The far right, both in Europe and the United States, has a long history of politicizing public health, casting immigrants as vectors for disease and infection, as pollutants of the body politic: poisoners of the physical and moral health of race and nation.
The debate about sanctions and their humanitarian implications on populations at large came back into the limelight with the unfolding of the Covid-19 pandemic in Iran.
During the past few weeks, the oil market experienced unprecedented volatility. On 20 April, “the Black Monday”, the price of the West Texas Intermediate fluctuated between -40 USD and positive values.
The field of privacy and data protection is probably the one where the most interesting moves occurred in the European Union's legal system over the last decades, leading to remarkable political externalities, most notably in the relationship with the United States. If a “Balkanization” of cyberspace did take place, the protection of privacy and personal data offers a privileged standpoint from which to look at how the European Union institutions, and above all the Court of Justice, contributed to such a result.
US oil and gas production has been booming, changing domestic markets and the role of U.S. production in the world. President Trump talks about “energy dominance” and about oil and gas as a driver for growth and exports. The term “dominance” isn’t accurate, but the United States is now the world’s largest gas producer and a global player in gas markets.
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.
