Stratfor goodness

For those of you who don't know about Stratfor, I am copying some of their free material below. If one were stranded alone with only a single source of information to while away the time, it would be a tough choice between Stratfor and The Economist.

Enjoy!


On Iran in Iraq...
"Iran is trying to link the nuclear issue to its dealings with the United States on Iraq as a sort of insurance policy. Iran does not want to reach an agreement on Iraq and then leave the nuclear issue to be dealt with down the road, when the United States is in a stronger position to take action against Tehran. "

..."In sum, this Iranian proposal called for a non-rushed withdrawal and relocation of U.S. troops to bases inside Iraq, a rejection of all attempts to partition Iraq, a commitment by the Sunni bloc to root out the jihadists and acknowledgement by Washington that the Iranian nuclear file cannot be uncoupled from the Iraq negotiations. In return, Iran would rein in the armed Shiite militias, revise the de-Baathification law and Iraqi Constitution to double Sunni political representation, create a policy to allow for the fair distribution of oil revenues (particularly to the Sunnis) and use its regional influence to quell crises in areas such as Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories.

The terms put forth by the Iranians are so close to the U.S. position on Iraq that, with little exception, they could have been printed on State Department stationary and no one would have noticed the difference. If these are the terms Washington and Tehran are in fact discussing, then we are witnessing an extraordinary turn in the Iraq war in which the U.S. and Iranian blueprints for Iraq are finally aligning. It does not surprise us, then, that Crocker said after his meeting in Baghdad that the Iranian position "was very close to our own" at the level of policy and principle. "

..."The prospect of Washington and Tehran warming up to each other, and of the United States potentially regaining its military bandwidth in the not-too-distant future, is enough to put a number of serious actors into a frenzy. With the exception of the jihadists, most of the actors in question see an Iranian-U.S. accommodation over Iraq as inevitable, and have little choice but to strive to shape what would otherwise be an imposed reality in the coming months -- leaving substantial room for error in these negotiations. The Iraqi Sunnis and Arab states, in particular, will not necessarily sabotage the talks, but they will be working to secure Sunni interests and contain the extent to which Iran emerges as the primary beneficiary of any deal it works out with the United States over Iraq. "



On Lone Wolves (i.e psychotic gunmen)...
"Perhaps the most common time that lone wolf assailants self-identify -- and the point at which they are most vulnerable to being identified before an attack -- is when they are conducting pre-operational surveillance of their potential targets; when they are stalking, in other words. Since pre-operational surveillance involves establishing patterns, potential attackers will stalk their targets several times. Thus, each time they improve the chance they will be observed, especially if the target is employing countersurveillance operations in search of such threats.

Countersurveillance -- the process of detecting and mitigating hostile surveillance -- is an important aspect of counterterrorism and security operations. Good countersurveillance is proactive, meaning it provides a means to prevent an attack from happening. This can be a group effort performed by a dedicated countersurveillance team, or it can be done by individuals who simply make the effort to be aware of their surroundings and watch for people or vehicles that seem out of place.

Lone wolves are especially vulnerable to detection during the surveillance phase because they do not have others to assist them. Conducting solo surveillance against a moving target is one of the hardest tasks any professional surveillance operative can be tasked with, and is even more difficult for an amateur. In a solo surveillance, the operative is forced to reveal himself repeatedly over time and distance, and in different environments. Also, a person unskilled in the art of surveillance, especially one who is mentally disturbed, will frequently commit many errors of demeanor. Thus, their odd behavior and crude surveillance technique -- they frequently stalk and lurk -- make them easy to pick out. "

On Environmentalism's next wave...
"With oil consumption and climate change seriously being addressed -- and nuclear power poised to make a major comeback -- the near-term future of energy policy is becoming increasingly clear. In the longer term, the key phrase will be "sustainable consumption."

For most climate change activists, this means their life's work of making the world care about greenhouse gas emissions is giving way to a technical fight over how best to cut those emissions. Meanwhile, the activists who successfully kept nuclear reactor construction at bay will be forced to regroup and look for new strategies to achieve their goals."

..."As the United States, Europe and China come to recognize, to varying degrees, the growing strategic importance of finding new energy systems, the issue has moved from the domain of small fringe groups to the mainstream. The question, then, is: If climate change and oil use really are being addressed by the major energy consumers (including the United States, of all countries), will so many people and organizations remain intently focused on "saving" the climate?

The activists who first brought the current slate of energy issues to the fore are largely responsible for developing the structural remedies that industrialized countries are now turning to in response to strategic economic, national security and environmental concerns. As new players are now discussing these issues, however, the activists see themselves increasingly outside the decision-making process. The most idealistic of the lot, those who see their position eroding and their goals being co-opted, are about to launch the next major public crusade on energy policy -- one that focuses squarely on consumption and pays little attention to issues of power generation. The result will be a global energy conservation movement that could be bigger than the movement behind climate change. It could also offer tremendous financial rewards to innovators."

..."As is almost always the case, things have not worked out perfectly for the idealists (and, as they are idealists, this is to say things have not worked out at all). So where do they go from here? Having led the public to care about climate change only to be co-opted by industry, those dedicated to the attainment of the ideal energy system are regrouping around the issue of "sustainable consumption." The term, grown out of international environmental conferences, is defined by the Sierra Club as "the use of goods and services that satisfy basic needs and improve quality of life while minimizing the use of irreplaceable natural resources and the byproducts of toxic materials, waste and pollution."

The key elements of sustainable consumption are taxing consumption, taking a life-cycle view of a product's costs and increasing individual consumers' attention to these issues. The issue is a natural follow-on to the 10-year focus on energy generation, and can build on many of the same concepts."

..."Outside of automobile fuel-efficiency standards and moves by individual corporations and institutions to save energy, conservation has been looked at as a second-tier issue compared to generation. That is now going to change."


PS -- Stratfor didn't give me a dime for the endorsement. But their analysis is so good that I recommend at least signing up for the free email updates.