Lettre from La Vigie Nr 204 dated 9 novemrbe 2022
A new strategic world is emerging
The war in Ukraine seems to be stabilising the fronts, which is a setback for Russia and a Ukrainian success. The strategic consequences will be long-lasting, notably by entrenching the West’s opposition to its Moscow neighbour. For all that, this war is not in itself a turning point but the ultimate revelation of a multiform crisis that has shaken up our strategic world for ten years.
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Corruption and strategy
Corruption, which is not generally included in the fundamentals of strategy, nevertheless invites itself into the debates as soon as it is implemented: the corrupter encourages those he corrupts to model their strategy on his own, or at least to make them compatible. Strategists are also affected, as their assessments of the situation may be biased or corrupted, making them less relevant.
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Lorgnette: in two voices
Ah, dear novlangue… that which offers simultaneous and contradictory points of view. A delight in two recent examples.
COP27 is currently taking place in Sharm-el-Sheikh and developed countries would like emerging economies to finally stop their frenetic consumption of hydrocarbon energy – while the West reopens coal-fired power stations, Europe builds LNG terminals and buys shale gas from the US.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) criticised Qatar and its protection of human rights two weeks before the start of the World Cup.
The Qatari Foreign Minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, reacted in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: he feels irritated by the German double standard, which has nothing against Qatar when it comes to evacuating nationals from Afghanistan or buying Qatari gas or oil, but which gets on its high horse when it comes to sports…
Let us not mock too much: let he who has never sinned cast the first stone.
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JOCVP
photo credit: Damian Gadal on Visualhunt.com