Tra gennaio e febbraio, l’intelligence italiana ha più volte messo in guardia contro possibili tentativi terroristici di colpire l’Italia con l’approssimarsi delle elezioni del 9 aprile.
Una mia analisi per Terrorism Monitor, pubblicazione a cura della Jamestown Foundation, riassume la questione sulla base delle fonti disponibili.
In un importante articolo, pubblicato l’11 gennaio scorso sul Wall Street Journal, il ministro della Difesa russo Sergei Ivanov ha esposto i motivi che spingono Mosca a ricercare la potenza militare.
Un mio articolo per Asia Times Online cerca di spiegare le implicazioni di tale “dottrina” per la zona compresa tra il Mar Nero e il Kirghisistan — e in particolare per l’area del Caspio.
In un eccellente articolo, Andrei Tsygankov affronta il tema della politica del Cremlino nei confronti del mondo musulmano — non solo dell’Iran.
La strategia di Putin appare coerente con il tentativo di rilanciare Mosca quale attore influente sul piano mondiale:
Russia has shown renewed activism in the Middle East and larger Muslim world. That doesn’t mean Moscow is anti-Western, only that it appreciates that the “war of civilizations” between Western nations and Islam is intensifying and understands that it has no business participating in that war
La sezione dei links comprende ora anche il sito dell’Institut de Stratégie Comparée, della Commission Française d’Histoire Militaire, e dell’Institut d’Histoire des Conflits Contemporains, visitabile all’indirizzo http://www.stratisc.org.
Si tratta di una delle migliori risorse online di studi storico-militari, strategici e geopolitici, diretta dal Prof. Hervé Couteau-Bégarie, autore di un Trattato di Strategia parzialmente tradotto (online) in italiano.
Nel sito (che è ancora, parzialmente, in ristrutturazione) si trovano centinaia di articoli, e decine di libri, liberamente disponibili in formato HTML.
Aggiunto anche Diploweb.com, diretto dal geopolitologo francese Pierre Verluise, specialista dell’Unione Europea. Si tratta di un’altra preziosa fonte di articoli, recensioni e commenti in lingua francese sull’attualità politico-diplomatica internazionale.
Un mio articolo su Asia Times Online cerca di fare il punto su una questione spinosa: l’embargo sugli armamenti, deciso contro Pechino all’indomani dei fatti di Tien-An-Men (1989).
L’analista ex-CIA Michael Scheuer offre oggi ai lettori una chiara, incisiva e spassionata analisi del contesto afghano.
L’articolo è costruito a partire dalle valutazioni che i responsabili della coalizione guidata dagli USA fecero nell’autunno 2005. Come mostra Scheuer, la realtà politico-sociale attuale — che rispecchia gli insegnamenti della storia di quel paese — ha avuto rapidamente ragione dell’ottimismo di qualche mese fa.
Kaveh Afrasiabi su AsiaTimes Online ragiona sui possibili effetti per la sicurezza energetica cinese in caso di escalation della crisi iraniana.
Su Asia Times Online un mio articolo sulle implicazioni militari — nonostante il carattere civile dell’iniziativa — del sistema di navigazione satellitare europeo “Galileo”, al quale partecipa Pechino e la cui fase operativa sta iniziando.
Un’analisi di Oxford Analytica, ripresa dal sito di Forbes, spiega i dettagli della pericolosa escalation tra Iran e USA sulla questione dell’arricchimento dell’uranio.
While the emphasis is on diplomacy, and U.S. air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities are not currently considered a serious possibility, President George W. Bush and his officials have repeated that all options are on the table. In reality, the U.S. administration may have to settle for delaying, rather than stopping, Iran’s nuclear program.
A strategy of graduated sanctions is also fraught with problems. Furthermore, Iran is not without leverage of its own. The measures that the Security Council will adopt when it takes up the Iran issue in March cannot be foreseen with any degree of certainty. Much depends on negotiations that will take place in the intervening few weeks.
However, the sanctions route could escalate the crisis. One possible scenario runs as follows:
–Washington and the EU succeed in securing Security Council approval for an initial, but limited, set of sanctions.
–Iran retaliates by accelerating its enrichment and centrifuge production program and uses surrogates to create trouble for the U.S. in Iraq.
–The Security Council feels compelled to intensify sanctions.
–Iran, increasingly isolated internationally, retaliates with additional measures.
Negotiations or informal discussions between Iran and other parties will take place before the March 6 IAEA meeting and subsequent Security Council meeting at several levels. Some ideas for bridging the differences between Iran and the EU/U.S. position have been suggested, but both sides have taken positions on which they will find it difficult to compromise.
Security Council-mandated sanctions would set Iran, the United States and the EU on a collision course of escalating actions and counter-actions. Ideas for resolving the crisis exist, but appear to have little chance of success.
Chirac aveva forse ragione a opporsi alla guerra contro Saddam, e GW Bush torto?
Lo pensa Jonathan Steele, opinionista del Guardian, nel suo articolo del 3 febbraio:
No one in Downing Street or Washington will admit it publicly, but Jacques Chirac has turned out to be right. His global Gaullism, the notion that the world has several power centres, and it is no longer just “the west versus the rest”, offers a more accurate picture than the image of the lone cowboy acting in the name of us all. The analysis is not Chirac’s alone, of course. The French president is in most ways a discredited figure, little loved even at home. But he is the most prominent European to dare to embrace multipolarity as the new reality of international politics.
Leaders of the non-aligned nations have been saying the same thing for a long time, as have Washington’s latest bugbears, such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. In his soft-spoken way, Kofi Annan has also been calling for a new recognition of the dispersal of international power. In a little-reported speech in London this week, he took issue with even the concept of a five-nation power centre made up of the permanent members of the UN security council. “Do not underestimate the slow erosion of the UN’s authority and legitimacy that stems from the perception that it has a very narrow power base, with just five countries calling the shots,” he pleaded.
UN reform is a slow process, and it is doubtful whether the new claimants for permanent security-council seats, such as Brazil, India and Japan, will get their way soon. But the trend is in their direction, regardless of whether it is formalised by the UN now or in several years.
So, Bush’s frantic pleas to his American audience not to retreat are signs not just that his ideological simplicities carry less conviction at home than they once did. He has also begun to see that US power abroad is on the wane.
