By The Numbers: Coups in Africa

What is a coup?

A coup is an “illegal and overt attempt by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting executive,” Powell and Thyne wrote in a 2011 article published in the Journal of Peace Research. A successful coup, they determined, lasts at least one week.

Pourquoi la Roumanie est si importante pour l’OTAN

L’OTAN construit actuellement en Roumanie la plus grande base militaire d’Europe, près de la frontière avec l’Ukraine et non loin de la mer Noire. Cette base vise à transformer considérablement l’infrastructure de l’OTAN.

La Roumanie, flanc sud-est de l’OTAN avec un accès à la mer Noire, revêt une importance stratégique particulière pour l’Alliance. D’importants investissements ont été réalisés : la plus grande base de l’OTAN en Europe y est actuellement en construction. Avec un président qui s’écarterait d’un alignement inconditionnel avec l’Occident, ce projet pourrait être compromis.

De la sécurité de l’Eurasie à la sécurité du monde

Du 31 octobre au 1er novembre 2024, Minsk a accueilli la deuxième conférence internationale sur la sécurité eurasienne, au cours de laquelle a été présentée la «Charte eurasienne de la multipolarité et de la diversité au XXIe siècle». Le président du Belarus, Alexandre Loukachenko, et le ministre russe des Affaires étrangères, Sergueï Lavrov, y ont prononcé un discours dans lequel ils ont souligné que le monde unipolaire était révolu et qu’un nouveau système de sécurité internationale était nécessaire. Et puisque l’Occident est principalement coupable d’attiser les conflits et de proposer des «formules sans issue», une question naturelle se pose : comment et avec qui créer une nouvelle architecture de sécurité ?

L’importance de la Roumanie dans le dispositif de l’OTAN contre la Russie

Le premier tour de l’élection présidentielle en Roumanie a vu le candidat Calin Georgescu, critique envers l’OTAN, obtenir un soutien important, ce qui a provoqué une réponse rapide des États-Unis sous forme de menaces voilées. Et les menaces n’ont pas mis longtemps à se concrétiser : la Cour constitutionnelle a annulé le premier tour de l’élection présidentielle, malgré un recomptage qui a validé la victoire du candidat Georgescu. Des rumeurs sur le web ont fait état de la venue d’un émissaire des USA à Bucarest. Quelques heures plus tard, la décision de la Cour constitutionnelle a été connue.

Experts warn Trump’s plan to deregulate crypto will help terrorists and domestic extremists

President-elect Trump campaigned on being a “crpyto president,” promising to open up the floodgates on cryptocurrency by undoing regulations imposed by President Joe Biden’s Securities and Exchange Commission.

But according to a Wednesday report in the Guardian, crypto deregulation could provide a significant benefit to extremist groups and foreign terrorist organizations that use crypto to finance their activity. The outlet noted that neo-Nazi group The Base – which has been under FBI investigation for years — used the new development of an incoming pro-crypto administration to solicit donations via cryptocurrency on Election Day.

Trump warns BRICS nations against replacing US dollar

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday demanded that BRICS member countries commit to not creating a new currency or supporting another currency that would replace the United States dollar or face 100% tariffs, Reuters reported.

“We require a commitment from these Countries that they will neither create a new BRICS Currency, nor back any other Currency to replace the mighty U.S. Dollar or, they will face 100% Tariffs, and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful U.S. Economy,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.

Convergence and the CT Return on Investment: A Framework

Abstract: Since 2018, the United States has been trying to figure out what counterterrorism looks like during an era of strategic competition, and how it can maximize and optimize returns from its counterterrorism investments. There are important differences between these two national security priorities—strategic competition and counterterrorism—but if the United States wants to gain resource efficiencies, it should look across the gray space at how and where these two priorities interplay and converge. This is because a key part of the pathway to CT optimization lies in realizing how counterterrorism has evolved as a form of influence. This article introduces a conceptual framework to help the counterterrorism community situate the returns from CT investments, especially deployed CT force activity. It recommends that those returns be understood through two lenses: 1) those that are direct and oriented around threat mitigation and 2) those that are intersectional and oriented around influence. Interviews with three experts provide context to elements of the framework and highlight the interplay between counterterrorism and strategic competition in different regional areas.

Smart Pressure: Conceptualizing Counterterrorism for a New Era

Abstract: When it comes to counterterrorism, the United States has been living through an inflection point. It wants to focus less on terrorism so it can place more emphasis on strategic competition, but key terrorist adversaries remain committed. The terrorism landscape and the approaches used by key terror adversaries have also been evolving. The United States and its partners have been placing various forms of pressure against priority networks such as the Islamic State and al-Qa`ida in key locations to keep the threats these groups pose degraded, and to restrict their ability to conduct external operations and other impactful acts of terror. But over the past two years, there have been growing signs that the Islamic State is evolving around the pressure that has been placed against it, developments that highlight the limits of existing CT pressure approaches and the need for those approaches to evolve. This article introduces two frameworks: 1) a framework to help conceptualize non-state VEO power and CT pressure efforts to degrade those elements of power and 2) a defense and degradation in depth framework that can be used to help strategically guide future CT pressure campaigns. It is hoped that these frameworks provoke debate within the counterterrorism community and that they help the United States and its allies adjust their CT approaches so they can evolve to stay ahead of the threat.