The Arab Spring that broke out ten years ago in Tunisia caused significant changes and keeps on affecting one of the hottest areas of the global political geography – the Middle East. On the other hand, this series of protests and traditional unrest in the region has been overshadowed, at least as far as the West is concerned, as a consequence of the current Coronavirus pandemic.

These days, we feel tempted to imagine a world that will try, after the pandemic, to redefine itself in order to find a new balance. In the process, we tend to stop relating to the world that we know and in which we used to live. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, globalization and development had made the world in which we used to operate extremely dynamic, by virtue of our social interactions. Individuals and states were equally trying to maximize their resources and harness their potential.

Georgia’s former president, Mikheil Saakashvili, has accepted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s offer to chair the Executive Committee of Ukraine’s National Council for Reforms (Ukrinform, May 7). Taking up the new challenge, Saakashvili promised to draw on the experience of his universally recognized achievements in Georgia (which inspired this new appointment in Ukraine) “but also to draw on the experience of my defeats” (Ukraine Crisis Media Centre, May 8).

Contrary to some optimist commentators, Donald Trump’s administration has not given up, nor does it intend to give up implementing the initiative to solving the Palestinian dossier that the occupant of the presidential seat in the Oval Office himself labelled as “Deal of the Century”.

Since the beginning of this year, and even earlier, the world was taken over - with its values, frustrations, concerns and, most of all, with the frightening count of those defeated - by the poisoning stench of the killer COVID-19. The tale of this ailing world filled numerous bookshelves, and the obsessive leitmotif was whether “the world after” will ever be the same. Epidemics, which humanity had experienced throughout its long journey to civilization and survival have not been forgotten, nor have the nostalgic ludic moments with their beaches, the joy of exotic places and the customary normality threatened with extinction

Serbia is not seeking to replace the West as its principal partner, and no amount of Chinese coronavirus aid is going to change that.

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 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 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.