In the history of wars – whether large or small – there is a stylistic and methodological tendency to overstate some of their episodes, most of the times subjectively chosen. Remembered as such either after the names of enemy commanders or the locations where confrontations took place, many of these martial actions were ennobled with epithets such as “historical” or “memorable”. Those labelled as “historical” especially, being scarcer, remained in the collective and historical memory as defining landmarks of the entire war.
Starting late 2019, we have been witnessing a new “historical episode” in Syria, where everybody is involved whether they want it or not, and if they want it they do it away from the spotlight and the public eye – whether Syrian, Arab, regional or international. And this episode is called Idlib, where for a few weeks now there has been a real war, which has already produced around one million refugees.

From the Editor

Valentin Naumescu, a professor at the Faculty of European Studies, Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca and President of the think tank Initiative for European Democratic Culture, made an account of this year’s Munich International Security Conference, the most prestigious international security forum, while being interviewed by Vladimir Adrian Costea, for the Geostrategic Pulse.

In the beginning of the document which includes his peace plan, president Donald Trump states that throughout history there have been conceived several peace plans for the Palestinians and the Israelis, however, none of them took into account the actual situation. He claims his plan is different. Nothing could be further from the truth, though. Completely built from clichés and lies, the so called plan, just like the others before it, ignores the national aspirations and rights of the Palestinians. Even though Donald Trump claims the plan is realistic and achievable, it favours one side only - the Israeli.

Wars, long-term conflicts, the fight against foreign occupations, the feeling of solidarity with the people of the oppressed community are just a few of the factors that have determined, in history, the evolution of the "foreign fighter" phenomenon. Heroes ready to sacrifice themselves for "noble" causes have been on the battlefield since the emergence of nineteenth-century nations in countries like Greece, the United States, Spain, Palestine, Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia and Somalia (Colgan & Hegghammer, 2011; Hennessy, 2012). But this was only the first stage of the phenomenon.

At the Berlin International Air Show in April 2018, Dassault and Airbus announced the launch of the”Future Combat Air System (FCAS)/ ”Système de combat aérien futur (SCAF)”, which includes a sixth generation combat aircraft, a new generation weapons system and other elements integrated into the operational airspace.

We shall wrongly understand the political meaning of Brexit if we fail to make reference to the timeline of the Brussels-London negotiations, and to the economic, social and political evolutions specific to the United Kingdom. An overall analysis of the evolution of the United Kingdom towards its withdrawal from the EU and Euratom helps us understand the contrast between the initial concept of a lesser Europe and the dire need to cooperate after Brexit.

In the wake of last month’s (December 2019) “Normandy” summit (see EDM, December 11, 12, 2019), and awaiting the same forum’s April 2020 top-level meeting, Ukrainian officials are airing proposals to revise the Kremlin-imposed Minsk “accords” of 2014 and 2015. The “accords,” designed to legalize Russia’s control of the Donetsk-Luhansk territory and to disrupt Ukraine farther afield, remain unimplemented to date thanks to the previous Ukrainian government’s successful maneuvering and stalling. That work has made it possible for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s administration now to call for revising the Minsk “accords.”

After two years of wait, controversies, scenarios and contradicting hypotheses, on the 28th of January 2020 president Donald Trump revealed, at the White House, the contents of the long-awaited US plan regarding the achievement of a peace solution to the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis, which the US president emphatically called “the Deal of the Century”. The ceremony took place in the presence of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, White House officials, including the team (led by the son-in-law and presidential advisor Jared Kushner), who had been working for two years to develop and finish the massive dossier regarding the US peace initiative. Neither having been informed nor consulted when the US initiative was launched and – , developed, the Palestinians were not present when this “peace plan” was made official, a plan they had been contesting and rejecting since its inception.

Since its establishment in 1948, the state of Israel has experienced many security incidents, some of which have posed a threat to its very existence. One of the prominent existential threats was the scenario of a hostile enemy state acquiring military nuclear capabilities, which would lead to an intolerable situation for the Jewish state. For the Israelis, such a scenario has repeated itself three times already: first, when Israel decided to destroy Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981; second, when Israel demolished the nuclear reactor built in Syria in 2007, and third, when the Israeli leadership confronted the question whether to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program in 2010-2011, but eventually refrained from this action. Empirically, these three incidents clearly demonstrate how Israel has responded to existential threats, taking into account its relationship with its main ally, the US.