At War against the Islamic State – A Global Theatre of War

Even though the capabilities of the Islamic State have now, in November 2017, changed and been seriously reduced , the understanding and fundamental underlying dynamics at work are still valid and must be considered. Lately, the world has been shaken by large attacks carried out by the Islamic State. On 31 October 2015, Islamic State’s fighters destroyed a Russian plane over the Sinai: “According to our experts, on board an aircraft in flight, an improvised bomb exploded capacity of up to 1 kg of TNT, resulting in an explosion of the aircraft in the air, which explains the spread parts of the fuselage of the aircraft at a distance. We can definitely say that this is a terrorist act” stated officially Alexander Bortnikov, director of Russia’s …

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The Islamic State Recruitment Psyops – From the Balkans to France

Since we published our sub-series on the Islamic State psyops products and foreign fighters (The Foreign Fighters’ Threat; Attracting Foreign Fighters (1), 23 March 2015, and Foreign Fighters’ Complexes (2) 30 March 2015), new psyops products related to this theme have been released. Below is an update considering the new products, with implications in terms of geographical expansion and deepening of message for selected targeted audience. The list of the videos is given at the bottom of the post. It is all the more important to consider these new products and impacts that some complacency of a sort appears to be developing in North America – and potentially Europe? – regarding the Islamic State: one could, somehow, accommodate a potentially winning Islamic State (e.g. Ronald Tiersky, “ISIS Could …

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The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly 192 – Denying the Islamism of the Islamic State

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 19 February scan →  World (all matters related to war, international and national security) – The focus this week stems from the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism currently held in Washington D.C. (see White House Fact sheet). First, in a very “Washingtonian” way, the summit leads to the publication of a host of reports and articles, as think tanks, newspapers, researchers, experts and pundits try to have their voices heard by policy-makers, some of them having been crowd-sourced here and worth checking and reading. Second, the summit forces the various actors to face an issue that …

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The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly 159 – An Accelerating U.S. Decline?

Editorial – Horizon scanning for national and international security – What appears as most amazing this week is a perception of an accelerating American decline on the world stage. A few months ago, we warned that changes related to the dollar supremacy were in the making, even if they would, most probably, need a relatively long time before …

The Red (Team) Analysis Weekly – 13 February 2014 – Storms and floods, harbinger of multifaceted changes

Editorial – Storms and floods, harbinger of multifaceted changes: While the US knows a very cold winter, Western Europe is hit by the ninth storm since 17 December 2013, each bringing destruction and floods in its wake. This shows first, in a somehow novel way, that so-called “rich and developed”countries can be relentlessly hit by what is most probably a consequence of climate change. Here we are faced with storms and related floods, but other types of extreme weather events could also occur. Second, these storms start giving us an idea of how this vulnerability will most probably have multifaceted and mammoth impacts. Actually, this issue is far from being completely new. We have already underlined the high likelihood to see …

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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 …

The Red (team) Analysis Weekly No119, 26 September 2013

Horizon Scanning for National Security – Batman’s Gotham City with an international twist? The world is being profoundly reshaped: China’s global land grab, the battle for the Arctic and the importance of extreme environments for resources, a fast changing unsettled Middle-East, the importance of Central Asia, the return of a pre-World War I type of capitalist world, …

The Red (team) Analysis Weekly No104, 13 June 2013

In the midst of turmoil – Once you get beyond the tsunami of articles regarding the NSA, we continue seeing the same pattern of deep and painful changes emerging as observed over the last months. Eurozone countries are not only in crisis, but, most probably, living through a deep shift. For now, Greece leads the …

Occupy, Los Indignados: towards radicalization?

The polarisation that can be observed in recent elections in 2012, notably in Greece and in France for the first round of the Presidential elections, appears to also take place within some of the current Opposition Movements existing outside the classical party system. Those movements, Occupy and Democracia Real Ya! – also known as Los …

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