In its last annual report signed on February 6 on the threat assessment, the director’s office United States National Intelligence –which controls all 16 intelligence agencies and was created after the 9/11 terrorist attacks– andexpresses its concern about the reconfiguration of the World Order that is taking place on the planet due to the intersection of two variables: the reactivation of the political-military blocs and the effects caused by the covid-19 pandemic.
In the context of the National Security Strategy of the White House, the report on threats establishes the conjunction of information on the international scene and presents a complex international situation dominated by the intersection of two critical strategic challenges:
on one side, the great world powers, regional rising powers and non-state actors will compete for establishing the emerging conditions and rules that will shape that New Order for decades to come.
On the other hand, the list of shared global challenges is long: climate change, human security, health security and economic problems driven by energy and strategic insecurity derived from the war in Ukraine that is now one year old.
The most important fact of all the security approaches of the United States is located in the centrality of American “national interests” as the guiding axis of the American strategy to drive the dynamics of the conflict; that is to say, subordinates the interests of allied countries and blocs to the priorities –clearly defined in the Biden Administration’s National Security Strategy– del american way of life or the American way of life or, simply put, the comfort of the American elite that is perceived as the guiding principle of Washington’s tasks as a national security state.
At a disaggregated level, the list of problems defined as threats to US stability is foreseeable: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea as active players, while it also defines problems of the functioning of the world system: climate change, health security due to viruses or biological weapons, the development of autonomous science and technology outside of US controls, the use of digital weapons to establish authoritarian government lines, the uncontrolled proliferation of nuclear weapons, the economic crisis caused by the war in Ukraine, the growing dynamics of migration, transnational organized crime and global terrorism.
The document from the Director of National Intelligence lists the problems of the situation, but clearly defines the circumstances of the moment: the dispute between blocks, countries and organizations for the rethinking of the World Order and a long inventory of uncontrolled effects that are causing wars. and health problems out of control.
The Threat Assessment of the White House National Intelligence Office coincided in political time with the holding of the annual Security Conference in Munich, this time without the expectations of 2021 due to the defeat of Trump and the climate of instability in the area eurasian. The main concern of American strategists for the coming years includes, of course,the still unpredictable effects of the war in Ukraine, but it clearly defines the number one priority of global instability Perceived by the Intelligence Community of the United States: the consolidation of China as a world power and its fundamental role in the definition of the new World Order.
American fear is described in a perception of China as a world power in itself and with territorial and strategic expansion objectivesstarting from the leadership of President Xi Jinping who has just obtained his third re-election: the expansion of his influence in East Asia, the objective of swallowing Taiwan, the strengthening of his capacity for military growth, the economic strength of his trade, expansion into the space of Chinese influence and investment in science and technology to compete with the Americans, in addition to clandestine activities in cyberspace, especially in terms of espionage.
Although only signs of competition and localized conflicts are perceived on the international scene, US intelligence tries to encompass the accumulation of irregularities at the present time, which it defines as the redefinition of a new World Order, although not so much in terms of new models. economic or political or wars of territorial recomposition, but rather as effects of out of control problems such as transnational organized crime especially around the international problem of drug trafficking and consumption.
He Beijing government is facing more serious problems internally –as in domestic terrorism, violent migration, increased crime, mass shootings, and the lack of societal expectations of employment– enough to give higher priority to world reorganization. The Biden White House has failed to clearly and purposefully position the United States in the international crisis, as seen in limited interpretation of the short term in Ukraine, national crises in Western Europe, neglect in Africa, and the lack of a strategy to address the serious national crises in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The international scene has just joined the crisis in the US presidential election process in 2024with a Donald Trump who wants to be a Republican candidate and return to rule the White House.
The content of this column is the sole responsibility of the columnist and not of the newspaper that publishes it.
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