The articles in this section focus directly on real world issues with geopolitical stakes.
Here you will find in-depth analyses.They are sorted out by issues presented below. You can also access our scans, i.e. information collected to identify signals, presented without analysis.
Then, we explain how we select issues and finally you can access the latest articles published.
French translations: Only recent articles are human translations. We gradually review the automatic translation (DeepL) of the remaining 600 plus articles…
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Geopolitics by Issues
Access the articles in this section by chapters.
Our new initiative Climate Change, Planetary Boundaries and Geopolitical Stakes – incl. Water security, Energy security and Extreme environments (Arctic, Antarctica, Space, Deep Sea, etc.) besides Environmental Geostrategy
Pandemics – incl. the COVID-19 Pandemic
War – incl. Ukraine, The Islamic State, Syria, Libya
Photos and Art Design by Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli (images 1,3,6), Pixabay (2,5), various public domain (4).
Monitoring and Scanning
Our scanning and monitoring is grounded in years of practice and in-depth knowledge and experience of research for political and geopolitical issues.
The Sigils are a series of daily, raw (non edited) scans. Each focuses on a specific issue. They are provided through the platform Paper.Li.
The Red Team Analysis Weekly scans the horizon every week for weak – and less weak – signals regarding all political and geopolitical risks and uncertainties, as well as national and global changes and instability, using crowdsourcing.
Horizon Scanning Board
(demonstration sample only) – The system provides selected open source intelligence – OSINT – signals that are particularly interesting, among all the signals identified. The collection of signals provided here are a demonstration sample only.
Photos from ESO Photo Ambassadors
How we select geopolitical issues
In this section, we address the major issues our contemporary world faces. These issues may obviously be part of geopolitics, for example the crisis and conflict in Ukraine or the Islamic State and terrorism. They may also surprise you because they are not usually think about as related to geopolitics, as with the COVID-19 pandemic.
What determines if an issue must be put under watch and analysed is the impact it has on the security of polities and societies, hence the larger field of “international security”, which is more adequate as a category than geopolitics.
The issues we address may be mainstream and correspond to acute crises at one stage, or, on the contrary ignored by the media and larger public.
It is absolutely crucial to consider the issues belonging to the second category. Indeed the deeper processes run in the background, often below collective perception level, but fundamentally influence and constrain our choices. They must thus be known and explored. Furthermore, they will often lead to apparently sudden crises. If we make an analogy with volcanoes, you can imagine these deeper dynamics and issues as the earth mantle and plates, slowly changing and reorganising themselves, while this very reorganisation leads to pressure and volcanic eruption. A perfect example for this type of issues is climate change and all environmental problems.
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Our latest articles
- An Excluded Russia? Not for Asia – Anthropocene Wars 6
(Art direction: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli) From 1 September to 16 September 22, Vladimir Putin, President of the Federation of Russia, presided the Russian military exercises Vostok 2022. Besides the Russian military, the exercise gathered troops from 14 countries, including India and China (Arang Shidore, “Vostok military exercises indicate that Russia is far from isolated”, Responsible Statecraft, …Continue reading “An Excluded Russia? Not for Asia – Anthropocene Wars 6”
- An Alternative Red Scenario for the war between Ukraine and Russia
(Art direction: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli) The September 2022 Ukrainian counter-offensive against Russia is hailed as very successful. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked the “true heroes” who allowed for a “very rapid liberation” of 8000 sq km by 14 September 22 “in the east, notably in the Kharkiv Oblast, and the south, notably in the Kherson oblast”, …Continue reading “An Alternative Red Scenario for the war between Ukraine and Russia”
- The War between China and the U.S. – The Normative Dimension
(Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli) The whole world is caught in a battle of giants with the U.S. on the one hand and China on the other. This confrontation takes place at different levels and through all forms and dimensions of power. The escalation towards war is at work. War is not inevitable, it is however …Continue reading “The War between China and the U.S. – The Normative Dimension”
- The American National Interest
(Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli Do the United States still consider France to be their ally? We have to ponder this question because of the submarine contract signed between France and Australia, and broken in September 2021, to the benefit of the U.S.. If a country takes 35 billion euros from you, possibly revalued to 55 … - Food Security: China-Russia and Ukraine – Anthropocene Wars (4)
The War in Ukraine and the Great Amplification Since the start of the Russian offensive on 24 February 2022, the raging war has triggered an amplification of the tension on global food and energy prices. The price trends for oil, gas, coal and agricultural products were already on the rise because of the Western “post” …Continue reading “Food Security: China-Russia and Ukraine – Anthropocene Wars (4)”
- Information Warfare and the War in Ukraine
(Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli on a photo by Francesco Ungaro) The war(*) in Ukraine is hastening changes in international politics in many different ways. The possibility to see the conflict morphing into World War III acts as a convincing spur for continuing efforts at understanding and adapting. Concerned and informed actors are thus trying to …Continue reading “Information Warfare and the War in Ukraine”
- War in Ukraine, Megadrought and the Coming Global Food Crisis – Anthropocene Wars (3)
The War in Ukraine as a Perfect Storm The war in Ukraine triggers a global whirlwind involving energy and food crisis. The latter is quite singular, because it combines the consequences of the war on the global agricultural system with massive extreme weather events, such as the U.S. midwestern megadrought. War as global disruption Indeed, … - Advanced Training in Early Warning Systems & Indicators – ESFSI in Tunisia
(Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli) At the end of March 2022, the Ecole Supérieure des Forces de Sécurité Intérieure (ESFSI) of the Home Ministry of Tunisia organised its fourth intensive training on early warning systems & indicators. It is part of its programme on the “management of social conflict.” This time, we set up with the management …Continue reading “Advanced Training in Early Warning Systems & Indicators – ESFSI in Tunisia”
- Nuclear Battlefields in Ukraine – Anthropocene Wars (2)
A nuclear theatre of operations (Art Direction: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli Image: Recognize Productions via Pexels). On 24 February 2022, at the very start of Russian offensive against Ukraine, after a two days battle, the Russian forces took over the Chernobyl power plant, where the historic nuclear accident occurred in 1986 (Mary Kekatos, “Seizure of Chernobyl plant …Continue reading “Nuclear Battlefields in Ukraine – Anthropocene Wars (2)”
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