The New Geopolitics of Energy | MI6 Recruits | Colombian Guerrillas

Proponents of clean energy hope (and sometimes promise) that in addition to mitigating climate change, the energy transition will help make tensions over energy resources a thing of the past. It is true that clean energy will transform geopolitics—just not necessarily in the ways many of its champions expect. The transition will reconfigure many elements of international politics that have shaped the global system since at least World War II, significantly affecting the sources of national power, the process of globalization, relations among the great powers, and the ongoing economic convergence of developed countries and developing ones. The process will be messy at best. And far from fostering comity and cooperation, it will likely produce new forms of competition and confrontation long before a new, more copacetic geopolitics takes shape.

The West Still Needs Russia’s Energy  (Eugene Chausovsky, Foreign Policy)
Hopes of defanging Moscow through alternative energy have faded.

U.S. Targets Colombian Guerrilla Splinter Groups with Terrorist Listing  (Juan Forero and Vivian Salama, Wall Street Journal)
The Biden administration added two new Colombian drug-trafficking gangs to its list of foreign terrorist organizations, reflecting the U.S.’s determination to support a peace agreement in Colombia threatened by the groups’ mayhem. The U.S. on Tuesday declared that the New Marquetalia group and the FARC-EP would join a blacklist of groups that include al Qaeda, Hamas and Boko Haram. At the same time, the Biden administration said it is removing the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, because the decades-old guerrilla group “formally dissolved and disarmed” upon signing a peace agreement with Colombia’s government in 2016. The Wall Street Journal reported on the removal last week. FARC “no longer exists as a unified organization that engages in terrorism or terrorist activity or has the capability or intent to do so,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. However, Mr. Blinken noted that revoking the designation for the FARC does nothing to shield those ex-rebels from U.S. charges for crimes such as drug trafficking. The two groups added to the list are made up of hundreds of former FARC fighters who didn’t take part in the peace agreement, which demobilized some 13,000 guerrillas and ended a 52-year-old conflict between Colombia’s government and the country’s largest insurgency.

After 7 Years, A U.S.-Led Task Force Fighting ISIS Is Getting a New Name and Taking a New Approach to Its Mission  (Stavros Atlamazoglou, Business Insider)
The special-operations task force that led the way in the war against ISIS has been renamed as major combat operations against the terrorist group wind down. Since 2015, Special Operations Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, or SOJTF-OIR, has been the tip of the spear in the multinational coalition that came together to fight ISIS. After almost seven years, the Pentagon has renamed the unit. Special Operations Joint Task Force-Levant, or SOJTF-Levant, now has expanded authority in the region. US special operators have more or less focused their efforts against ISIS in Iraq and Syria while conducting operations against its offshoots in Afghanistan, the Philippines, and some African countries. SOJTF-OIR focused solely on the fight against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. SOJTF-Levant will continue to support Iraqi and coalition forces against the remnants of ISIS in Iraq and Syria and expand its operations against the terrorist group into Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan, according to US Special Operations Command Central. The expanded role is a milestone. “We operate in a region with numerous terrorist and violent extremist organizations and share a common interest with partner nations in prevailing against these regional security challenges,” Army Maj. Charles An, a spokesperson for US Special Operations Command Central, told Defense News.

MI6 Recruiting from World’s Most Dangerous Groups to Combat Al Qaeda  (Thomas Harding, The National)
MI6 is recruiting agents in the “most dangerous organizations in the world” to combat Al Qaeda’s ambition for mass-casualty terrorism, the service’s chief has said. Richard Moore said the terrorist group responsible for the 9/11 attacks is seeking to rebuild bases in Afghanistan to launch international strikes. In his first public speech, the Chief of the Security Intelligence Service, highlighted the threat to world stability from Russia, China and Iran as well as from artificial intelligence. Praising the bravery of his officers, many of whom operate in foreign countries running special agents at great risk to both, Mr. Moore said he needed better technology and more people to tackle Al Qaeda, ISIS and other terrorist groups. “We retain an intense focus … to degrade existing terrorist groups, prevent their spread and identify unknown threats. To do this, MI6 continues to recruit agents in the most dangerous organizations in the world.” There was no doubt the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August had emboldened international terrorists and that in Afghanistan both Al Qaeda, he said, and ISIS were now seeking “to increase their foothold and to rebuild their ability to strike Western targets”. “Their affiliates and imitators retain an undiminished appetite for violence and the inflicting of mass casualties,” he told the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank in London.

Trump’s Intelligence Briefings: Better Than Some Feared, Worse Than Many Hoped  (David Priess, Lawfare)
New information about interactions between intelligence officers and Donald Trump as a presidential candidate, as president-elect and as president points to the limits of what an enterprise dedicated to presenting objective intelligence can do for a customer who proves unwilling or unable to recognize and appreciate it.