Security and Sustainability: the Future of Egypt?

The new constitution of the Arab Republic of Egypt, approved in January 2014, states, in four articles, the rights and duties of the state and of the citizens about the Suez Canal, the environment and natural resources, and the Nile. These articles have a political and strategic meaning in the current domestic security situation, dominated by rising tensions between the military, the Muslim Brotherhood, and a catastrophic economic situation, heightened by the environmental and international context of Egypt and of the Nile riparian countries. To understand the political and strategic situation of Egypt, today and during the twenty years to come we must consider the context of its current national sustainability crisis (Valantin, Egypt, climate change and the long resource …

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Egypt, Climate Change and the Long Resource Civil Warfare

Since the “Arab spring” reached Egypt in January 2011, the political situation has evolved quite quickly (Georges Corm, Le Proche-Orient éclaté, 2012). Many observers analyse the Egyptian political landscape as a battlefield between the Army, the Muslim Brotherhood, and a growing number of people wanting to experience democracy, while the whole situation is being put under pressure by a very degraded economic situation (Seumas Milne, The Revenge of History, 2013). Moreover, those different actors are participating in the political tensions between Arab countries, especially Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and between these countries and the U.S. (Corm, ibid). Egypt has tremendous political importance in the Middle East, in Africa, and at the international and global level. Since the antiquity, this very singular …

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Hyper Siege: Climate Change versus U.S. National Security

In a passage of the “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”, T.E. Lawrence, a.k.a. “Lawrence of Arabia”, recalls that, as he waged a guerrilla war in the Arabian Desert, he was looking for a way to besiege an Ottoman garrison. He then had a kind of military epiphany, understanding that he did not need to do that, because the garrison was already besieged … by the desert. All he had to do was to stay mobile. However, a siege can be a very strong position for the defendant, which, often, can be defeated only from inside, as a long military history shows since the Trojan War. One can wonder if, nowadays, the U.S. national defence and security apparatus is not in the same …

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Climate Blowback and US National Security

The recently released 2014 Quadrennial Defence Review (QDR) establishes that “The impacts of climate change may increase the frequency, scale, and complexity of future missions, including defence support to civil authorities, while at the same time undermining the capacity of our domestic installations to support training activities. Our actions to increase energy and water security, including investments in energy efficiency, new technologies, and renewable energy sources, will increase the resiliency of our installations and help mitigate these effects.” This important statement is followed by a thorough assessment of how climate change may become a “threat multiplier” through the combination of multiple stressors such as food insecurity, water shortages, rapid and global urbanization, and coastal flooding. The Review furthermore states: “Climate change …

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Climate Change and U.S. National Security: a Geoeconomic Approach

In May 2013 and February 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry defined climate change as a global strategic threat. In May 2013, he declared: “… A principal challenge to all of us of life and death proportions is the challenge of climate change… So it’s not just an environmental issue and it’s not just an economic issue. It is a security issue, a fundamental security issue that affects life as we know it on the planet itself, and it demands urgent attention from all of us” (John Kerry, Remarks with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeld, May 14 2013). In February 2014, on a diplomatic tour in Jakarta, he said: “When I think about the array of global climate – of …

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Afghanistan at a New Crossroad: Resource Curse or Asian integration?

The first sentence of the 2006 US Quadrennial Defence Review is “The United States is a nation engaged in what will be a long war”. Any civilian, military or factious leader in Afghanistan, could have written almost exactly the same after thirty-five years of war. And this war still goes on, but it now faces a strange strategic, ecological and economic transition, that could be dominated by a new “Afghan resource and climate curse”. Failed state-building, climate and war From 1969 to 1972, Afghanistan went through a terrible drought and a harsh winter. A terrible famine followed, which ravaged the populations of central Afghanistan. The titanic scale of incompetence, mismanagement and corruption of the Kabul government aggravated it, and maybe …

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Pakistan and the “Long Storm”

Events show that Pakistan is on the most advanced front lines of climate change. How thus should we re-read the already complex and interacting geopolitical, geostrategic and domestic situations of Pakistan and what does that mean strategically for the region and the world?

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The Warming Arctic, a Hyper Strategic Crisis

Adapting a famous battle between the Teutonic knights and the Russian army during the thirteenth century in his 1938 movie, “Alexandre Nevski”, Sergei Eisenstein directs one of the most famous war scene in the movie’s history: he shows the terrible armoured Teutonic Knights charging the Russian ragtag army over a frozen lake. However, such is the weight of the Knights’ armours, that, after some fights,  the ice of Lake Peipous breaks up and all the Knights drown, giving the victory to the Russians. This could be a metaphor for what might happen in the Arctic during the decades to come, with an important nuance: there might be no winner in the end. Because of climate change, the Arctic is warming …

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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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