The Islamic State (IS) is a practitioner of terrorism even more terrible than al-Qaeda as it has recently amply demonstrated. It is also an insurgent movement and an army, and unless that is understood the strategy carried out by the US will fail.
Before formulating any response to the ISIS challenge, the European Union must carefully assess the nature of the risk to European security interests.
Periodically, Spain gears itself for the enormous effort to get itself elected by the UN General Assembly a non-permanent member of the Security Council for two years.
Some in Russia maintain that the West promised there would be no NATO expansion eastwards, even towards what was soon to be the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), in exchange for accepting German unification. The West, particularly the US, maintains there was no such commitment. Which is true?
NATO can choose between building either bridges or borders, but it cannot ignore the vectors. Does it know what it wants? Does it want what it knows? Do its members, who have been cutting their military expenditure as a result of the crisis, know what they want, even if they agree on calling for an increase?
The US knows that a nuclear agreement with Iran is the best way to normalise foreign relations with Iran, to ensure it ceases to be a rogue state and embraces moderation. This should change the dynamics in the Middle East, even if Israel is unwilling.
With North Korea unwilling to halt WMD proliferation yet in the middle of an opening up process, the EU’s policy has to carefully balance non-proliferation activities with economic engagement.
Iraq has failed as a concept. It has been a failure of seeing democracy as only a question of votes, disregarding the protection and integration of minorities.
Has Putin won? In the short term, so it seems. In the long run it is much more uncertain because Western confidence in the Russian President, and in Russia, has evaporated.
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