The last year’s Middle East political agenda was mainly dominated by the redundant paradigm called the “Deal of the Century”. A promising title for the latest initiative of president Donald Trump who, setting aside the US plans to building the “new” or “great” Middle East (that the former secretary of state Condoleeza Rice launched in 2000), came up with an objective of his own – equally “modest” and complex and difficult – to find a final and long-lasting solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The occurrence and rapid spread of COVID-19 has shaken the entire world. Initially seen as a local phenomenon in Wuhan or, in the worst-case scenario only in China, it turned in less than two months in a global problem.

The Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, “Kosovo”, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and, sometimes, Croatia and Slovenia) is an area in Europe which tries (or so it says) to share European values and join the great “European family” represented by the EU, but it faces a series of challenges. This is not a first; just like the Balkans, the area of the Western Balkans is somewhat particular, an area which knew how to test the entire world, and not just once.

In an unstable geopolitical environment, where the international landscape is marked by growing tensions, the reformation process of the European Union after Brexit cannot ignore the way the Member States seek to relate themselves to the security and defence dimension.

The trilateral military cooperation, begun in November 2017, has all the necessary components to become decisive for the three countries in the eastern Mediterranean in the long-term. In addition, the US is fully behind the three countries, sending a clear signal to Ankara not to provoke conflict in the region.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland leaving the European Union and Euratom represents a major challenge to the EU member states and has complex economic, financial, social and political implications for the entire Community acquis.
Sergiu Mişcoiu, professor at the Faculty of European Studies, Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, offers us an overall picture regarding the perspectives and challenges related to the protection of the EU’s identity in the post-Brexit context, in the interview given to Vladimir Adrian Costea for the Geostrategic Pulse magazine.

In this article, we set out to look at prisons as potential sources for the expansion of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are taking into account the special status of prisons and the informal rules, which set the ground for life behind bars. We are referring to the dynamics of entries and exits from the penitentiary, in order to identify possible preventive and management measures, should a COVID-19 outbreak occurs.

Twice in the last decade, Orwell’s seminal dystopia 1984 topped best-sellers list. In 2013, after Edward Snowden leaked revelations about the NSA’s widespread surveillance operations, 1984 sales rose dramatically amid an explosion of references to the book’s totalitarian, tentacular entity, the “Big Brother” . It spiked again, by more than 9500%, in late 2017, when a White House aide casually evoked the existence of “alternative facts” when faced with her own previous erroneous statements.

The Versailles system of treaties between 1919 and 1920, following World War I, replaces imperialism with nationalism and practically ends the process – which lasted for the whole 19th century – of the formation of the modern European states. The first country to separate from the Ottoman Empire was Greece, after a long Russian-Ottoman war, which ended with the Adrianopolis Peace Treaty in 1829 and recognised the autonomy of the newly emerged state.

After 18 years of war, the USA and the Taliban insurgents decided to conclude an agreement that many analysts considered as having a historical dimension and significance. It is meant to pave the way for the withdrawal of the US and NATO troops, as well as for the start of a peace process between the insurgents and the government in Kabul led by the president Ashraf Ghani – who wasn’t present in Doha for the negotiations, as it is seen by the Islamist Taliban as a “US and Western puppet”.