Geopolitics

• Azerbaijan's International Energy Aspirations Raise Tensions in Middle East

  Azerbaijan has been expanding its international energy aspirations further afield over the past several years, gaining assets in Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Georgia, and offering to build installations in Libya, but it wasn’t until it entered the Israeli market that anyone took much interest in these developments, with Iran particularly on edge. Last fall, a subsidiary of Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company SOCAR bought a 5 percent stake in Israel’s main oil field Med Ashdod, working alongside Israel’s Shemen Oil & Gas Resources (SMOG) consortium. It wasn’t until late April this year that this became an issue, when…

• Washington Not Equipped to Deal with Yemen

  As the US launches airstrikes on al-Qaeda targets in Yemen after a thwarted suicide bombing attempt on a US-bound flight, we are about see exactly how ill-equipped Washington is to deal with the complexities that are shaping the conflicts in Yemen. Unlike the attempted bombing of a US-bound aircraft on Christmas Day 2009, when a Nigerian man was thwarted by passengers on the plane while US intelligence agencies remained unaware of the situation, this latest bomb plot was actually (reportedly) carried out by a Saudi asset to a CIA and British MI5 operation to infiltrate Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula…

• Has Julia Gillard's Time in Power Ruined Australia's Economy?

  Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s Labour Party (ALP)-dominated coalition Government of Australia has clung to power without an express public mandate since the August 21, 2010, House of Representatives elections. This has been largely because its parliamentary majority has been guaranteed by four independent parliamentarians and one member of the Greens party, all of whom recognize that they would be unlikely ever again to gain a position of power and vote with the ALP to preserve their privilege for as long as possible. Thus, Ms Gillard has been able to avoid being voted from office. Even her colleagues privately agree that…

• The U.S. Turns its Back on Europe, Allowing Russia and China to Approach

  Europe is at a pivotal point. Or, rather, it is at a point where its structural transformation can no longer be ignored. Events in Europe have finally led us to the dénouement of the 20th Century. It may presage a new Europe tied more firmly into the Eurasian heartland than old Europe. It is the end — ’though not without economic, social, and political pain — of the 20th Century form of Atlanticism. Similarly, the United States and much of the West is at a pivotal point, except that — by almost all public reaction — this reality can be,…

• South Sudan Experiment Headed Toward Failure

  The World Bank, in a draft document reviewed by the independent Sudan Tribune, warns that South Sudan could collapse by its two-year anniversary because authorities in Juba were unaware of the consequences of one of its very first unilateral decisions. The South Sudanese government early this year, roughly six months into independence, expressed frustration with Khartoum's claims on revenue and halted the production of at least 75-percent of the regional oil. But with Khartoum controlling the export infrastructure, the move now seems to have backfired. Either South Sudan was unprepared politically for independence or it lacked appropriate guidance to manage…

• As Yemen's Water Runs Dry, al-Qaida Runs Rampant

  We’ve talked about the internal struggle waging in Yemen to control its oil resources, the revenues from which can buy patronage for a new regime, but water is the other liquid gold informing the conflict, and as al-Qaeda steps in to wield control over a country running dry, it becomes easier to map the conflict in terms of water shortage. As a showdown with Houthi rebels ensues in the north, separatists fight government forces in the south, groups linked to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) step up attacks and make territorial gains, a divided military fights itself, split between…

• Will North Korea Disappear if We Ignore It?

  As North Korea celebrates 80 years and uses the occasion to lash out at the treacherous South with vows of a “sacred war” and to boast of its nuclear strike capability against the US, it won’t do to brush Pyongyang aside as simply irrational and unpredictable. Pyongyang is anything but irrational, and while it may be unpredictable, that only attests to the US Intelligence Community’s inability to get a handle on North Korea, which has very painstakingly and deliberately calculated every move it has made under the late Kim Jong-il and his successor son, four-star General Kim Jong-un. There was…

• Climate Change and the Potential for Future Instability in North Africa

  Northwest Africa is crisscrossed with climate, migration, and security challenges. From Nigeria to Niger, Algeria, and Morocco, this region has long been marked by labour migration, bringing workers from sub-Saharan Africa north to the Mediterranean coastline and Europe. To make that land journey, migrants often cross through the Sahel and Sahel-Saharan region, an area facing increasing environmental threats from the effects of climate change. The rising coastal sea level, desertification, drought, and the numerous other potential effects of climate change have the potential to increase the numbers of migrants and make these routes more hazardous in the future. Added to…

• How Malaysian and French Elections could be Affected by the Submarine Scandal

  Malaysia’s submarine procurement scandal was, by mid-April 2012, spilling onto the French political scene, highlighting a range of political and strategic dilemmas which ultimately impact (and reflect) on the national security capabilities of a number of Asian states. Apart from anything else, this scandal — and a number of similar scandals — highlights the stagnation of the international defense scene; it has become bogged down in politics, corruption, and endemic bureaucratic maneuver. Significantly, the issue of the Malaysian submarine scandal had become a factor in the French Presidential elections of April 22 and May 6, 2012, and the Malaysian general…

• Why the West is Supporting an Anti-Western Solution in Syria

  A Jihadist, Anti-Western Agenda is Being Forced on Syria The international community has been blindly following a jihadist-driven agenda for Syria; a solution the majority of Syrians reject, but which Turkey and Qatar have been driving. It begs the question: why are analysts in Washington — or Paris or London — not digging more deeply into what is really happening, given that the solution they have endorsed is so profoundly anti-Western? The key test of the Annan plan and ceasefire to help end the widespread violence in Syria came on Friday, April 13, 2012, in the aftermath of the Friday…