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The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly – 9 January 2014 – Contrasts

Editorial – Contrasts – The year starts with interesting contrasts. On the one hand we have more than worrying trends. The Syrian conflict continues spreading as, notably, Iraq seems to be falling back into war – as could be expected from the continuously rising numbers of attacks and death over 2013 (if you have not seen it yet RT has followed it through a grimly beautiful 2013 Iraq Year of Carnage and there are of course the UN data), as Lebanon knows (again) increasingly violent attacks, on the backdrop of a (related) transmutation at work in the Middle East. The tension between China and Japan does not ease, far from it, and could very well engulf South Korea. The situation in the Far East is dangerous, and increasingly so as weeks go by. Finally, there is also the return on the media agenda of Europe as elections approach when the economic and financial situation has not improved, at least from the point of view of citizens.

On the other hand we have a rising focus on capabilities, notably technological ones, with an emphasis on cyber-security, the internet of things, drones, etc. and (hopefully only apparently) a shift towards these issues (e.g. Pentagon Intel Shift Focuses on Cyber, S&T). Considering the unstable state of the world, we would also hope to see a renewed interest in hiring analysts, in setting up global strategic centers etc. The risk here could be (if further specific research confirmed it) that we are facing an either / or situation, with the emphasis put on capabilities implying a neglect of the actors’ intentions, of strategy and of attempting to understand and consider complex situations in all their dimensions. Ideally dealing with one type of issues should not mean that the others are forgotten.

Also to note, the different ways Lloyd’s and Munich-Re deal with the now known figures resulting from the 2013 natural catastrophes. The latter especially underlines the good news (a good year , especially for the U.S., compared with previous years as the overall cost is much lower). The former, although noting similar data, looks “behind the figures”, at specific events and anomalies and finds that “the catalogue of events contained some important lessons for them [the insurers].”

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Arctic Warming and Eurasian Grand Strategies

In May 2013, several Asian countries obtained the status of “permanent observer” at the Arctic Council, the body that gathers the eight countries bordering the Arctic. These new “observers” are China, India, South Korea, Singapore, and Japan (Russia Today, Northern exposure, May 15, 2013). This rush of Asian (some of them tropical and equatorial) countries to the Arctic is one of the most important dimensions of the current global race to the Arctic region (see Valantin, “Arctic, the New great game”), triggered by the combination of the rapid warming of the North and the global competition for natural resources (Klare, The Race for what’s left, 2013). The new grand strategies ruling over this race to the Arctic, which combine national …

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The Arctic Power Race: the New Great Game

This post opens a new series dealing with the Arctic, its environmental change and its evolving geopolitics and security. The Arctic death spiral, or “Melting is coming” Thanks to the widespread rapid melting of Arctic sea ice during the 2013 summer season, a Chinese freighter crossed the famous Northwest passage, shortening its journey from Dalian, China, to Rotterdam, by more than two weeks in August 2013. Between 22 and 26 September, the Nordic Orion, a bulk freighter going from Vancouver, Pacific Canada, to Finland, used the same passageway. It was transporting coal. The opening of this mythical passageway in summer over the last few years is the result of the way global warming is massively impacting the whole Arctic region. …

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The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly – 19 December 2013 – Pivot, center and epicenter

Editorial – Pivot, center and epicenter – First of all, let me wish you all a Merry Christmas, and send this wish especially to those who are prey to war and disaster, whatever their faith. This week, the epicenter or the pivot for the turmoil of change seems very much to be located around the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean Sea (see notably the articles on Turkey, Iran, Syria – that may not be that close to peace – Saudi Arabia, Ukraine), besides, in a so far more subdued way, North East Asia… and the Arctic, again (forthcoming Red (Team) Analysis series by Dr Valantin). Interestingly, if we make the experiment to see, with Google Earth, those three regions, Russia must be placed at the center. This is certainly nothing new – although the awareness of it through the easy use of a tool such as Google map may be – but it is always useful to remember fundamental geographical facts. In the light of the Obama administration’s strategic “pivot” to Asia, this underlines the multi-dimensional power the U.S. needs and will need to deploy for its strategy, which, since the end of the nineteenth century, it has done rather successfully (the judgement on success concerns the capacity to be an “Asian power”).

What has changed and will remain so in the future is the necessity to consider also extreme environments (thus the Arctic, but also space and the deep-sea) notably because of a tense resources situation and climate change with its multi-dimensional dire impacts, as underlined by the Guardian article “Whole World at Risk” grounded in the “series of papers published by the Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)”. How will those fundamentally changed conditions alter interests and capacity to project power?

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How to Analyze Future Security Threats (3): Scenarios as an Organic Living System

This article is the third of a series looking for a methodology that would fulfill the challenging criteria demanded by our time. We shall now focus on scenarios, which are a way to simulate how the actors we defined and described during the previous step interact, not only among themselves but also with their environment, up until the end of the chosen timeframe. Using the precedent post’s game of chess analogy, with scenarios we imagine the various ways the game may “end”.Towards an Operational Methodology to Analyse Future Security Threats and Political Risk (1)Methodology to Analyse Future Security Threats (2): a Game of ChessHow to Analyse Future Security Threats (3): Scenarios as an Organic Living SystemHow to Analyse Future Security Threats (4): Scenarios and …

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The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly – 12 December 2013 – Russia, the Arctic and … Syrian uncertainties

Editorial – Russia, the Arctic and … Syrian uncertainties – If you were looking for a new tense area to monitor, here it is: the Arctic. We had known it was coming for a few years, but now it is definitely on the agenda, besides, mainly, the Middle East, North East Asia and a struggle for spheres of influence at the Eastern margin of Europe a.k.a. the Western margin of the Russian world. The Arctic positioning is also one more indication of Russia’s reasserted place as a full global player, notably present wherever uncertainties and changes are at work, as also underlined in the case of East Asia by the interesting Stratfor video on Russia’s East Asian Pivot, posted by @Kostian_V.

As far as uncertainties are concerned, the Syrian theater of war shows once more the difficulty of understanding what is happening in periods of change and turmoil, which are so well exemplified by war, as underlined by those two articles, Syria: FSA, Islamic Front face off (posted by @joshua_landis) and Syria Spotlight: The Real Story Behind US Cut-Off of Non-Lethal Aid to Insurgents? – EA WorldView, as well as by the Syrian National Coalition declarations. The related challenges in terms of decisions and policy-making only add to the general complexity… and fuel changes.

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The Persian Gulf, between Power and Collapse

A tale of two cities: Warsaw, TeheranAt the international United Nations conference on climate change in Warsaw, Poland, started on the 12th of November, the Philippine diplomat begged for the negotiators to find an international binding accord on climate, one day after a monster storm left a trail of mass destruction in his country. At the end of tense negotiations, it was established that each country should define national contributions for this global effort, which will be discussed during further negotiations.At the very same time, in Geneva, a historic deal was struck between Iran, the five permanent members of the UN security council and Germany, about Iran nuclear program: Teheran promised to suspend it, in exchange of a progressive lifting …

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The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly No129, 5 December 2013

Editorial – A window of opportunity to regain some legitimacy? What do Hansen’s new study on the inanity of the current goals of the international community to mitigate climate change and the Council of Europe report regarding the terrible impact of austerity measures on European citizens have in common? The answer is legitimacy, or rather illegitimacy and is emphasized by Hansen: “We started this paper to provide a basis for legal actions against governments in not doing their jobs in protecting the rights of young people and future generations,” he said.” Governments and state or quasi-state administrations have lost a large part of their legitimacy, and by the actions and decisions that led to this dire situation have started a worrying vicious spiral: lack of legitimacy means that it is increasingly difficult to govern and thus to be efficient in ensuring the security of citizens, which in turns leads to even less legitimacy. If this spiral is not stopped at some point, then even Hansen’s goal could “relatively quickly” become obsolete: to take a legal action against a government demands to use the judicial system, which is also part of the system that is being increasingly delegitimized. More constructively, Hansen’s threat and the Council of Europe’s report, by openly, clearly and loudly saying what so many citizens think also open a window of opportunity for governments and states to start working towards reconstructing the legitimacy they have lost, which will also means confronting divergent interests… a difficult and challenging but also potentially mobilizing task.

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Methodology to Analyze Future Security Threats (2): a Game of Chess

This article is the second of a series looking for a methodology that would fulfill the challenging criteria demanded by our time. Previously, we saw that a single “story” initially told at a general level, the political dynamics that are at the core of a polity, could be used to build the very specific model needed to answer a strategic foresight and warning (national security) question or a political risk interrogation. Very practically, how shall we do that? How are generic dynamics going to help us with our task? How can we proceed? This is what we shall see now. Related Towards an Operational Methodology to Analyze Future Security Threats and Political Risk (1) Methodology to Analyze Future Security Threats (2): a …

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The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly No128, 28 November 2013

Editorial – Si vis pacem para bellum (If you want peace prepare for war) and biases – The continuous escalation in East Asia is worrying to say the least. We have increasingly stronger signals pointing towards the possibility of war, including considering Japan’s challenging domestic situation. Windows of opportunities to de-escalate are most likely to open too in the near future and should be actively monitored and used. Another factor may make the situation all the more dangerous: could it possible that, actually, only very few people, deep down, truly believe in the possibility of a major war, as a reader, Alexandros Liakopoulos of BrightSideVeritas, pointed out in a discussion? Peace is one of the crucial norms underlying the current international order. War can be imagined as happening only to a few countries in unstable regions, always relatively far away from home, with indeed destabilizing impacts but controllable ones. At worse, as underlined in the NIC Global Trends 2030, war can be thought as spilling over to regions, but, again, in a contained way. What if this was not the case? What if war was as uncontrollable as ever? What if major wars were still possible? Are the moves of the main actors of the East China Sea drama done while considering the others can really go to war or while estimating, on the contrary, they would never go that far, whatever the rhetoric used? Those are crucial questions analysts and policy-makers need to ask themselves.
There is much more in this edition from the hope generated by space resources, to some very interesting articles that should contribute to improve our understanding of political phenomena to – sobering – news putting the announce of Geneva II in perspective (Syria), and more.

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