{"id":5413,"date":"2015-02-07T19:58:11","date_gmt":"2015-02-08T00:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5413"},"modified":"2015-02-07T19:58:11","modified_gmt":"2015-02-08T00:58:11","slug":"global-conflict-intensity-spikes-to-7-year-high","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5413","title":{"rendered":"Global Conflict Intensity Spikes To 7-Year High"},"content":{"rendered":"

Global Conflict Intensity Spikes To 7-Year High<\/a><\/h3>\n

If it\u2019s not one geopolitical concern these days it\u2019s invariably another.\u00a0<\/strong>If today\u2019s story isn\u2019t weak-handed Greece escalating the rhetoric in its hopeless game of chicken with eurozone creditors, it\u2019s ISIS ratcheting up the shock factor in a campaign to scare U.S. coalition partners away from an increasingly ineffectual bombing campaign in Syria and Iraq. If it\u2019s not an escalation of tensions between Russia and Ukraine, it\u2019s\u00a0logrolling<\/a>between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia with the fate of the Assad regime, Gazprom, and the Russian economy at stake. As we\u2019ve seen over the past several months (e.g. crude in a veritable tailspin) and over the past several days (e.g. hourly news out of Greece\u00a0raining<\/a>\u00a0on the BLS\u2019s non-farm revision\u00a0parade<\/a>), markets are becoming increasingly tethered to the vagaries of geopolitics — and don\u2019t expect that trend to abate any time soon.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, BBVA is on the case, noting that \u201cgeopolitical analysis is becoming a key element on the agenda for 2015.\u201d Indeed.\u00a0That\u2019s why the bank has just launched their first ever \u201cBBVA Research conflict & social unrest monthly\u00a0update<\/a>.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

From BBVA, on conflict:<\/p>\n

\n
During January, the presence of ISIS in the Middle East continued to be a threat while the Russian-Ukrainian crisis escalated, increasing geopolitical worries in the region. In contrast, territorial disputes and geopolitical tensions eased in South-Eastern Asia. Social unrest related to demands for democracy (North Africa), together with terrorism and economic demands (Europe), have also increased\u2026<\/em><\/div>\n

…key hot spots continued to be the Russia-Ukraine and ISIS conflict<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0<\/em>The Russian-Ukraine crisis escalated<\/em><\/a>\u00a0again in January (see our previous hot topic) after a relatively calmer period during October-November. This triggered a new meeting in the EU level to discuss new sanctions. The situation in neighbouring countries (Armenia, Belarus, Georgia\u2026) also remained tense. \u00a0In the Middle East, the International coalition forces regained some ground in Northern Syria (Kobane) and were able to stop the advance of ISIS in Iraq. However, it will take more time to secure peace in the region. Tensions also increased in Western Europe after the attacks in Paris and in Belgium.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And on protests:<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Global Conflict Intensity Spikes To 7-Year High If it\u2019s not one geopolitical concern these days it\u2019s invariably another.\u00a0If today\u2019s story isn\u2019t weak-handed Greece escalating the rhetoric in its hopeless game of chicken with eurozone creditors, it\u2019s ISIS ratcheting up the shock factor in a campaign to scare U.S. coalition partners away from an increasingly ineffectual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[35,2146,204,352,355,3321,1167,1239,446,637,657,694,776,821],"class_list":["post-5413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-assad","tag-conflict","tag-democracy","tag-gazprom","tag-geopolitics-2","tag-global-conflict","tag-greece","tag-is","tag-isis","tag-politics","tag-protests","tag-russia","tag-syria","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5413"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5414,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5413\/revisions\/5414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}