USA

The Middle East is a fundamentally unstable area of the world.  Threats to regional stability have regularly emerged both from disputes between governments and from internal forces within countries.  This is likely to continue for decades to come.  Looking ahead, however, the region’s stability will be increasingly threatened by relatively new, largely external dynamics.  The most important of these will be the interplay of three ongoing and unfinished transitions: the rise of Chinese regional influence, the prospect of US regional retrenchment, and the changing global strategic approach of

The 2020 U.S. election campaign will be the most bitter, acrimonious ever. Whether Trump is re-elected or not, America will emerge from the election even more divided, resentful, and changed.

South East Asia is set to be a key driver of global economic growth in the coming decades, with Indonesia alone projected to be the world’s fourth biggest economy by 2050. Vietnam and the Philippines, each with approximately 100 million people and fast-growing economies, will likely emerge as middle powers themselves. While Thailand and Malaysia have begun to age and are battling to avoid middle-income traps, they are already large, globalized economies.

“The Monroe Doctrine is alive and well”, proclaimed former US National Security advisor John Bolton in April 2019, re-invoking an old vestige of American foreign policy dating back to 1823. A time when an infant United States was attempting to affirm its sphere of influence south of the Rio Grande, declaring that any interference in the region from European powers would be recognised as an unfriendly act against Washington.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, if not from the birth of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) itself, relations with United States have proven to be a central factor in China’s strategic calculus and a major driver of Chinese foreign policy. Indeed, America’s ability to weigh on all spheres of China’s national security – from domestic to regional and global – poses fundamental challenges for Beijing.

I grandi attori internazionali appaiono in questo contesto storico tutti alle prese con crisi, seppure di natura molto diversa. Gli Stati Uniti escono sconfitti da due guerre, Iraq e Afghanistan, e sembrano costretti a ridimensionarsi e riorientarsi, potendo contare su risorse relativamente limitate. L’Europa cerca di frenare le forze disgreganti, mentre anche la Cina è alle prese con una crisi che è sia politica sia morale a causa delle vicende legate alla corruzione.

Dal 20 al 22 marzo il presidente Barack Obama compirà un’importante visita di Stato tra Israele – la prima nello stato ebraico dall’inizio del suo mandato nel 2009 -, Territori Occupati e Giordania. I temi di maggiore confronto saranno i principali dossier mediorientali: dalla crisi siriana al nucleare iraniano, passando per la transizione egiziana, la lotta al terrorismo internazionale ed, infine, il rilancio della questione israelo-palestinese.

Per comprendere le priorità e le modalità di gestione da parte della Federazione russa del G20 abbiamo proceduto a un inquadramento politico ed economico del paese.

At last, the big day of the Bahrain workshop on the Palestinian economy is coming. After two years of negotiations and secret plans, the Trump administration should soon propose a US framework of guidelines for resolving the oldest struggle in the Middle East, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The location of this event will be Manama (June 25-26), the capital of Bahrain and focal point of some important Middle Eastern dynamics. The conference will bring together government and business leaders from Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

As the first Democratic presidential primary debates rapidly approach, observers of American politics both domestically and around the world are increasingly focused on one key question: Will Donald Trump be re-elected president in 2020?  Many of the academic models that historians and political scientists use to predict presidential elections are favorable for a Trump re-election, and most of the global betting markets have him as close to an even-money proposition.  On some level, this makes sense; incumbent presidents typically win re-election barring economic recession, an unpopular maj