UK defense minister Grant Shapps has predicted a global conflict between the West and Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, within five years. Shapps has called on Britain’s allies to increase their military spending in response to this so-called “existential threat.”
Keeping score in a war is not an easy task. All manner of important data relevant to warmaking is obscured from open view. Much is hidden by the conscious effort of the warring parties for obvious reasons related to secrecy, but even behind the curtain of state security, armies do not always have a particularly accurate sense of how many casualties they have taken, what the strength of their constituent units are, and what the disposition of their forces may be. War is analyzed through a veil, and behind the veil is fog and confusion.
ICIJ-led investigation Cyprus Confidential reveals how the EU member state powered the Kremlin’s financial machine, moving vast sums for oligarchs, including after Russia’s 2022 Ukraine invasion.
The Mediterranean island of Cyprus has long been a geopolitical crossroads, a prize contested by empires and a meeting point of peoples, religions — and money.
Amid the ongoing hostilities and losses in Ukraine, the Russian authorities are automatically extending the contracts of those already on the frontline and trying to recruit soldiers to avoid another partial or general mobilization ahead of the upcoming presidential elections. These measures have prompted the rise of a powerful women’s protest movement.[1]
I’ll be the first to admit that two of the main themes on this blog – the United States’ sovereign debt crisis and the deterioration of the petrodollar – have been extraordinarily slow-moving theses.
In both cases, there have been developments that stand at odds with my contentions. For example, US stock indices continue to move higher, despite our economy grinding to a halt, and the BRIC nations have not developed and put forth their own reserve currency to combat the dollar, as I have suggested may happen. They also haven’t backed any of their sovereign currencies with gold, as I have also suggested. While the timing hasn’t proven me right as quickly as I would like, it doesn’t mean that things aren’t ticking forward for both of these forthcoming realities.
Abstract: The world has never been safe for small and vulnerable countries. Their perilous position has been largely determined by weak economic, political and military capabilities, which deprive them of the ability to ensure their national security effectively. The existing literature concerning national security of small and vulnerable countries reveals that overemphasis is placed upon diplomacy as the major instrument of advancing the national interests of such states while overlooking the importance of their supportive institutions, such as intelligence services. The literature regarding the role of intelligence services in national security demonstrates that the secretive nature of intelligence activities and their association with “dirty tricks” of statecraft demonises intelligence services, ultimately undermining their role in national security. Moreover, discrediting the intelligence services is fueled by frequently blaming the intelligence community for strategic failure, even when the inadequate political decision-making process causes it. Inquiring into the Georgian national security environment, which exemplifies well the difficulties faced by small and vulnerable countries, allows us to review and challenge the existing trends in academia regarding the interplay between intelligence and national security.
It’s premature to speculate about the details of their discussions, but the news items shared in this analysis indicate that they could concern the resumption of peace talks and possible pathways for getting there, including those that go around Zelensky or even get rid of him if he remains an obstacle.
The war in Ukraine heralded a new era of public engagement for Defence Intelligence. However, the Israel–Hamas war has demonstrated that it is not a silver bullet for countering disinformation.
In the days and weeks following Hamas’s attack on Israel, and as the Israeli counteroffensive began, no daily intelligence updates were made public by Defence Intelligence in the UK’s Ministry of Defence. This sort of disclosure would not have been expected at all a few years ago. But during the build-up to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, then-Chief of Defence Intelligence Lt Gen (now Gen) James Hockenhull began briefing publicly that Russia was not drawing down its troops as the Kremlin had claimed. Public commentary on ongoing crises from within the UK’s intelligence establishment was unprecedented at the time. It placed the UK in clear defiance of Russian disinformation, and strongly signalled the UK’s resolve to counter Russian narratives surrounding the war.
Mali’s military junta succeeded in kicking out the U.N. peacekeeping force, and on Wednesday its Russian allies scored yet another victory against the U.N.: They were able to terminate all U.N. sanctions on Malians and abolish a panel of experts which has been critical of activities of Russia’s Wagner Group in the West African nation.
Niger’s new military junta has asked for help from the Russian mercenary group Wagner as the deadline nears for it to release the country’s ousted president or face possible military intervention by the West African regional bloc, according to an analyst.