A Disrupted Global Recovery – Analysis

The continuing global recovery faces multiple challenges as the pandemic enters its third year. The rapid spread of the Omicron variant has led to renewed mobility restrictions in many countries and increased labor shortages. Supply disruptions still weigh on activity and are contributing to higher inflation, adding to pressures from strong demand and elevated food and energy prices. Moreover, record debt and rising inflation constrain the ability of many countries to address renewed disruptions.

The Geopolitics Behind Spiraling Gas and Electricity Prices in Europe

The current crisis of spiraling gas prices in Europe, coupled with a cold snap in the region, highlights the fact that the transition to green energy in any part of the world is not going to be easy. The high gas prices in Europe also bring to the forefront the complexity involved in transitioning to clean energy sources: that energy is not simply about choosing the right technology, and that transitioning to green energy has economic and geopolitical dimensions that need to be taken into consideration as well.

Dragii noștri tefelei medievali. Părerea sociologului

De sute de ani, medieval e ditamai vorba de ocară. Numa și numa atribute negative gravitează în jurul acestei idei. De regulă, cînd zicem medieval, ne gîndim la o atitudine irațională, primitivă, de stagnare ori de decădere, atît morală cît și materială.

Give a dog a gun: arming quadrupedal military robots

Semi-autonomous and remotely controlled weapons systems are established military tools, and several armed forces are experimenting with quadrupedal robots to carry equipment. But should we be concerned about efforts to arm doglike robots with lethal weapons? Norbert Neumann explores the current state of quadrupedal systems and their capabilities.

Climate Change and the French Armed Forces

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.

World Re-Binarized: Brief History Of Sino-American Collision Course – Analysis

Americans performed three very different policies on the People’s Republic: From a total negation (and the Mao-time mutual annihilation assurances), to Nixon’s sudden cohabitation. Finally, a Copernican-turn: the US spotted no real ideological differences between them and the post-Deng China. This signalled a ‘new opening’: West imagined China’s coastal areas as its own industrial suburbia. Soon after, both countries easily agreed on interdependence (in this marriage of convenience): Americans pleased their corporate (machine and tech) sector and unrestrained its greed, while Chinese in return offered a cheap labour, no environmental considerations and submissiveness in imitation. Both spiced it by nearly religious approach to trade.

New DARPA research could make night vision goggles smaller

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded 10 teams more than $18 million total in first-round contracts for a program aimed at making night vision glasses less bulky and more powerful.

The U.S. agency announced the Enhanced Night Vision in Eyeglass Form program last year, calling on industry and academia to submit proposals in two technical tracks. The first focuses on developing prototypes to reduce the size of the eyepieces and intensifiers on current night vision glasses. The second explores new methods for converting infrared light reflected into visible images.

Macron’s Flawed Vision for Europe

Persistent Divisions Will Preclude His Dreams of Global Power

On May 11, 1962, U.S. President John F. Kennedy hosted an extraordinary gathering of American cultural talent to welcome France’s minister of culture, André Malraux. The dinner—which included luminaries such as the novelist Saul Bellow, the painter Mark Rothko, the playwright Arthur Miller, and the violinist Isaac Stern—was a celebration of the long-standing historical ties between the United States and France. Only hours before this glamorous fete, however, Kennedy, Malraux, and the French ambassador to the United States had a sharp exchange over French President Charles de Gaulle’s increasingly strident critiques of U.S. policy and accompanying demands for strategic autonomy.