Our picksThe New Geopolitics of Energy | MI6 Recruits | Colombian Guerrillas

Published 2 December 2021

·  The World Has No Answer for Migration

·  The Far-Right Is Worrying Enough, but Let’s Not Pretend It’s the Biggest Threat We Face

·  Green Upheaval: The New Geopolitics of Energy

·  The West Still Needs Russia’s Energy

·  U.S. Targets Colombian Guerrilla Splinter Groups with Terrorist Listing

·  After 7 Years, A U.S.-Led Task Force Fighting ISIS Is Getting a New Name and Taking a New Approach to Its Mission

·  MI6 Recruiting from World’s Most Dangerous Groups to Combat Al Qaeda

·  Trump’s Intelligence Briefings: Better Than Some Feared, Worse Than Many Hoped

The World Has No Answer for Migration  (Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy)
The migrant crisis in Belarus is a window into the failure of today’s global order to solve a growing problem.

The Far-Right Is Worrying Enough, but Let’s Not Pretend It’s the Biggest Threat We Face  (Ian Acheson, CapX)
No one could deny the obvious and growing sophistication of fascist ideologues and their clear desire to groom and recruit young people online. Bored and lonely kids living in their heads in their bedrooms through the Covid years, stripped of the protective shield of normal socialisation, are easy prey for groomers who use popular culture and comedy on various platforms, including gaming sites, to reel in potential recruits and begin a subtle process of indoctrination. So far, so bad.
But examining the glut of young people entering our preventative, then criminal justice processes reveals a preponderance of people who are surely more inadequate and deluded than dangerous. Whose ‘preparatory acts’ often range from building a hide in a woods to ‘hostile reconnaissance’ of radio masts. Whose sentences have included not hard time, but classical literature.
While we should never let our security policies be dictated by racist losers, it is worth repeating that the demonstrable terror threat to our security in the United Kingdom does come from Islamist extremists. The body count does not lie.

We need above all to be able to sort out the people of any ideology who pose a real national security threat from those who clog up the system, distract resources and skew the discourse with psychological problems that would be better off dealt with by the NHS.

Green Upheaval: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Jason Bordoff and Meghan L. O’Sullivan, Foreign Affairs)
the geopolitics of oil and gas are alive and well—and as fraught as ever. Europe is in the throes of a full-fledged energy crisis, with staggering electricity prices forcing businesses across the continent to shutter and energy firms to declare bankruptcy, positioning Russian President Vladimir Putin to take advantage of his neighbors’ struggles by leveraging his country’s natural gas reserves. In September, blackouts reportedly led Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng to instruct his country’s state-owned energy companies to secure supplies for winter at any cost. And as oil prices surge above $80 per barrel, the United States and other energy-hungry countries are pleading with major producers, including Saudi Arabia, to ramp up their output, giving Riyadh more clout in a newly tense relationship and suggesting the limits of Washington’s energy “independence.” (Cont.)