On May 16, wheat prices reached a new high, as India banned exports amid a disastrous heat wave.
India, the second largest producer of wheat worldwide, conveyed growing concerns about the status of its own food supply amid skyrocketing prices and decreased harvests.
Late last week, Finland’s prime minister and president jointly announced Helsinki’s intention to move ahead with its application for NATO, a move that, if completed, would be a significant boon for the transatlantic alliance.
China has been unabashed about making its intentions known. Already in 1999, two colonels in China’s People’s Liberation Army, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiansui, wrote, “Unrestricted Warfare: China’s Master Plan to Destroy America.” In it, the authors “suggest the significance of alternatives to direct military confrontation, including international policy, economic warfare, attacks on digital infrastructure and networks, and terrorism. Even a relatively insignificant state can incapacitate a far more powerful enemy by applying pressure to their economic and political systems.” Ideally, “one might not even know that one is the target.”
Earlier this month, Journalists Without Borders’ annual World Press Freedom Index placed Greece last among European Union countries for press freedom, citing a number of challenges faced by journalists in the country. The index suggests that Greece is a country in which democratic norms are in serious crisis.
Peace and conflict need to be considered in the climate change agenda.
The Paris Agreement was nothing less than a landmark agreement. Legally binding, adopted by 196 parties to the convention, it has inspired hope and ambition to get to net-zero emissions and limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The Paris Agreement does not, however, mention conflict or fragility, neither peace nor security, even once – neither did the Kyoto Protocol before it, nor does the Sendai Framework directly address any of these issues either.
While Defence Intelligence’s daily briefings have garnered praise, the emphasis has been on publicity over analytical quality.
In the world of secret intelligence, at least in the UK, such is the mystique surrounding the various agencies that a rare public speech by ‘C’ or the head of GCHQ is treated as a ‘must watch’ event and the words of the intelligence chiefs are assumed to hold great significance. Traditionally, intelligence released into the public domain has tended to be infrequent, indirectly attributed or deliberately obscured.
Russia’s failures are a result of outdated Soviet attitudes and ideas that cannot keep up with the evolving intelligence environment.
The Russian offensive against Ukraine has been dogged by a cascade of intelligence failures at every level of command. This has ranged from completely failing to assess the likelihood and shape of a unified Western response and Ukraine’s determined resistance, to inadequate preparations for Ukraine’s ‘mud season’ and a bewildering lack of any effective operational security (OPSEC) measures. The irony of this, of course, is that Vladimir Putin’s ruling coterie is numerically and functionally dominated by former intelligence officers. Attempts to explain this paradox have tended to rely on conventional wisdoms of why authoritarian regimes are often bad at strategic intelligence. Such governments, the orthodoxy runs, may invest heavily in covert information collection, but they are typically poor at analysis and assessment. In part this is because of an institutional bias towards espionage that neglects analysis, partly because of a pressure to tell autocrats what they want to hear because of the personal and professional risks of doing otherwise, and partly because autocrats tend to act as their own intelligence officers and ignore the truth even when someone dares speak it, acting instead on their own judgement.
As Russia’s offensive in Ukraine stalls, there is a real risk that it could escalate its nuclear threats if faced with the potential loss of Crimea.
Explaining Nuclear Peace
The Cold War saw many armed interventions by the two superpowers – by the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, Africa and Afghanistan, and by the US in Korea and Indochina. The frequency of such interventions increased after 1990, with wars fought by the US in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, and by Russia in Georgia, Ukraine and (other parts of) Syria. In several cases, one of these powers sought to undermine the other through arming its military opponents, often on a considerable scale. But none of these wars saw direct conflict between their armed forces. This is one of the main reasons why no nuclear weapon has been used since August 1945.
This Whitehall Report outlines a joint methodology for the targeting of A2/AD systems.
The British military is expeditionary and seeks to confront adversaries abroad before they pose a threat at home. Theatre entry is therefore a precondition for the utility of the British military. Adversaries are fielding increasingly capable and integrated anti-air and anti-ship complexes that threaten the viability of theatre entry. These complexes differ from older systems in their level of integration, redundancy and consequent resilience. To assure the future relevance of the UK’s military instrument, it is necessary to have a methodology for breaking through these systems.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s brinkmanship over Finland and Sweden’s bid to join NATO has put Turkey back at the top of the news. I provided some background, including a scoop on Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu’s bullying of his Swedish counterpart Anna Linde over her support for the US-backed Syrian Kurdish group which Turkey labels terrorist during a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Berlin.