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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The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly 128 1

Climate of Change on the Red Sea

Since the “Arab spring” in 2011, one has seen a series of old and entrenched dictatorships topple (Georges Corm, Le Proche-Orient éclaté, 2012), from Tunisia to Yemen, or, as in Syria, being replaced by a monstrous civil war. However, the very complex political forces thus unleashed, are not only rooted in the changing social, political and religious Middle-East context. New socio-environmental dynamics have also appeared, which reveal the dire vulnerability of some of these societies, about to lose the very resources upon which they depend. So, they struggle to find new resources, or new ways and means, in a very tense strategic context. These new trends are particularly impressive around the Red Sea, where Middle-East power relations are deeply transformed by …

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The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly No127, 21 November 2013

Editorial – This week, three main themes stand out. They are unsurprising as we have been following them for a while, yet they show how difficult it may be to warn about an issue, i.e. to convince a client or an audience that a signal is neither noise nor anymore weak but strong (e.g. changes in the Middle-East for the U.S.), that warning may not be properly heard for self-interested reasons, but then with potentially more serious consequences (the crisis and legitimacy), and how (relatively) new signals may start emerging from older ones (e.g. Climate change, science and religion).
First of all, there is the Middle-East and the North-African region, which is definitely being redrawn, with an increasingly denounced blindness by the U.S. – which, of course, participates actively in the strategic evolution. I particularly recommend “Obama’s Middle East Debacle” by Michael Doran (Brookings). The uncertainties in Egypt and the increasingly worrying situation in Libya only add to the generalizing changes.
Then, we have the overall loss of legitimacy of the political elite and of governments that goes with the political aftermath of the financial crisis and the ongoing changes that were decided to answer it… despite ongoing beliefs that the crisis is over. This may well be the case, financially, both for a narrowing global class of happy few and for the enlarged, no less global, number of poor, as the two groups are now experiencing new opposite continuous realities. Yet, if the price to pay to obtain this new order was a loss of legitimacy, a new crisis, of a different kind, may well be looming, and the order may not last long.
Finally, there is climate change, extreme weather events, natural catastrophes and their multi-dimensional impacts, including – and this is where this week articles are so interesting – on the values and norms that are fundamentally legitimizing modernity, thus our political systems. The revival of religion versus, or maybe alongside, science is an important trend that should be integrated in our foresight and warning efforts, as a crucial factor.
Interestingly too, all of those themes interact and contribute to create the new strategic landscape in the making.

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Red (Team) Analysis, horizon scanning, strategic warning, risk

Towards an Operational Methodology to Analyze Future Security Threats and Political Risk (1)

In this day and age of speed, not to say haste, unequally shared resources and wish to relatively easily obtain answers to complex questions, we are faced in strategic foresight and warning analysis (or political risk analysis) with a very serious challenge. We must choose a methodology that:

  • allows for a “good enough” analysis (Fein, 1994), i.e. an analysis that will allow for proper decisions to be taken;
  • can be used relatively quickly (the one minute crystal ball prediction will however remain impossible);
  • can be used relatively easily, without scaring both analysts and officers;
  • can be used, for most actors, relatively cheaply;
  • keep the analyst in control (most of the time opaque software and tools are regarded with suspicion);
  • allows for team and collective efforts;
  • transmits a minimum of knowledge in political science and international relations, as sometimes – or often – people analyzing political and international issues and related risks come from diverse backgrounds.

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The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly No126, 14 November 2013

Editorial – Below the horizon? The current tragedy of The Philippines, hit by the typhoon Haiyan “is the very model of a modern environmental catastrophe”, as underlined by Reuters’ blogger Philip Simon in his “Cat bonds wouldn’t have helped the Philippines.” This is certainly not below the horizon; it seems obvious, and is displayed on every news channel. However, and this may be below the horizon for many citizens, as Simon also points out “Haiyan is not a particularly devastating financial catastrophe.” Simon goes on showing that, well, besides being a human tragedy (however with a probably smaller death toll than envisioned), this is not so serious financially. According to him, most actors are not that worried and, “after all, all the money coming in to the country to help rebuild the devastated areas will end up making a positive contribution to the country’s GDP.”

This is not the first time I have heard this type of arguments, which can be caricatured as follows: extreme weather events, and in general all impacts of climate change are, at the end of the day, rather welcome news because they will generate economic activity and growth. Never mind the net loss of wealth, nor the destruction of citizens’ and individuals’ lives, what matters is that financial loss is not that important and that a very rapid macroeconomic calculation seems to says that new activity will be generated. We may have to look no further than this very reassuring ideas to understand why nothing is decided nor done regarding climate change and its impact.

What may be buried even deeper below the horizon, is that in terms of political dynamics, the story may be more complex and quite different. First, rulers (political authorities) are rulers because they have the duty to ensure the security of their citizens. True enough they may not do it, but then they are predatory authorities and one day or another they will have to face protests and revolutions. Second, the very real consequences of extreme weather events in terms of net destruction of wealth, besides the very real impact of climate change on the environment – you know, this “setting” into which we live and that is more or less conducive to life and survival – do exist and change how impacted communities and countries live and relate to each other. The evolution in terms of international relations goes and will go much beyond the diplomacy of emergency and influence. It will be declined in geopolitical and strategic terms, and it would be high time we consider it… as a pendant to our collective decision to consider climate change and its impact only from the point of view of growth and financial losses.

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horizon scanning, weak signal, strategic warning, national security, political risk

Surviving the Gulf of Aden: a New Strategic Paradigm for the Future of the Region

On 15th September 2013, saboteurs blew up the pipeline linking Yemeni oil fields in the North to the Hodeidah export terminal, on the Red Sea coast. It was the third time in two months. In the meantime, the Yemeni political life was also marked by a deluge of US drone strikes against militants of “Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula” (AQAP).  On 18th October, a militia of armed and well-organised Islamist militants attacked a Yemeni military base in the Southeast, preceded by a car bomb suicide attack, which killed five soldiers. The two following weeks saw endless attacks and manifestations, against the government as well as sectarian violence, leaving dozens dead. In the meantime, on the other side of the Gulf of …

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Event EEAS (EU): High Level Conference on Managing Complex International Crisis

EEAS (EU) Event: High Level Conference on Managing Complex International Crisis

To inform those of you who would be interested in attending (registration needed) to this very interesting forthcoming high level conference, to which we participate by moderating (and contributing to the organization of) a session. Click on image to register (closing 15 November 2013).

The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly No125, 7 November 2013

The Million Mask March organized by Anonymous on 5 November as a day of global protest received little attention in the media and mobilized, according to photos, less than what could be seen previously with Occupy. However, it can nevertheless be taken as an indication of a generalized discontent, even if it is neither mobilized nor really fully expressed, as well as a weak signal of a rising crisis of legitimacy. People are not immune to the wavering and doubts displayed by their governments and administrations. If legitimacy were starting to be seriously questioned, then those governments could discover that policies would become very difficult to implement indeed, which may be critically lethal considering the impact, present and future, of environmental changes. It is no less dangerous when being faced with countries that do not have to deal with similar problems, that are not beset with public deficit and austerity and that know how to dare taking strategic advantage of changes, while making sure it is known and publicized. Worse still, in turn, unfavorable international exchanges  – more bluntly, signals indicating a weak or potentially weaker influence – also further impact negatively domestic legitimacy. Could it be that we are still living in the midst of a crisis, actually a very deep one?

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The Red Team Analysis Society, Startegic Warning, anticipatory intelligence, horizon scanning, weak signal

Facing the Fog of War in Syria: The Tragedy of Kurdistan

This post is an update for the State of Play: The Kurds in the Syrian civil war. It can be read independently, but readers will be able to refer to the initial post for background.A general call to arms to fight Jihadis– Since first clashes erupted on 12 July 2013, intensifying on 16 July, notably over and in the city of Ras al-Ain, the YPG (The People’s Defence Units – see updated mapping of actors below) has been fighting Jahbat-al Nosra (JAN) and the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS or ISIL) (van Wilgenburg, Al-Monitor, July 16 2013). At the end of July, fighting was raging in the area of the oil fields of Rmeilan “around the main production …

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