(Art direction: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli, Photo: durik1980, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons, colorised and cropped by RTAS) Since October 2022, the Russian military has regularly launched waves of missiles and drones strikes on the Ukrainian energy infrastructures. (Greg Myre, “Russia strikes, Ukraine repairs, in a battle to survive the winter”, NPR, 25 November 2022). As a …
Continue reading “War in Ukraine, Europe, and the Weaponization of Winter – Anthropocene Wars (7)”
(Art direction Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli using a photograph created by Pete Linforth) Over the last decades, strategic surprises have accumulated and accelerated rather than receded. They continue to do so. Most actors, from governments and international organisations to businesses through citizens seem to be constantly and increasingly surprised by events they fail to anticipate, and thus for which …
Continue reading “Multiplicating Crises: Strategic Surprises or Strategic Shocks?”
This article seeks to assess the future of the Yellow Vest protest movement and of the situation in France. It looks at the way the actions of political authorities can stabilise a protest movement. Then it applies this understanding to the French movement. Indeed, if protests in France continue, Saturday 26 January 2019 would have …
Continue reading “Stabilising Or Escalating the French Yellow Vest Movement?”
This article is the second of our series focusing on scenarios depicting the range of spillover that could stem from the Libyan war. In our previous article, we detailed two scenarios of spillover that initiate a renewed war encompassing more than just Libya. We discussed a case of spillover in one direction – where Europe is drawn into this renewed war, as well as spillover in two directions, where Algeria and Niger are also drawn into the war. In this article, we shall conclude the spillover scenarios with a contagion taking place in all directions (west towards Algeria, south towards Niger, east towards Egypt, and north towards Europe). It is important to note our choices for spillover sub-scenarios. There are …
Each week our scan collects weak – and less weak – signals… Read the 12 March scan → Editor’s note: Although the piece below focuses on climate change, and worrying development accumulating over the past weeks, it is applicable to all sciences and more broadly to all analyses. It notably links perfectly well with the developing controversy and possibly wedge taking place between Germany on the one hand (and most probably a host of European countries), and, on the other, anti-Russian hawks notably in NATO and the U.S., regarding information on the civil war in Ukraine, and Russian military involvement there. This piece is also crucial in terms of SF&W monitoring and scanning. Meanwhile, it underlines how crucial it is to stretch thinking and not becoming so focused …
Each week our scan collects weak – and less weak – signals… We present below some of the most interesting or relevant features for each section. Read the 12 February scan → World (all matters related to war, international and national security) – In terms of major issues, increasingly, one week looks very much like the next, as matters get entrenched. However, within each issue, problems emerge, evolve and sometimes coalesce. Joseph Nye, in his small but excellent book Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History, wrote in a part aptly named The Funnel of Choices: “Events close in over time, degrees of freedom are lost and the probability of war increases. But the funnel of choices available to leaders might open up again, and degrees of freedom could …
Continue reading “The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly 191 – Minsk and the Probability 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. 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 …
Each week our scan collects weak – and less weak – signals… We present below the most interesting or relevant features for each section. World (all matters related to war, international and national security) – This week, we can point out, besides many other signals and articles, a must read article on “Putin’s Great Gamble” by Pr Nikolas K. Gvosdev, …
Continue reading “The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly 176 – Europe Unexpected Power Waiting to be Used”
Each week our scan collects weak – and less weak – signals… Read the 18 September scan → 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 …
Continue reading “The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly 170 – China Sees Possibility for World War 3”
Since March 2014, the Russian “dispatch of troops to Crimea”, and the contested referendum in Crimea followed by its incorporation into the Russian Federation, “The West”* rhetoric is that Russia is isolated, and that the U.S. and its allies will work to further isolate it (e.g. Zeke J Miller, “Obama: U.S. Working To ‘Isolate Russia’“, Time, 3 March 2014). As the war in Eastern Ukraine seems to be perceived mainly through “Crimean lenses”, this Western policy, added to rounds of sanctions, aim at seeing an increasingly isolated Russian Federation bend to a “Western” vision of what the international order should be. The soon ex-General Secretary of Nato Rasmussen’s statement on Estonian TV according to which “Russia is globally isolated due to its actions in Ukraine” is only one example of similar comments made …
