The dreadful burning alive of the captive Jordanian pilot by the Islamic State and its video broadcast by Al-Furqan Media Foundation, as well as the reactions it succeeded in eliciting, such as Jordan’s retaliations (e.g. ISIS Study Group, 3 Feb 2015; BBC News, 6 February 2015), show once more the crucial importance to fully consider the Islamic State psyops as they are completely part of the war it wages and of the order it thus aims at establishing. These psyops, beyond the influence they aim at generating (see “A Framework“), offer us a way inside the Islamic State and its Khilafah’s worldview. Understanding the latter is crucial is we want to fight the Islamic State victoriously, because its belief system and induced actions impact all other actors, be …
The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly 190 – The Islamic State, Puppet Master of Emotions
Each week our scan collects weak – and less weak – signals… We present below some of the most interesting or relevant features for each section. World (all matters related to war, international and national security) – This week was overwhelmingly dominated by three main issues, the horrendous burning alive of the Jordanian pilot by the Islamic State, its use as psyops products, and more largely the war against the Islamic State, the never abating tension between North America and Europe on the one hand, Russia on the other, along the Ukrainian conflict (with an unusual number of videos on the situation within Ukraine) and the showdown between the new Greek government and the EU (see more details in the economy section, although the potential …
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The Arctic, Russia and China’s Energy Transition
Numerous Chinese cities go through what is now dubbed an “airpocalypse” mainly due to the explosion of coal plants and transport by cars.
In the meantime, Russia is renewing and expanding its network of oil and gas pipelines toward China.
Meanwhile, the Arctic and subarctic region is going through a major atmospheric warming of more than 4° in less than a century, which makes it increasingly more attractive to industrial investment, especially because the Arctic could contain more than 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30% of the undiscovered gas reserves, as well as other important mineral deposits and fishing potential (Arthur Guschin, “Understanding China’s Arctic policy“, The Diplomat, November 14, 2013).
The warming and melting of the region could turn these deposits into extractable resources (“The Arctic Death Spiral”, Arctic News, July 2013).
These three situations are interconnected and are affecting basic international strategic equilibria.
As we saw in “Arctic Fusion: Russia and China convergent strategies” (Valantin, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, June 23, 2014), the two Eurasian giants are elaborating common industrial, energy and shipping strategy in order to develop the Arctic region. However, this “great convergence” goes beyond their “simple” economic development: the stake is also the Chinese energy transition.
The coal nation?
In effect, China’s economic and social development rests upon the way it produces energy for its population, its booming cities, and its industry. 75% of China’s electricity production is coal-based. China produces 46% of the global coal production, and represents 49% of the global coal consumption. The domestic development of China depends of coal, its consumption having increased by 2.3 billion tons in ten years (Joseph Ayoub, “China Produces and Consumes almost as much coal as the Rest of the World Combined”, Today in Energy, US Energy Information Administration, May 14, 2014).
It makes China the first emitter of greenhouse gases, being responsible for 30% of global emissions (Craig Simons, The Devouring Dragon, How China’s Rise Threatens our Natural World, 2013).
It must be kept in mind that China is part of the contemporary global trend of urban growth. In 2012, the Chinese urban population started to exceed the rural population when it reached almost 691 million people, on a total of 1300 million people (Jaime A. Forcluz, “China’s Urban explosion: a 21st Century Challenge”, CNN, 20 January 2012). In other terms, contemporary Chinese social, urban, economic and political organization and development is based on coal.
However, this situation is turning the Chinese boom into a domestic and global social-environmental deadly trap. Coal atmospheric rejects are polluting the air, to the point that it endangers the 
health condition and daily life of hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens. Indeed, each year, 350 000 to 500 000 people could be dying prematurely because of air pollution, while the number of ailments, especially among children is growing quickly (Malcolm Moore, “China’s “Airpocalypse” kill 350,000 to 500,000 each Year”, The Telegraph, 07 January 2014)).
In the same time, some Chinese scientists are now comparing the permanent smog to the “consequences of a nuclear winter”: coal dust adheres and thus makes opaque greenhouse surfaces, diminishing by 50% the amount of sunlight received and needed by the growing vegetables, which could threaten the food and health security of the country (Jonathan Kaiman, “China’s toxic air pollution resembles nuclear winter, say scientists“, The Guardian, 25 February 2014). Meanwhile, it turns the Middle Kingdom into one of the main drivers of climate change (Simons, Ibid).
At the political level, the Chinese political authorities inherit a five thousand years old tradition according to which legitimacy emanates from the “Mandate of Heaven”, and which most probably still operate today, under new forms (Loretta Napoleoni, Maonomics, 2011).
If the population discerns signs that the government has lost the Mandate, it ceases to see the government as legitimate and vast social and political unrest and extremely violent upheaval may follow (John 
King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, China: A New History, 2006). In other terms, the Chinese political authorities need today to protect their population from the permanent pollution-related countrywide airborne chemical attack that it now suffers, because it may be perceived as a sign that the Mandate of Heaven is lost:
“Towards the close of each regime, for example, natural calamities, earthquakes, floods, comets, eclipses, and other heavenly portents become more numerous in the record, evidence that the improper conduct of the ruler was losing him the Mandate of Heaven” (Fairbank & Goldman, Ibid: 48).
This perception of legitimacy may have contributed to the Chinese central government’s vigorous efforts in addressing the twin challenge of cleaning the air and reducing the Chinese greenhouse gas emissions over the last few years (Paul Joffe, Geoffrey Henderson, “Taking Stronger Action on Climate Change: China and the United States”, China FAQs The Network for Climate and Energy Information, The World Resources Institute, 16 November, 2014)
Enter Russia
For China, the only way to clean the air is to regulate the number of cars and to very significantly decrease the use of coal. To achieve that, the Chinese energy industry needs to access other fuels in order to maintain the economic growth of the Middle Kingdom while depolluting the air.
President Xi Jinping announced very ambitious goals about the decrease of coal use, and the development of renewable 
energies, which could reach 20% of China’s energy production in 2030, at the APEC summit in Beijing, as part of a US-China deal on climate change (Office of the press Secretary, “FACT SHEET: U.S.-China Joint Announcement on Climate Change and Clean Energy Cooperation », The White House, November 11, 2014).
However, less polluting fuels must be found to change the gigantic park of coal plants (“China’s Long Farewell to Coal”, Deutsche Welle, 15 December 2014), especially natural gas and oil, which emit less greenhouse gas and other pollutants than coal. Thus, on 26 May 2014, the Russian and Chinese governments signed an energy agreement, according to which Beijing agreed to pay 400 billion dollars during the next thirty years for Russian natural gas (Ding Ying, “A Gas bond, energy cooperation will serve as a new link between China and Russia“, The Beijing Review, 22 May, 2014).
Russia agreed to have their giant State company Gazprom supply the China National Petroleum Company with 1.3 trillion of cubic feet of gas a year, during the next thirty years, which amounts to about a quarter of the current Chinese gas consumption. Gazprom and its partners will invest 55 billion dollars, while their Chinese counterparts will invest 20 billion dollars to build the needed pipeline, which will link northeast China to western Siberia (Marin Katusa, The Colder War, How the Global Energy Trade Slipped from America’s Grasp, 2015).
This agreement was 11 years in the making, because of a long negotiation regarding the pricing structure.
The closing of the deal came at a moment politically important for both governments. For the government of President Vladimir Putin, the tensions with the West were heightening because of the situation in Ukraine and the economic sanctions that it triggered against Russia (Lavoix, “An Isolated Russia? Think again”, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, September 15, 2014). Meanwhile, for President Xi Jinping, it was a way to demonstrate to the government, to the Chinese Communist Party and to the Chinese population, his will to implement politics favouring better life conditions (Reuters, “China Economic Growth to be Sustainable: Xi Jinping”, 15 Nov 2014), while also probably to show, internationally, its ongoing support to Russia.
The signature of the deal took place only four months before the major joint declaration by President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama at the APEC summit in Beijing, announcing their resolve to diminish the carbon emissions of their respective countries, which, for China, clearly means to start its “long walk” away from coal.
The natural gas will begin to flow from Russia to China in 2018 or 2019 (Katusa, ibid). This huge deal, which opens the door to numerous others (“Record High Chinese Imports of Russian Oil in 2014”, Russia Today, January 23, 2015), has a very profound political meaning: each of the two giant and powerful countries rests upon the other in order to ensure its economic, political, and existential security and future.
It means that the legitimacy and the viability of the Russian government and of the Chinese government are now interlinked, and are both dependent on the success of the Chinese energy transition from coal to oil and gas. Thus, it will lead China to reach its “peak” emissions sooner, in a less polluting way, while preparing itself for another “post-oil” energy transition.
That is why it should not have been a surprise when the Chinese government declared, in November 2014, it would help Russia to protect and support the Ruble, badly affected by the western sanctions (Tomas Hirst, “The Russians Have Persuaded The Chinese To Bail Out Their Oil Industry”, Business Insider, November 13, 2014).
The Arctic Imperative
Climate change, driven by greenhouse gas emissions inherent to the use of oil and gas on a worldwide scale, is so profoundly and so deeply altering the Arctic, that the summer ice pack is said to have entered “the Arctic death spiral” (Joe Romm, “Arctic Death Spiral: CryoSat Reveals Decline In Arctic Sea Ice Volume Continues“, Climate Progress, September 11, 2013).
This massive geophysical change is the support of industrial, infrastructural, political and military development of the region by Russia, and of the emergence of the 
“Near Arctic nation” implemented by China with Iceland, Greenland, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Russia (Valantin, “The Chinese Shaping of the North”, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, 9 June 2014).
As the massive Siberian gas fields are nearing their peak production (Michael Klare, The Race for What’s Left, 2012), new sources of gas must be found in order to, literally, ensure the future energy security of both countries, and, in particular, the heightening of electricity production by gas-powered plants in China.
In fact, the Russian commitment to ensure a large part of the Chinese current and future oil and gas supply gives a new meaning to the development projects for such giant gas fields as the Shtokman field, in the north of the Barents Sea, the Prirazlomonoye field, discovered in 1989, in the east of the Barents Sea (Fabienne Costadau, La Mer de Barents, un nouvel enjeu géostratégique, 2011), the Bovanenkovo field, close to the South-west coast of the Yamal Peninsula (Klare, ibid), and, since September 2014, the mammoth Universitetskaya, in the Kara Sea, north of Siberia. (This sub-sea structure, potentially, could contain reserves of oil and gas equal or superior to the Gulf of Mexico).
Of these projects depend now both not only the “oil and gas power of influence” of Russia upon Europe and Asia, but also the strengthening of the Russia-China “special relationship”.
Furthermore, the Russian Arctic could now play such a key role in the domestic cohesion, energy transition and security of China, that it would contribute to further insure the support of China when or if the Russian situation and its Arctic influence were to be questioned.
The Russian and Chinese energy politics are changing the relationship between the economy, the atmosphere and strategy in an era of climate change and energy transition.
The world is shifting.
Dr Jean-Michel Valantin (PhD Paris) leads the Environment and Security Department of The Red (Team) Analysis Society. He is specialised in strategic studies and defense sociology with a focus on environmental geostrategy.
Featured image: The Presidential Press and Information Office – President of Russia – Before the start of an official reception for the APEC economies’ leaders.November 10, 2014.
The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly 189 – Why an anti-Russian “Western” Foreign Policy?
Each week our scan collects weak – and less weak – signals… We present below some of the most interesting or relevant features for each section. World (all matters related to war, international and national security) – With the return of war to Eastern Ukraine, we are witnessing an interesting effort by some authors to try to make sense of a US-led foreign policy and analysis of the world that does not appear to make sense to them, besides, of course, the host of usual anti-Russian articles. The articles in The American Interest (“Putin’s World: In It To Win It” by Walter Russell Mead) and Salon (“Distortions, lies and omissions: The New York Times won’t tell you the real story behind Ukraine, Russian economic collapse” by Patrick …
War in Libya and its Futures: State of Play – Islamist Forces (2)
In Part I of Libya’s Islamist and Misrata forces, we examined Dawn of Libya forces and the underlying dynamics created by the General National Congress (GNC). In this second post, we shall focus on the state-affiliated Islamist militias in Benghazi, the Salafist militias in Benghazi and Derna – as well as their Islamic State and Al-Qaeda links. In the next post, we shall look at actual and potential international involvement, from the UNSMIL peace talks to countries supporting the GNC and Dawn of Libya. Here, we shall notably address the religious dynamic of the Salafist groups, which are increasingly fundamentally important to note, in Libya – as in the rest of the region and beyond. The Salafi movement, or Salafism, strives for …
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The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly 188 – Beyond the Positivity Mindset, the Islamic State and a Map
Last updated 26 January 2016
Latest updated maps, for the Islamic State and its Khilafah, may be found for Mesopotamia (Iraq and Syria) here and for its global reach here. The text below remains largely true, with variations of course, notably as awareness of the danger created by the Islamic State has suddenly increased after the attacks in Paris on 13 November 2015. As the post below shows, had we, in January 2015 gone beyond the positivity mindset, the odds to see the latest attacks mitigated might have been increased.
Each week our scan collects weak – and less weak – signals… We present below some of the most interesting or relevant features for each section.
World (all matters related to war, international and national security) – Foreign ministers of the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State are meeting in London, as “much more [than air strikes] needed to be done”, according to British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond. According to the BBC, the aim is “to find ways to halt the flow of recruits to IS, cut off its funding and “tackle the underlying narrative”. In the meantime, the successes of the coalition’s strategy are also emphasized, as is regularly stated by most governments, including by U.S. President Obama in his State of the Union address.
Yet, facts on the ground tend, to the least, to question this relative optimism, even if governments officials are careful to use cautious words and statements, as shown, for example, by the excellent updated maps published regularly on Pietervanostayen website (and accessible each in a large format) and made by Thomas van Linge (@arabthomness). We are displaying here the 15 January versions of the maps together (approximately merged), rather than separately with Iraq on the one hand and Syria on the other, as it better reflects the reality on the ground, and helps perception. The merged version (click here to access a larger merged map) notably shows the probable impossibility of dealing with the Islamic State if considering the Iraqi battlefield only and thus underlines the very real complexity of having to consider the Syrian diplomatic quagmire on top of war.
Considering the various allegiances to the Islamic State, and the various wars and fightings taking place from West Africa to Pakistan, as abundantly documented in the crowd-sourced articles, the same mapping effort needs to be repeated on a larger scope (update 21 May 2015 – see draft map in Understanding the Islamic State system – structure and Wilayat, bottom of the post).
Undoubtedly, the various state instances, notably military and intelligence, involved within the coalition use such maps.
But then, would it not be time that governments (understood in the European sense of the word, as distinct from state), if they truly want to do much more than strikes, in a successful and meaningful way, including when trying to stem the flow of foreign fighters, as they most certainly know the situation on the ground, stop first the “communication” tack according to which everything must be positive and reassuring and nice, and only specific parts of the truth are told? True enough, their discourse could be part of a real need for secrecy and of counter-psyops operation, rather than part of PR and politician communication. Yet, in both cases, in the age of the internet, anyone can work out that such a message is just, at best, not exactly representative.
Systematically emphasising and hyping only what is positive is likely to backfire in many different ways, from loss of legitimacy to polarization to adverse cognitive impact on all actors, including analysts, who can always fall prey to the fear to tell the truth.
Even if we are not yet there (at least from the point of view of some in the coalition, as Syrians and Iraqis, or Lebanese, or Jordanians among so many others would probably say and feel in their everyday life otherwise), could we imagine Churchill making similar statements during the Blitz or when Singapore fell to Japan, which did not stop then a remarkable use of decoy and propaganda, true enough before the existence of the internet?
Alternatively, a better, but more pessimistic, reference might be the speech “Air Parity Lost” given by Churchill at the House of Commons on 2 May 1935 (everything being equal, as the problem here is not evidently loss of air power):
“Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong—these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.”
Meanwhile, check also a number of articles on Ukraine considering the tensions that just flared up again, with, as apparent major difference, compared with the pre-Minsk agreement period, an American and European political class that might be less inclined into following Ukrainian statements regarding alleged open Russian aggression in the Donbass, as peace is of primary import, on the contrary from many mainstream media. Tensions however remain.
Economy – An excellent article by Dr Odette Lienau from Cornell University on her latest book explaining why “It’s time we reconsider(ed) the principle that states must always repay their sovereign debt” (LSE Blog). It also points out the dangers for understanding to fail to pay attention to the meaning and construction of norms as well as to history.
Energy and environment security – Dr Keith Daum more particularly pointed out the need to monitor “how the appointment of Magnusdottir as Minister of the Environment of Iceland might influence the agreement Iceland signed with China last year to allow increased access to the Arctic. It is important to watch how this appointment may alter or clarify the current political pathway.”
He then outlined a number of articles addressing the problem of dissenting opinions on climate change and the need to consider them, beyond one’s initial position. “First, NOAA recently published information that 2014 was the warmest year on record. However, Dr. Roy Spencer had an alternative analysis and also deserves to be read, notably because he has some basis for that disagreement. Meanwhile, an article this week pointed out the potential biases from omissions of data, while another stressed how challenges, such as those related to the oceans can be overstated. For the ICCP, NOAA and other narratives to stay resilient, it is important to address dissension in the open, acknowledging what is useful and using data to show errors in analysis.”
Science – Some interesting conclusions regarding the ability “to predict the future” as identified by the still ongoing “geopolitical forecasting tournament” organised by the U.S. Intelligence are summarized in Quartz “Some people really are better at predicting the future. Here are the traits they have in common”: part gift, part work and proper methodology, as well as team work.
Tech & Weapons – Two articles stand out this week. First, one on “New method to generate arbitrary optical pulses” (Science Codex), which could have impact on laser-based weapons. Second, Google’s massive investment in SpaceX (NPR) not only enhances the odds of seeing an “Internet Access For All” but has also multiple potential impacts, from the spread of propaganda and mobilization to remain with a current topic, to the overall area of space security.
Ebola – A potentially unfavourable piece of information emerged this week, regarding the genome of the current Ebola strain. The virus mutated compared with the previous epidemic, which might question the usefulness of the various drugs being currently prepared. As a result, the uncertainty surrounding the epidemic and its potential futures increases. According to the WHO latest situation report, we now have a total of 21689 confirmed, probable, and suspected cases of EVD and 8626 deaths … reported up to the end of 18 January 2014.”
The Weekly is the scan of The Red (Team) Analysis Society and it focuses on national and international security issues. It was started as an experiment with Paper.li as a way to collect ideas, notably through Twitter. Its success and its usefulness led to its continuation.
The information collected (crowdsourced) does not mean endorsement but points to new, emerging, escalating or stabilizing problems and issues.
If you wish to consult the scan after the end of the week period, use the “archives” directly on The Weekly.
Featured image: “C-band Radar-dish Antenna”. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
The Islamic State Psyops – Worlds War
The world is increasingly racked, and with an ever wider geographical scope, by “Jihadis” attacks of various if not complex origin. To name only some of the most reported and latest cases, we faced attacks in Belgium, Canada, Australia, and lately France – with aftermath in Germany (11 January 2015, The Telegraph). In Lebanon we had an attack in Tripoli (10 January 2015, BBC News) and the north of the country seems to be plunging into war. In Pakistan we remember the 16 December attack on a Peshawar School (BBC News, 13 January 2015), while the overall situation is increasingly unsettled and a former Taliban group, Khorassan Shoura, renewed its allegiance to the Islamic State in January 2015 (The Long War Journal, 13 Jan 2015). In Nigeria, two …
The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly 187 – Freedom of Speech, the Other, and War
Each week our scan collects weak – and less weak – signals… We present below some of the most interesting or relevant features for each section. World (all matters related to war, international and national security) – In the aftermath of the Jihadi attacks in Paris during the second week of 2015, a crucial debate surrounding freedom of speech is emerging. It is not only a philosophical and intellectual debate. It mobilizes populations across the world and can divide populations within countries, as show the exchanges on the social networks on the topic. It is translated in diplomatic terms, as show the decision of the Kingdom of Morocco not to participate to the march in Paris on 11 January, the 14 January reactions in the Middle East …
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Oil Flood (2) – Oil and Politics in a (Real) Multipolar World
The world oil flood is quickly rising. As we have seen in “Oil Flood (1): The Kingdom is Back”, the decisions taken by OPEC members and Russia not to curb oil production, while Saudi Arabia is forcing prices down, are much more about power politics and strategies than about economics and the “invisible hand” of the logic of “supply and demand”. We shall now focus on what the evolution of the current oil market reveals about current and future geopolitics. Since the end of November, especially since the 27 November OPEC meeting, prices have kept falling down, while the main producers, chiefly among them Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, and the private U.S. companies, have all decided, for reasons of their own, to maintain …
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The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly 186 – The Attack on Charlie Hebdo and Denial of War
Each week our scan collects weak – and less weak – signals… We present below some of the most interesting or relevant features for each section. Update 9 January 2015: As the dual hostage crisis (the perpetrators of the 7 and 8 January attacks had fled and taken hostages) unfolded, in France, progressively, commentators and experts interviewed started stressing that we were in a case of war. General Tauzin, Special Forces, stated: “this looks like a campaign against France, it is only a beginning” (14:57 i Télé – interview). World (all matters related to war, international and national security) – The focus this week is on the deadly attack against Charlie Hebdo in Paris, as another attack took place the next day (8 January 2015) in the metro. …
