Soleimani was Iran's most important military strategist and tactician in Tehran's long-standing campaign to expand Shi'ite and Iranian influence throughout the Middle East. Dexter Filkins, a veteran chronicler of Middle East conflict, described him in a profile in the New Yorker magazine as "the single most powerful operative in the Middle East today,2 Jammie Dettmer wrote in a profile for VOA.

That's an assessment shared by current and former U.S. officials.

"We have killed one of the most significant militant actors inside the Iranian government," said Patrick Kimmitt, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs. "It takes the whole issue of the United States and Iran, and the United States and Iraq to a whole new place. This is an inflection point that can't be understated."

Rare earth elements are used in very small amounts, but their significance to the defence sector, despite it making up a small proportion of the total demand, and to emerging and potentially disruptive technologies, combined with China's control over the majority of the market, has given them outsized geopolitical relevance.

Rare earth mining, processing and fabrication capabilities will even more strongly influence geopolitical dynamics in the coming years as the world undergoes its nascent energy transition and transportation evolution. In the near term, China will benefit from its near-monopoly, but ultimately its own growing domestic demand will limit the duration of its control over the sector and eventually force production diversification.

Introduction

Recent unexpectedly rapid melting of Arctic Ocean sea ice has captured the public imagination and created the impression of a „Race for the Arctic" with some countries scrambling for access to new trade routes, fishing grounds, energy and other seabed resources that could disturb the current geopolitical balance, writes Lutz Feldt. Others are concerned by the consequences of indiscriminate exploitation for the environment and indigenous peoples and fear possible conflict in the region.

Beneath the heightened political rhetoric, national posturing and media hype about unresolved territorial claims, huge hydrocarbon resources and disappearing polar bears, lies a complex and dynamic picture of disputed science, with inadequate data and unreliable predictions and increasing volatility in the energy market that is not conducive to long term investment and which may affect stability.

In such a fluid situation there is clearly scope for opportunism and miscalculation to lead to friction, which if mishandled could develop into military inter-state conflict.

The Arctic is becoming the cockpit of the world for three central reasons, writes Tim Reilly:
1. The epicentre of the fastest rate of physical state change in the earth's climate and weather. Interest in the Arctic is now global.
2. A region in which the world's most powerful countries will compete in C21 for strategic dominance, control of the Northern Sea Route (NSR), and access to vast hydrocarbon, fish, and rare-earth mineral reserves.
3. An arena in which two philosophically contrary governance frameworks exist to date in harmony, namely Sovereignty (geopolitical and strategic concerns - held by NATO/Arctic states), and Sovereign Rights (International Law, Human Rights, United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), etc), is the governance framework of the Arctic Council (AC). For all these reasons the AC is a highly successful international relations forum in which consideration may be given in due course, to Confidence Building Measures between the U.S. and Russia. In the meantime, it is the essential governance framework for maintaining stability and predictability in the region.

On 30 November 2019, a just-released jihadist Usman Khan, attending a "Learning Together" seminar in London, wearing a fake suicide vest, murdered two members of the organisation before running to London Bridge to stab more people, writes Olivier Guitta. He was subsequently killed by police and when details of his case emerged, the public was outraged. Khan had been convicted for trying to attack the London Stock Exchange and was sentenced to 16 years in jail. After serving half of his sentence, he was automatically released. The judicial system in Britain had miserably failed but this is happening throughout Europe when it comes to dealing with terrorism cases.

For current approximate locations of US aircraft carriers see next page

In the last few years, China has become a polar power, writes Patrick Hebrard. Beijing's interest initially focused on Antarctica, but its presence in the Arctic has accelerated in recent years, driven by global warming and melting ice. The term polar translates into Chinese by jidi (极地) which means the "extremes of the earth". The Arctic is therefore the "Far North", the Antarctic "the Far South". Long remaining ambiguous, the Chinese strategy for the poles now appears in official documents, showing its willingness to be a recognized actor in these regions of the world and to defend resolutely its interests.

China's presence in these extremes is recent. In 1925, China had signed, without enthusiasm, the Treaty of Paris on Spitzbergen, solicited by France. With the events that China went through, this signature felt into oblivion and it was only in 1964 that the State Administration of Oceans was created which progressively became interested in the polar environment. See more on next page

The steady reduction of the Arctic ice means that all types of navigation in Arctic waters are substantially increasing, writes Fernando del Pozo:
• Trans-Arctic traffic, which some shipowners are already trying to convert into regular services, even building specialized ships, such as TeeKay which has commissioned the first LNG carrier with icebreaker capabilities, the Eduard Toll; also Russia's Rosatom group is actively planning to operate a container shipping line along the Northern Sea Route, to compete with the Suez Canal;
• Intra-Arctic, already very active, although almost exclusively between Russian ports, such as Dudinka in the Yenisey, serving the mining complex in Noril'sk; Yamburg, Noviy Port and Sabetta in the Ob, also in Siberia; and in European Russia Varandey serving the facilities in the Pechora. One exception to this Russian-only network is the Murmansk-Churchill Arctic bridge, which exports the wheat production of Manitoba, Canada, bringing in exchange Russian fertilizers; and
• Destinational (eco-tourism, scientific, research, fishing...), probably the type of shipping showing the biggest growth.