shall more particularly point out how sections of the maritime New Silk Road become therefore protected in the framework of a tense geopolitical environment brought about by climate change and resource depletion.

On 7 September 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping officially launched the “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) initiative, also called the “New Silk Road” (NSR), in Astana, during a state visit in Kazakhstan.

This Chinese strategy is aimed at creating a planetary-wide “attraction system” from the outside to China. It is necessary to channel in the mineral, energy, and food resources needed by China in order to keep developing itself, while ensuring the social cohesion of its 1.400 billion strong population (Jean-Michel Valantin, “China and the New Silk Road, from oil wells to the Moon … and beyond!”, The Red Team Analysis Society, July 6, 2015).

In this first part, we shall see how the important segment of the maritime New Silk Road, which the South China Sea has also become, is militarized and what it means for business.

The militarization of the maritime New Silk Road

The NSR is a new expression of the Chinese philosophical and strategic thought, grounded in an understanding of the spatial dimension of China as well as of the different countries that are involved in the deployment of the NSR. Space is conceived as a support to spread Chinese influence and power to the “outside”, but also to allow 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). This is why we qualify some spaces as being “useful” to the deployment of the OBOR, and why each “useful space” is related, and “useful”, to other “useful spaces”.

A fundamental “useful space” for China is the South China Sea. This sea commands the access of China to the Northern Pacific Ocean, as well as to the Indian Ocean through the Gulf of Malacca, and thus to the Gulf of Bengal, to the Arabian Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, finally to reach the Mediterranean Sea.

However, the South China Sea and its maritime limits are disputed, at times harshly, between the different countries of the area, i.e. China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia Malaysia and Brunei.

In this regard, this space plays a major role for implementing and securing the present and the future of the maritime dimension of the OBOR, which must maintain access with and between the Chinese coastal cities and harbours (Helen H. Wang, “China’s triple wins: the New Silk Roads”, Forbes, January 15, 2016). Those harbours are one of the interfaces between the “Belt” and its international reach on the one hand, and, on the other, the Chinese hinterland towards which is directed the flow of resources “vacuumed” internationally by the NSR (Jean-Michel Valantin “The New Silk Road: from oil wells … to the Moon and beyond”, The Red Team Analysis Society, July 6, 2015).

The South China Sea is the trade basis of the exchanges between China and its ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) partners and competitors. The annual global trade value of the South Asian Sea is of more than 5 trillion U.S. dollars and thus plays a crucial role for the maritime New Silk Road (“18 maps that explain maritime security in Asia”, Asia Maritime Transparency in Asia – Centre for Strategic and International Studies, 2014).

If the militarization of the South China Sea by China and the other actors is not new, the current Chinese militarization process knows a new development with the creation of eight artificial islands, some of them enormous, such as the “Mischief reef”, which covers almost 200 km2, in the Spratly Islands, (Steve Mollman “Photos: how a “fishermen’s shelter” became on stilts became a Chinese military base in the South China Sea?” Quartz, December 15, 2016). Those artificial islands appear as being militarized, as indicates the analysis of aerial pictures, released by the Centre for International and Strategic Relations (Mollman, ibid).

Spratly Islands by the CIA cartography Center – 2000 2010s section – Public Domain

This on-going militarization is a reinforcement of the already important Chinese military presence in the South China Sea, in a highly militarized area, which is also the area of responsibility of the US Seventh fleet and of the Japanese navy, that led joint naval manoeuvres there with the US Navy in September 2016 (“Japan to boost South China Sea role with training patrols with U.S : minister”, Reuters, September 16, 2016 and

Kyle Mizokami, “What makes Chinese fake islands military bases in the South China Sea so dangerous?”, The National Interest, February 12, 2017).

In 2016, the Chinese military also installed Chinese HQ-9 missile batteries on Woody Island, part of the Paracel Islands, in the northern part of the South China Sea. The HQ-9 missiles, which design is close to the Russian S-300 missile, is a radar homing surface to air missile, with a 200 km range (Jon Tomlinson, “More Chinese missiles bound for disputed islands”, Fox News, December 23, 2016).

It is interesting to note that China has bought three regiments of S-400 missiles, meaning 48 launchers and dozens of missiles. Those missile regiments are currently being built and should be delivered in 2018. S-400 batteries are weapons systems able to track up to 100 flying targets and to engage 6 of them simultaneously; they are fully automated and have land and sea variants. Their range reaches 400 km (Wikipedia S-300 missile system). They can disable any kind of modern military aircraft, even stealth ones, with the assumed exception of the American F22-Raptor, and have an anti access/ denial area function, meaning that these weapons are meant to block an attacking flying force to enter into the air perimeter protected by S-400 batteries, as these missiles can be very precisely guided towards their targets. Knowing the cost of military airplanes, and the length and value of military pilots training, the kind of loss so entailed would be very quickly unsustainable for any military on Earth (Dave Majumdar, “No fly zoner: Russia’s lethal S-400 goes global“, The National Interest, December 18, 2015).

Furthermore, the S-400 complex systems are able to coordinate themselves with other surface to air weapons systems, such as the S-300s. As we underlined in our previous article, in practical terms, these weapons systems and the system of systems that integrate them into a single defence system, create an envelope of protection for the forces, the authorities and the territory of those who install and use the system (Dave Majumdar, ibid). Thus, the missiles bought by the Chinese can drastically limit and degrade the operational freedom of any aerial force acting into its perimeter.

Moreover, since the start of January 2017 the Chinese maritime presence has taken a new dimension with the drills conducted in the South China Sea, which included the Liaoning aircraft carrier escorted by five warships. It is not any more “simply” the presence of combat ships and submarines, because the function of an aircraft carrier is to dramatically expand the capability of force projection of the fleet to which it belongs, through the use of aircrafts . (“Chinese warships enter South China Sea near Taiwan in a show of force”, The Guardian, 27 December 2016). Furthermore, after the contentious exchanges between U.S. president Donald Trump and Taiwan Premier, seeming to question the “One China policy”, the Taiwan Strait has been flown over by a Chinese nuclear-capable bomber, already used to launch nuclear bombs on test sites. As a result the Chinese authorities probably wished to remind notably the U.S., that they have even more capabilities to militarize and to assert their strategic and operational presence in this contended area (Jon Sharman, “China flies nuclear bomber over South China Sea as a “message” to Donald Trump”, The Independent, 11 December 2016).

In other terms, the South China Sea, rife with tensions, knows a new level of Chinese militarization, while the Middle Kingdom is implementing the land and maritime NSR initiative, grounded in the absolute necessity for China to access energy, as well as mineral resources.

Furthermore, it is likely that the South China Sea seabed called the South China Sea platform could hold major oil and gas deposits, with possible reserves of 750 millions of barrels to 2 billions barrels of oil and more than 266 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (Tim Daiss, “Why the South China Sea has more oil than you think?”, Forbes, 22 May, 2016). To these must be added the vast potential reserves of phosphates (of great importance for agriculture to produce fertilizers), and of polymetallic nodules, which greatly attract the interest of heavy industries (Hélène Lavoix, “Deep Sea Resources brief”, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, “China’s lifting pump system for deep-sea mining completed its first test trial”, China Minmetals corporation, 26 June 2016).

Economic Zones in the South China Sea (2008, 2013). Crop of original image to depict only the SE Asia region, intended for use on SE Asian-related articles – Public Domain

The natural resources of the South China Sea also include its fisheries, with consequences in terms of food security. The South China Sea is one of the richest maritime ecological systems on Earth, with more than 3 365 different fish species, very important reef areas, as well as giant clams (Rachaele Bale, “One the world’s biggest fisheries is on the verge of collapse”, National Geographic, August 29, 2016). These biological resources attract the fishing fleets of more than seven nations.

In this regard, China is notably developing a system of joint operability between its coast guard fleet and its 50 000 strong fishing fleet, dubbed the “fishing militia” (Megha Rajagopalan, “China trains “fishing militia” to sail into disputed waters“, Reuters, April 30, 2016). The Chinese government is strongly supporting the modernization of the fleet through heavy subsidies and the replacement of old ships by new ones, with a steel hull. Meanwhile, the owners can equip their vessels with Beido systems, the Chinese Global positioning system, which puts them in direct contact with the coast guard fleet (John Ruwitch, “Satellites and seafood: China keeps fishing fleet connected in disputed waters”, Reuters, 27 July 2014). Fishermen also receive basic military navy training, especially on manoeuvering (Ibid).

The South China Sea plays a major role as far as the Chinese food security is concerned. The depletion of the fisheries near the Chinese coast is driving the fishing fleet farther and farther in the South China Sea, sometimes triggering incidents between ships of different countries.. This problem is compounded by the fact that seafood plays a basic role in Chinese food security considering Chinese culinary tradition and economy: the Chinese people eat more than 35 kg of fish annually, whilst the average global consumption is of 18 kg (“The consumption of fish and fish products in the Asia-Pacific region based on household surveys”, FAO, December 2015.

From militarization to business development

It must be noted that this militarization process is accompanied by another process: Chinese business development in the South China Sea. For example, Sansha City, a city created by China in 2012 on Woody Island, hosts companies that operate in a wide range of sectors, from agriculture to tourism, transport, water management, and finance, such as the mammoth Bank of China and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (Lee Seok Hwai “Top firms set up shop on disputed South China Sea Island”, The China Post, November 28, 2016).

The Chinese development of the South China Sea is an attractor for Chinese as well as for foreign companies. For example, it can be noted that the company CCCC Dredging, a subsidiary of the state-owned China Communications and Constructions Company, after having built the Chinese artificial islands, has signed a deal for land reclaim with the Filipino government, during a state visit of president Duterte in China in October 2016 (Laura Zhou, “Chinese island-building firm wins contract with South China Sea rival claimant,the Philippines“, South China Morning Post, 27 October 2016).

The militarization process and the geopolitical tensions in this area are also creating direct opportunities for some European companies. For example, companies – for instance German MTU – selling dual use (civil-military) technology such as ship engines, which can be used by Chinese submarines (even though arms sales to China are embargoed by the EU, the sale of dual technologies is authorised), take advantage of this geopolitical uncertainty. (“German companies profiting from rising tensions in the South China Sea“, Facing Finance, 24 August 2016).

Once more, this shows that geopolitical uncertainty is not so frightening once it is properly handled analytically. It may mean loss of business if companies are unable to see beyond superficial news. On the contrary, it may mean new opportunities and to the least a strengthening of policies if the right process is followed. Already, once the crucial building blocks of an anticipation analysis for a specific issue are understood – as done here in the case of the South China Sea – some new elements emerge that may, once the strategic foresight and warning analysis is completed, be injected in the design of a proper answer strategy.

With the second part we shall see how this militarization of the Chinese commodity “attractor” is implemented in the Arabian Sea and what it means in strategic terms for China.

About the author: Jean-Michel Valantin (PhD Paris) is the Director of Environment and Security Analysis at The Red (Team) Analysis Society. He is specialised in strategic studies and defence sociology with a focus on environmental geostrategy.

Featured image: Subi Reef, Spratly Islands, South China Sea, in May 2015. The source claims it is Mischief Reef, which is clearly wrong when compared with other photos of both reefs. Date 21 mai 2015 – United States Navy – Par United States Navy [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Evaluating Likelihoods for Libya – Scenario 2 Methodology

In this article and the next, we shall evaluate the likelihood of the primary scenarios for foreign military intervention, which we started to detail in “Scenarios for the Future of Libya – Scenario 2: The Joint Arab Force Takes a Side (1).” We shall focus on preliminary methodological work allowing for better describing the intervention cases for likelihood estimates. In the last article we discussed the likelihood of Scenario 1, where the Libyan actors negotiate a peace settlement—a scenario for which the probability we assessed was less than 20%, or highly unlikely. As detailed previously, we shall use the methodology developed by The Red (Team) Analysis Society, building upon Heuer (“Assessing Probability of a Scenario”, in Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, …

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Beyond the End of Globalisation – From the Brexit to U.S. President Trump

Trump, Brexit, nationalism, nationalised globalisation, scenarios, post-liberalism

The world has entered a period where uncertainty rules and where surprises abound.

Focusing on 2016, the two major surprises usually singled out are the Brexit or the vote leading to the exit of the U.K. from the European Union, then the election of U.S. President Trump against favourite Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Even though a short-term focus could let us believe that the turmoil only or mainly hits “the West”, political and geopolitical surprises and uncertainties have multiplied worldwide, starting at least with the shock of the financial crisis in 2007 and 2008 and responses to it (see end note for some major instances*).

What is thus happening? How are we to tackle the uncertainty? Are these surprises related or discrete independent events that it would be wrong to link or try to understand together?

We shall start here with the 2016 surprises and related ongoing uncertainty, i.e. the Brexit and the U.S. Trump Presidency, and focus more particularly on the contradictions and questions that arise when we compare the two phenomena. We shall seek a framework for and elements of understanding, which can then be used in the development of scenarios for the future.

Militarizing the Great Resource Roads – 1 – Russia

Strategic Foresight, Russian Missile, Scenarios, Arctic

There are (Russian) missiles on the roads. In this new series, we are going to focus on the militarization of the Russian Northern Sea Route and along segments of the Chinese New Silk Road and envision the political, military, industrial and business consequences for Russia, China, and their partners, notably through the installation of Russian missiles. We shall also evaluate the geopolitical consequences of the militarization of these “great roads”, which connect Asian powers and Russia to resources and markets. We shall more particularly point out the way assets are therefore protected in the framework of the potentially tense geopolitical environment brought about by climate change and resource depletion. Over the last few years, Russia, China, and other Asian countries, have installed …

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Evaluating Likelihoods for Libya’s Future – Scenario 1

Having detailed the various potential scenarios for Libya’s future over the next three to five years, we shall now evaluate the likelihood of the scenarios thanks notably to their indicators. We shall use the methodology developed by The Red (Team) Analysis Society, building upon Heuer (“Assessing Probability of a Scenario”, in Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, pp.156-157) and the capability given by indicators. This methodology allows us to obtain an estimated likelihood, which is considered not only as good enough for the purpose of anticipation through scenarios but also as remaining usable by analysts. Bayesian Networks (BN), using Pearl’s work (1985), would provide us with even more accurate estimates, but the use of BN for analysts, furthermore in the framework of issues which analysis is mainly qualitative, remains so far too heavy and time-consuming.

In this article, we shall determine the likelihood of the primary scenarios for a peaceful solution between the main Libyan actors (excluding Salafist groups), which we started to detail in “Scenarios for the Future of Libya – Scenarios 1: Towards Peace? (1).”

Organizing the Scenarios & Indicators

In order to mathematically deduce the likelihood of this scenario and its sub-scenarios, we organized the sub-scenarios in such a way as to correctly account for scenarios not detailed in our posts previously because they were not necessary in terms of narrative and understanding of the future of Libya – they were implicit (see graph below).

With the main scenarios now organized, we compiled all their indicators from their corresponding articles and selected the indicators that were absolutely necessary for that scenario to occur. There were two reasons for this approach: first, we wanted to be as accurate as possible with determining the likelihood; indicators like the creation of a Joint Arab Force would be far less significant than the Islamists’ view of General Haftar affecting their willingness to participate in peace talks. Although these ‘lesser’ indicators do indeed contribute to strategic foresight and warnings for Libya’s future, and will provide us, in terms of monitoring with indications regarding the evolution towards a scenario or another, they are not absolutely necessary for that specific scenario or sub-scenario to occur*. Second, only having ‘primary indicators’ allows us to more easily monitor their reality on the ground for assessing the likelihood, and thus let us update their likelihood between posts to maintain the accuracy of the final likelihoods at the conclusion of this series. Monitoring for warning once the likelihood of all the scenarios is established would however use also ‘secondary indicators’.

To ensure the reliability of the mathematical process, each scenario’s group of indicators is mirrored in its counterpart or opposite scenario, but the way each indicator is phrased is inversed to match that scenario’s likelihood of occurring.

For example, indicator 6 of scenario 1.3 [Peace Negotiations, Without an External Mediator, Lead to a Signed Peace Treaty] is “Do the Libyan actors agree on the role of Islam in the unity government?” Since the Islamists advocate for the use of Sharia, and the nationalists do not, their agreement on the role of Islam in a new government is necessary for this scenario to occur. However, in scenario 1.4 [Peace Negotiations, Without an External Mediator, Fail], indicator 6 states “Do the Libyan actors disagree on the role of Islam in the unity government?,” since this disagreement on the role of Islam would prevent a signed peace treaty.

After organizing the scenarios, selecting and grouping their primary indicators, we began to compare the ideal indication for each indicator to see the scenario occurring with the reality of the indication on the ground to determine the likelihood for each (for more on indicators and indications, see Helene Lavoix, “Evaluating Scenarios and Indicators for the Syrian War”, 10 March 2014, RTAS).

Evaluating the Indicators

*The likelihood of each indicator is based on the current reality on the ground, which may warrant a change of likelihood as we progress through each scenario in the forthcoming posts.

The following scenario and its indicators will show how we determined the numerical likelihood based on current realities. We use the following table for our likelihood levels:

Scenario: Libyan Actors Agree to Participate in Peace Talks Mediated by External Actors

Are Libyan actors willing to attend and participate in peace talks mediated by external actors? 50% (Improbable). Currently, there are major factions that are either refusing or delaying to participate in peace talks facilitated by UN actors or individual states (such as Algeria). The Steadfastness Front has refused to join such negotiations, and has opposed the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) (Toaido and Fitzgerald, European Council on Foreign Relations). Meanwhile, General Haftar turned down Algerian-led peace talks between himself and the GNA (Middle East Monitor, January 3, 2017) and refuses to meet with UN Special Representative Martin Kobler (Fishman, The Washington Institute, January 19, 2017). However, other actors have already shown their willingness to participate in UN-led peace talks, as exhibited by those who have supported and joined the GNA. Furthermore, a group of members of the Council of Representatives (COR) have engaged in dialogue with Algerian mediators and a UN delegation regarding a peace agreement (Libya Herald, January 26, 2017; Libya Herald, January 17, 2017), although other COR members are still resistant to peace talks. Considering these realities, we gave this indicator a 50% likelihood to see the necessary indication happen, which rates as improbable.

Do the identities of the external mediator(s) have a minimal effect on the willingness of Libyan actors to participate? 30% (Improbable). The former UN envoy to Libya, Bernardino Leon, accepted a job in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) while mediating peace talks between the General National Congress and Council of Representatives (Al Jazeera, November 5, 2015). Because the UAE openly backed the COR, supporters of the GNC were enraged, which likely deepened mistrust of the United Nations. More recently, the plane carrying UN Special Representative to Libya Martin Kobler was denied permission to land as he was flying to Tobruk to speak with members of the COR – a government whose members are increasingly opposed to Kobler (Prentis, Libya Herald, January 18, 2017). Even Grand Mufti Sheikh Sadiq Al-Gharyani has expressed disapproval for UNSMIL and Kobler, saying, “The UNSMIL is cooperating with Satan, it has neglected the victory of Libyan people over ISIS, therefore, it’s time to call for replacing it” (The Libya Observer, December 7, 2016). Such distrust and disapproval of UN mediators has certainly had an effect on the willingness of Libyan actors to be actively involved in peace talks, thus we gave this indicator a 30% likelihood.

Do views on General Haftar have a minimal effect on the willingness of Haftar opposition forces to participate? 15% (Highly Unlikely). Considering the Islamists’ overwhelming opposition to Haftar and Misrata’s serious concern of a Haftar dictatorship (Saleh, Financial Times, January 25, 2017), we gave this indicator a 15% likelihood.

Are the armed coalitions facing a prolonged stalemate? 20% (Highly Unlikely). Based on the estimates of military strength and territorial control (see indicator below), we gave this indicator a 20% likelihood.

Are the armed coalitions relatively equal in terms of military strength and territorial control? 20% (Highly Unlikely). Although Misrata forces solidified their presence in central Libya by liberating Sirte from the Islamic State, Haftar’s forces control more territory and recently made significant gains in Benghazi against Salafist groups (Critical Threats, January 2017; BBC News, January 25, 2017). Furthermore, all the Misrata brigades under the command of the Misrata Military Council have joined the forces of the Government of National Accord (The Libya Observer, January 30, 2017), leaving the General National Congress and its coalition significantly weakened. As a result, we gave this indicator a 20% likelihood.

Have Libyan actors failed to secure military backing from external actors? 45% (Improbable). General Haftar and his nationalist allies have recently made gains in finding external actors who are increasingly stepping up their military support. Egypt has reportedly been caught sending arms to Libya in violation of the UN arms embargo (Saied, Al-Monitor, January 23, 2017), although it denies this accusation, and the UAE is speculated to soon deploy fighter jets in support of Haftar (Libyan Express, February 7, 2017). Russia, meanwhile, has made public shows of support for General Haftar and his forces (Daou, France24, January 25, 2017; Libya Prospect, December 1, 2016), including flying wounded nationalist fighters to Russia for medical treatment (Markey, Reuters, February 1, 2017). Considering much of this has not yet transitioned to concrete military backing, and considering that the other actors have not secured support from external actors, we gave this indicator a 45% likelihood.

Are external actors applying a sufficient amount of pressure or incentives on Libyan actors that encourages them to participate in peace talks? 75% (Highly Likely). External actors have incrementally increasing their pressure on Libyan actors to participate in dialogue and reach an agreement. Last year, the European Union imposed sanctions on Libyan politicians that were considered to be obstructing the Government of National Accord (BBC News, April 1, 2016). More recently, the EU suggested that it might lessen the sanctions against these Libyan leaders in order to facilitate a dialogue (ANSAmed, February 7, 2017). The European Union has also agreed to give the Government of National Accord a 215 million dollar package and funding for the Libyan coast guard in order to stem the migrant flows from Libya (BBC News, February 3, 2017). Such an action puts pressure on the GNC and COR, as evidenced by the COR’s condemnation of the deal (GeopoliticsAlert, February 8, 2017). Considering these realities, we gave this indicator a 25% likelihood.

Determining Likelihood

After calculating the likelihood of each indicator, we organized each numerical value in tiers with independent indicators standing alone and dependent indicators linked together according to dependency. Using scenario 1.3 again as an example, the likelihood of indicator 5 [Are the armed coalitions facing a prolonged stalemate?] occurring is dependent on the likelihood of indicator 4 [Are the armed coalitions relatively equal in regards to military strength and territorial control?].

We then took the first of each pair of opposed scenarios and multiplied the numerical likelihoods of each indicator to find the likelihood of that scenario. In our first scenario where Libyan actors agree to participate in peace talks mediated by external actors, the product of the indicators’ likelihood was .00030375 – a less than 1% likelihood for that scenario. After finding the product of the first scenario, considering probabilities’ rules, we subtracted it from 1 to get the likelihood for its counterpart (1-x[sc 1 likelihood]=sc 2 likelihood). Thus, the likelihood of Libyan actors deciding to not participate in peace talks brokered by external actors is .99969625, or 99.96%.

To determine the likelihood of their sub-scenarios, we followed the same process for each pair of scenarios and, because trees of scenarios obey to the rules of probability for dependent events, multiplied the product of each sub-scenario to their parent scenarios.

After evaluating the main sub-scenarios, as well as their primary indicators, we thus assess that Scenario 1 Towards Peace would be highly unlikely – less than 20%, considering current situation.

In our next post, we shall begin to determine the likelihood of the various 2.x scenarios.

*In terms of graph and network representing the future of Libya, they would be antecede the variables used for this specific scenario by more than two steps and/or be on adjacent paths.

Bibliography

Feature Photo: Row of Libyan flags in Tripoli by Ben Sutherland, [CC BY 2.0], via Flickr

“Algeria continues Libya peace efforts with visit of pro-LNA HoR group,” Libya Herald, January 17, 2017

“Anger at UN chief negotiator in Libya’s new job in UAE,” Al-Jazeera, November 5, 2015

Ben Fishman, “Shifting International Support for Libya’s Unity Government,” The Washington Institute, January 19, 2017

“EU may reduce sanctions to foster Libyan peace,” ANSAmed, February 7, 2017

Fighting Forces in Libya: January 2017 map, Critical Threats, American Enterprise Institute

“Grand Mufti calls for UNSMIL replacement; praises victory over ISIS,” The Libya Observer, December 7, 2016

“Haftar and Russia agreement…Where it goes?” Libya Prospect, December 1, 2016

“Haftar refuses peace talks with UN-backed government,” Middle East Monitor, January 3, 2017

J. Pearl, “Bayesian Networks: A Model of Self-Activated Memory for Evidential Reasoning,” (UCLA Technical Report CSD-850017), Proceedings of the 7th Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, University of California, Irvine, CA, 1985, pp. 329-334.

Jamie Prentis, “UNSMIL’s Martin Kobler refused clearance for Tobruk landing,” Libya Herald, January 18, 2017

“Libya And Italy Sign Migration Deal,” Geopolitics Alert, February 8, 2017

“Libyan Islamists lose Benghazi district to Haftar’s forces,” BBC News, January 25, 2017

“Libyan politicians hit by EU sanctions over new government,” BBC News, April 1, 2016

Marc Daou, “By supporting Marshal Haftar, Russia marks its territory in Libya,” France24, January 25, 2017

Mattia Toaldo and Mary Fitzgerald, “A Quick Guide to Libya’s Main Players,” European Council on Foreign Relations, June 15, 2016

“Migrant crisis: EU leaders agree plan to stop Libya influx,” BBC News, February 3, 2017

“Misrata brigades join Libyan National Army,” The Libya Observer, January 30, 2017

Mohamed Saied, “Egypt goes against international current with Libya support,” Al-Monitor, January 23, 2017

Patrick Markey, “Eastern Libya forces fly wounded to Russia in growing cooperation,” Reuters, February 1, 2017

“UAE on verge of sending Mirage 2000s to support Haftar’s looming war on western Libya,” Libyan Express, February 7, 2017

“UNSMIL team in Tobruk for talks with HoR,” Libya Herald, January 26, 2017

Geopolitics, Uncertainties and Business (6) : The Psychological Impact of the Islamic State Terrorist Attacks

This article is the second of a two-parts of a series seeking to identify the impacts of the current and most probably forthcoming terrorist attacks by the Islamic State and other jihadist groups, and focuses on major socio-psychological consequences. It follows a first article, which started outlining a framework for impact assessment out of our current understanding of the economic consequences of terrorism, which notably pointed out the need to use mapping as methodology if the complex and cascading characters of these impacts are to be properly assessed. The larger aim of the series is notably to understand if businesses should or not neglect these aggressions and related geopolitical uncertainties, while finding out ways to foresee these risks so as to best design answers (see Helene Lavoix, “Businesses and Geopolitics: Caught up in the Whirlwinds? (1)”, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, 17 Oct 2016)

To find out which could be the psychological impacts of the ongoing string of terrorist attacks, we

The Chinese New Silk Road in East Africa

The Popular Republic of China (PRC) is building a naval base in Djibouti, which should be completed during 2017, alongside the already existing French and American military naval bases (“China’s base in Djibouti means more than an attribute of “global power”, Sputnik, 7/12/2016). This move is a crucial global development for China, for East Africa as well as for many other actors, which operations will be impacted, as we shall explain and detail further in this article.

Djibouti is a small nation, strategically located at the tip of the “Horn of Africa” on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Thus, it commands access to the Red Sea, the Sea of Arabia, the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal, hence to the Mediterranean Sea. In other terms, it commands one of the most vital naval arteries in the world (Robert M. Shelala II, “Maritime Security in the Middle East and North Africa: a strategic assessment”, CSIS, 2014).

Furthermore, since the reconstruction of the railway that connects Djibouti to Addis Ababa, financed by a Chinese bank and achieved by a Chinese company, the economically booming Ethiopia has access to the port, which attracts ships from the eastern coast of Africa. This favours numerous Ethiopia projects of transportation infrastructures’ development that extend to Cameroon through land transport infrastructures.

However, pointing out the crucial importance of Djibouti as outlined above is not enough to fully understand the scope and strategic meaning of the Chinese base.

To completely grasp the significance of this Chinese move, we must see it through the current Chinese lenses, notably incorporating the specific Chinese understanding and use of space as developed in the new “One Belt One Road” (OBOR) also called the “New Silk Road” (NSR) initiative. The NSR is a new expression of the Chinese philosophical and strategic thought, grounded in an understanding of the spatial dimension as something that may not only be used in order to support and spread Chinese influence and power, but also to allow the Middle Kingdom to “aspirate” or “suction” what it needs from the “outside” to the “inside” (Quynh Delaunay, Naissance de la Chine moderne, L’Empire du Milieu dans la globalisation, 2014). That is why we qualify spaces as being “useful”, while “useful spaces” are also related to other “useful spaces”.

As a result, Djibouti, from a Chinese perspective, is not only meaningful as an access to Africa and a strategic position on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, but also because it is “useful” at the scale of the African ambitions of the New Silk Road, a strategy devised by China in a time of worldwide competition for resources (Michael Klare, The Race for What’s Left, 2012). However, using the lenses of the paradoxical logic of strategy, we must also wonder if this Chinese strategy may not also become counter productive, because of the reliance it creates between China and a very unstable and fragile region, as we shall see in the last part.

A suction process to China: The New Silk Road integrates Djibouti

Djibouti attracts Chinese interest because it is not only a way in the transportation network of the Horn of Africa, but also and most probably foremost because, as a port, it is a complement to the maritime “use of space” as defined by the NSR (Deng Yaqing, “A shared path”, The Beijing Review, July 10, 2014).

The Chinese base integrates Djibouti to the NSR strategy. The latter became official in 2013 in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, when the Chinese President Xi Jinping launched the OBOR or NSR initiative (Michelle Witte, “Xi Jinping calls for regional cooperation via new Silk Road”, The Astana Times, 11 September 2013). This Chinese strategy is aimed at creating a planetary-wide “attraction system”, necessary to channel the mineral, energy, and food resources needed by China in order to keep developing itself while ensuring the social cohesion of its 1.400 billion strong population (Jean-Michel Valantin, “China and the New Silk Road, from oil wells to the Moon … and beyond!”, The Red Team Analysis Society, July 6, 2015.

The Chinese NSR is implemented throughout Central Asia, Europe and Africa through a very specific use of space, grounded in the philosophy explained above: the different spaces where the NSR is created and located are segments of the same OBOR, upon which other segments are built (“Belt and Road Nations account for 26 per cent of China’s trade”, The Beijing Review, April 29, 2015).

In the same time, building this base, while constructing the rail link to Addis Abeba is a way for China to support the development of Djibouti and of Ethiopia, and thus to help these countries becoming sustainable, hence “sustainable useful spaces” for China: i.e. spaces that will allow China continuing using them as nodes to provide resources from the external areas towards inner China (Valantin, “China and the New Silk Road, The Pakistani Strategy”, The Red (Team) Analysis Strategy, May 18, 2015).

Djibouti, a node to construct a new segment of the New Silk Road

Djibouti, as seen, is located where the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and through it the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, on the South, and the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea, on the North, connect.

As such, this naval base defines a new segment of the OBOR through the connection it offers with the Pakistani port of Gwadar, largely renovated by China, on the opposite side of the Arabian Sea (“Pakistani PM welcomes first large Chinese shipment to Gwadar port”, Reuters, 13 November 2016). The maritime line between the two ports allows ships to sail along the coast of Oman and Yemen.

Gwadar is notably crucial to the Chinese because it is connected by sea with all the ports on the south-west coast of China and because it should also allow China to partly escape the bottleneck of the Malacca Strait. Indeed, it must be remembered that the port of Gwadar is currently being connected to the Chinese Xinjiang region, through the construction of an immense north-south highway across Pakistan (“Gwadar port integral to China maritime expansion”, The Express Tribune, February 17, 2013).

In other words, building a naval base in Djibouti and rebuilding the railway that connects the port with Addis Ababa in the hinterland of Ethiopia is a way to integrate the Ethiopian market to the maritime and terrestrial Africano-Asian transport infrastructure that goes from Eastern Africa and from the Horn of Africa to the economic zones of the South China coast and to the developing Xinjiang region.

Protecting sea-lanes: International status but also ensuring the security of the Chinese supplies system

To this space strategy are aggregated other and more “classical” naval functions for the new base in Djibouti, such as the defence against pirates, coming from Yemen, Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt (Jean-Michel Valantin, “Surviving the Gulf of Aden: a new strategic paradigm for the future of the region?”, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, November 11, 2013).

Participating in the international effort against piracy in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden is a way to confirm the status of China as an international power. This participation is also necessary, at a very practical level, in order to protect this segment of the NSR against the disruption that is being wrought by piracy (Valantin, “Somali Piracy: a model for tomorrow’s life in the Anthropocene?”, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, October 28, 2013), as well as by the international power games in the region, as “played” by Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Iran, the U.S., the Islamic State, and Al Qaeda for example in Yemen and Somalia (e.g. Hélène Lavoix, “At war against a global Islamic State – The fall into extreme Sunni Shi’ite tensions”, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, 1 February 2016).

Thus, Djibouti appears as a particularly “useful space”, from the Chinese NSR perspective, because it is a strategic place to use in order to protect from the pirates and from ongoing war operations the ships and convoys, which are sailing to and from China, especially the oil tankers coming from the Arabian port of Jeddah. In the same time, it allows Chinese transportation and energy companies to have access to South Sudan and to its oil production (James Burgess, “War-torn South Sudan to resume oil production in July”, Oil Price.com, May 26, 2016).

Connecting the East African dots

This “spatial usefulness” of Djibouti is magnified by analogous Chinese moves in Africa, for example much further south in the port of Maputo, Mozambique. In April 2016, The China Harbour Engineering Company has started planning to invest more than 1 billion dollars in a new port in the Maputo province, on the coast of the Mozambique capital.

This operation is related to a South African-Swaziland project of railway linking Maputo to the mining zones in South Africa, through Swaziland, and is boosting building and renovation of transport infrastructures with Tanzania, Zambia and Botswana (“China’s CHEC involved in investment of US 1 Billion Dollars in the new port of Maputo”, Macau Hub, April 25^th, 2016). The South African-Swaziland project could be used to transport coal to Maputo, and to export it to China and to India (“Bots SA coal, transport war”, The Patriot on Sunday, 10 August 2015).

Thus, the Chinese Djibouti naval base, located on the north-eastern part of the continent becomes a space that opens different segments of the New Silk Road between South Asia and the Horn of Africa. In the same time, the Chinese interest in Maputo signals the Chinese interest in the southern part of East Africa and the preparation for the creation of the NSR segment necessary to connect China with resources it needs in south-east Africa (Shannon Tiezzi, “China’s “Maritime Silk Road”: don’t forget Africa”, The Diplomat, January 29, 2015).

These East Africa-China connections create a practical transport system between the Chinese hinterland and the port-cities of the Chinese south coast and the African resources, which are necessary for the economic, industrial, consumerist and urban growth of China ,for example South African ore and fish from Mozambican fisheries (Craig Simon, The Devouring Dragon, 2013). The same dynamic will most probably facilitate inter-state exchanges by land and by sea within East Africa, which will attract even more resources and products to these harbour zones, and thus literally “plug” the different Eastern African areas with natural resources, or knowing economic growth, in the Chinese economic and resource needs (Dambisa Moyo, Winner take all, China’s race for resources and what it means for us, 2012).

These so-far two East Africa segments of the OBOR is an international infrastructure through which China projects its “power of need”, i.e. the immense and permanent need for different kinds of resources and products necessary to answer to the basic and developing needs of a giant country with 1.4 billion people going through a triple cycle of economic growth, consumerism, and very rapid urbanization (Loretta Napoleoni, Maonomics, 2011).

This means that the OBOR “initiative” is not mainly aimed at expanding a “Chinese hegemon” in the world, but to acquire the means, on an intercontinental scale, to make China sustainable, because the Middle Kingdom does not have the means to support this phase of its development by itself (Giovanni Arrighi, Adam Smith in Beijing, 2007).

Africa, the “Chinese power of need” and the planetary crisis

However, these “East African New Silk Road segments” must also be analysed through the perspective of the paradoxical logic of strategy (Edward Luttwak, Strategy, the logic of war and peace, 2002). Indeed, developing a project, be it political, commercial, military, or of any other nature, creates the emergence of situations that are driven by a paradoxical logic: the implementation of a given project attracts opposing forces, which threaten the very project that created or attracted them with failure (Luttwak, ibid). Understanding this attraction of the opposites and the necessity to use them in order to attain success is the very essence of the strategic approach, as we already saw in the case of the Russian Arctic (Jean-Michel Valantin, “Strategic thinking into the Russian Arctic: turning threats into opportunities, part 1 and 2”, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, January 9, 2017).

In the case of the connection of the Chinese NSR with the ports of Djibouti and Maputo, the paradoxical logic of strategy is effective through the installation of the “Chinese power of need” in two regions that are alarmingly hammered by climate change, as well as by the combination of the climatic evolution with volatile political situations.

In the case of Djibouti, the whole Horn of Africa is under a growing stress because of the combination of the effects of climate change on temperatures and precipitations with the human overuse of water as well as with multiple conflicts, as in neighbouring Somalia and Yemen (Peter Woodward, Crisis in the Horn of Africa, politics, piracy and the threat of terror, 2013). Over the coming years, the disruptive effects of climate change are going to keep building up and hammering the fragile and vulnerable Ethiopian, Eritrean, North and – South Sudanese, and Kenyan societies and economies, while the large hinterland of Djibouti is afflicted by international and civil wars (Serge Michailof, Africanistan, 2015 and François Guiziou, “Les ports de la façade est africaine : dynamiques d’intégrations et d’exclusions”, ISEMAR, Mars 2010).

In the case of Mozambique, the Chinese quest for resources is reaching the African south coast of the Western Indian Ocean, where a mammoth climato-biological crisis may well be currently unfolding. A recent study shows that an alarming loss of more than 30% of the phytoplankton in the Western Indian Ocean took place over the last 16 years (Koll Roxy and al., “A reduction in marine primary productivity driven by rapid warming over the tropical Indian Ocean », 19 January 2016).

This loss most certainly stems from the accelerated warming of the surface water, where the phytoplankton lives: the warming is blocking the mixing of the surface water with deeper and cooler subsurface waters, where the nutrients of the plankton – nitrates, phosphates and silicates – are located and where they remain blocked, thus depriving the plankton from its nutrients (K. S. Rajgopal, “Western Indian Ocean phytoplankton hit by warming”, The Hindu, 29 December 2015).

The problem is that plankton is the foundation of the whole ocean food chain (Callum Roberts, The Ocean of life, the fate of Man and the Sea, 2012). For example, researchers have unveiled that there is a massive decline in the shoals of fish near the Kenyan and Somali coasts. These declines are not solely the results of overfishing, but of the combination of this practice with the loss of plankton (David Michel and Russel Sticklor, “Plenty of fish in the sea? Food security in the Indian Ocean”, The Diplomat, 24 August 2012).

This negative trend is very likely to continue in the foreseeable future, because of the warming of the ocean resulting from climate change. It is highly likely to alter the whole Indian Ocean, hence transforming the biologically rich ocean into an “ecological desert” (Amantha Perera, “Warmer Indian Ocean could be “ecological desert” scientists warn”, Reuters, 19 January 2016).

This means that the decline of marine life stemming from anthropogenic climate change is a direct threat to the food security of the whole western Indian Ocean ecosystems, thus to the lives of the populations of Eastern African societies – i.e South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, as well as archipelagos, as Comoros, Maldives, Seychelles, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mayotte – and to their economies (Johan Groeneveld, “The Western Indian Ocean as a source of food”, in WIO Regional state of coast report, UNEP, 1 May 2015). This is most likely to happen despite the rapid development of fish farming, which induces its own cascade of issues (Michel and Sticklor, ibid).

The plankton and sea food crisis is particularly worrisome given the profound economic and social inequalities known by the region, and by the political, confessional and military tensions that arise, for example in Kenya and Somalia (Hélène Lavoix, “At War against the Islamic State – A Global Theatre of War“, & “At War against a Global Islamic State – Facing a Strategic Trap in Somalia?“, The Red Team Analysis Society, 23 Nov & 14 Dec 2015).

Hence, a giant biodiversity and geophysical crisis is unfolding on such a scale that it concerns numerous countries and dozens of millions of people at the same time, while merging with political and strategic current crises.

Then, the Chinese strategy of identification of and connection to “useful spaces” leading to the creation of segments of the OBOR in East Africa begs a question: are these spaces going to be really useful to help China answering its needs? In effect, the massive investments, which underlay these connections, will need time to produce a valuable return. This time to profitability may create vulnerabilities for China, because the need to find and import food ties the “Middle Kingdom” to the climate and biological crisis and the tangled geopolitics of what is becoming a very dangerous environment.

In other words, we may wonder if China will have the necessary time to reap the benefits of these infrastructures built-in order to literally suction the resources needed for its own development or if it settles itself in a dependency on a region that could go through a massive environmental-social-political destabilization during the coming years. China does so through what appears to be a very efficient strategy, but which finally could turn against its creator. The African opportunities, which have attracted the creation of these segments of the “One Belt, One Road” could turn into dangers for the growth of China, should China not take also the adequate measures to ensure the ecological sustainability of these regions, assuming this is possible.

Analytically, this situation exemplifies the crucial need to always integrate the new parameters emerging from the environmental, social and political impacts of climate change, as we continuously exemplify at the Red (Team) Analysis Society, in order to truly understand the present, how it is likely to unfold in the future and thus to devise a successful strategy across all time horizon.

Featured image: COSCO Africa vor Cuxhaven, 11 August 2012 By Bernhard Fuchs (Flickr: Cosco Africa) [CC BY 2.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons.

Scenarios for the Future of Libya – Sc 4.2 An Islamic State Victory

This article focuses on the second of the scenarios depicting a Salafist victory, where the Islamic State (IS) becomes the dominant force on the battlefield, defeats the other actors, and establishes the caliphate. In our previous scenario we detailed the scenario of an Al-Qaida victory where Al-Qaida groups in Libya dominate the battlefield and gradually implement Sharia through a grassroots strategy. Note: Considering the future names of potential factions that would result from a new split between the unity government, we shall use the label nationalist for those that supported the nationalist-dominated Council of Representatives (COR) and any future anti-Islamist factions; Islamist to note those that supported the General National Congress (GNC) and any future pro-political Islamic movements; and Salafist …

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The Impact of the Islamic State Terrorist Attacks – Geopolitics, Uncertainties and Business (5)

Since the Islamic State declared a Khilafah on 29 June 2014, it carried out, worldwide, 6 attacks or series of attacks in 2014, which killed 2 and wounded 12 people, 23 in 2015, which killed 1020 and wounded more than 2171, 36 in 2016, which killed more than 1455 and wounded more than 3505 and so far 3 in 2017, which killed more than 109 and wounded more than 169 people, assuming all attacks are known and referenced as such (Wikipedia “List of terrorist incidents linked to ISIL“). As a whole, we thus faced 68 attacks, during which more than 2586 people lost their lives and more than 5857 were injured. Prospects for the near future look no less grim as reminded …

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