Defence researchers have been experimenting with quantum technologies for decades, with some results and capabilities proving more promising than others. The question is not whether quantum will proliferate the defence world, but when and to what extent. Norbert Neumann investigates what quantum computing and sensing mean for militaries.
Over the next few decades, a reduction in the use of fossil fuels worldwide presents a bigger problem for Russia than climate change itself.
As Russia masses military forces on the borders of Ukraine, Western governments are consumed with trying to decipher President Vladimir Putin’s intentions and predict his next moves. While this heightened focus is fully justified, we should remain attentive to longer-term processes that might exacerbate the threat that Russia poses, both to its neighbours and to the West. One such process is climate change.
Sending anti-tank weapons to Ukraine will not alter the military balance or moderate Russia’s behaviour. It is time for a serious approach to supporting Ukraine, one that accounts for the Russian way of war.
The UK and US have been the most prominent military supporters of Ukraine since the conflict with Russia started in 2014. Past military deliveries have included Saxon armoured vehicles from the UK and HMMWVs from the US, as well as the widely reported delivery of the Javelin anti-tank guided missile system and now the Next generation Light Anti-tank Weapon from the UK.
With climate security gaining ground as a topic of global discussion, the French armed forces are developing their own approach to climate change at the national level.
As shown by the recent failure of the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution on the security implications of climate change and on the need to develop conflict-prevention strategies, with one veto (Russia), one vote against (India) and one abstention (China), climate security appears to be a somewhat controversial topic in international relations. Indeed, this vote reveals an existing political divide between countries that clearly recognise climate security as a legitimate issue and those that tend to contest its relevance. It also comes as a setback considering the strong and regular acknowledgements of the security implications of climate change made during UN Security Council debates since 2007, as well as by the most prominent defence officials from the US, the UK, Canada and New Zealand. For its part, France is clearly among the proponents of the issue, having championed the idea of a UN climate security envoy at the beginning of 2021.
Given the lack of joined up thinking by China’s geopolitical adversaries, the biggest threat to China’s growing economic and geopolitical dominance may actually be itself.
For a country considered by many to have been the source of a global health pandemic resulting in over 5.3 million deaths globally, it is noteworthy that COVID-19 appears to have done little to check China’s geostrategic standing. If anything, it can be argued that China’s geostrategic reach may actually have increased. This is particularly the case as Western governments have presided over a series of geostrategic errors allowing Beijing to extend its sphere of influence almost unchallenged.
The US and Europe will need to work together to prevent Russian attempts to fundamentally redefine the European security order by force.
In late 2021, European Council President Charles Michel declared 2022 the ‘year of European defence’. He was referring to a burst of planned activity from the EU: a European Defence Summit, an EU defence strategy in the form of the EU ‘Strategic Compass’, a joint EU–NATO declaration, and the articulation and hopeful agreement of what ‘European strategic autonomy’ means in practice, all within the first six months of the year under the French EU Council presidency.
In November 2020, the Moroccan government sent its military to the Guerguerat area, a buffer zone between the territory claimed by the Kingdom of Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). The Guerguerat border post is at the very southern edge of Western Sahara along the road that goes to Mauritania. The presence of Moroccan troops “in the Buffer Strip in the Guerguerat area” violated the 1991 ceasefire agreed upon by the Moroccan monarchy and the Polisario Front of the Sahrawi. That ceasefire deal was crafted with the assumption that the United Nations would hold a referendum in Western Sahara to decide on its fate; no such referendum has been held, and the region has existed in stasis for three decades now.
L’envoyé spécial du secrétaire général des Nations unies pour le Sahara occidental, Staffan de Mistura, a terminé le 19 janvier sa tournée dans la région pour tenter de relancer le dialogue entre les parties prenantes du conflit. Le bilan de ces échanges est mitigé, tant les protagonistes algérien et marocain campent sur leur position.
Quatre Tunisiens, dont une fillette, ont péri et sept autres sont portés disparus après le naufrage d’une embarcation de migrants au large de la grande ville tunisienne de Sfax (centre-est), a appris vendredi l’AFP auprès des garde-côtes.
“L’embarcation partie des côtes tunisiennes a coulé dans la nuit de mercredi à jeudi, devant les îles de Kerkennah”, situées au large de Sfax, la deuxième ville du pays, a indiqué à l’AFP Houssem Eddine Jebabli, porte-parole de la garde nationale.
Le président tunisien Kais Saied s’est insurgé contre les manifestations qui ont eu lieu dans le pays. Il a répété son engagement à garantir l’égalité de tous devant la loi en recevant le ministre de l’Intérieur Taoufik Charfeddine.
Plusieurs personnes étaient dans les rues de Tunis la semaine dernière, une manifestation qui avait été interdite par les autorités dans le cadre des restrictions contre le Covid-19.