PERSONNEL
SECURITY, UNREST & WAR
Post-COVID-19: Re-Thinking South Africa
If there’s smoke, there must be cigarette smuggling. South Africa, Beijing’s most important African client state, sustains its seemingly-inexorable downward momentum.
PERSONNEL
Key Transitions and Defense and Intelligence Appointments - 04/2020
SECURITY, UNREST & WAR
Outlook Post-COVID-19: Re-Thinking Much of Africa
CULTURE, PSYCHOLOGY & MEDIA
The COVID-19 Wars: Strategic Warfare Amid Chaos, Threat, Opportunity
“[T]he only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” — Inaugural address of US Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 4, 1933.
STRATEGY & INTELLIGENCE
STRATEGIC TRAJECTORIES | Beijing, Increasingly Desperate, Continues Assault on Eswatini
PRC's Ambassador to South Africa issued a 7-page statement to Eswatini demanding that it change its diplomatic allegiance from the ROC or face total isolation from the African and world community. Beijing is now lashing out to subdue what is seen as a mounting global repudiation of Beijing.
CRIME & CORRUPTION
CURRENT ESTIMATE | Coronavirus, Corruption: Africa’s Inheritance from Beijing
A staff estimate on a topic of current significance.
SECURITY, UNREST & WAR
What Does Beijing Do Now?
Presidential elections in Taiwan repudiated PRC pressure, just as protests in Hong Kong have done. Beijing hoped 2019 would be the year that all significant opposition to its strategic rise would be silenced.
CRIME & CORRUPTION
Death of a Nation: South Africa’s Refusal to Correct its Course of Corruption and Anger
Collapse in South Africa would have a significant impact on all Southern African regional states and societies, but it would also impact the global trading community and the guarantee of Atlantic-to-Indian Ocean maritime security.
ECONOMICS & BUSINESS
State of the World: Parlous, Transforming, Yet in Some Ways Stabilizing, Optimistic
The optimism may be hard to find, but the fact that crisis is now clearly upon us gives a certain clarity.
SOVEREIGNTY
EN CLAIR | Beijing Reaps the African Whirlwind
SECURITY, UNREST & WAR
STRATEGIC TRAJECTORIES | Why a Coup Attempt in Southern Africa is Strategically Important
The UK has reportedly been promised concessions to exploit Eswatini reserves of diamonds and natural gas, among other things, in a “post-Mswati” Eswatini. And yet the Swati people and chiefdoms overwhelming support their traditional structures and monarchy.