Special Analysis

Case Study: The migration wave and the Schengen agreement Most of the observers of the Middle East have become used to the talk about a new Middle East. They did so after the Camp David accords, the Oslo Agreements and most recently the Arab Spring. In the end, it resulted …

The recent Group of Seven (G7) summit meeting in Schloss Elmau (Germany) took place in a global context marked not only by the proliferation of crises – from the Russian seizure of Crimea and the advent of the Islamic State to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and heightened tensions …

The recent Mediterranean migrant boat disasters, which highlighted the dimensions of the people-smuggling originating from war-torn Libya and aiming to Europe, as well as the savage killings’ video released at the same time by DAESH[1], also in Libya, shed a new light over the new activities of this terrorist group. …

The recent evolutions in Europe are marked by the political crisis generated by the development in Ukraine, and by the economic crisis (itself turned into a political one) that affects most visibly Greece, but also other European states. Analysts see them as indicators of a geopolitical shift generated by what …

The growing number of political victories obtained with the help of the social media, as well as the revelations about the complex manipulation processes for which they might be used, the launching of the “digital citizenship” and the extending use of the Bitcoin, the year-end crisis generated by the cyber …

CASE STUDIES IN THE ARAB WORLD   According to U.S. National Intelligence Council’s (NIC) “Global trends 2030 – Alternative worlds”[1], the world’s current roughly 50-percent urban population will climb to nearly 60 percent, or 4.9 billion people, in 2030. Urban centers are estimated to generate 80 percent of economic growth; …

On the first day of the 2014 Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the Syrian anti-Assad group called the “Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)”[1] announced that it would be establishing a caliphate[2], or Islamic State (IS, which also became the organization’s new name), on the territories it controls in …

For many analysts, geopolitics offers a useful framework to assess current events and evolutions in and around Ukraine, especially the movements of the power actors which have historically decided about its fate. The new feature that adds to Ukraine’s specific geopolitical position is independence, because Ukraine is an independent and …

Not earlier than 2011, the Arab world appeared to undergo a historic revolution that was supposed to define Islam in the 21st century, an Islam compatible and at ease with the democratic values of free speech and tolerance. With Osama bin Laden dead and al-Qaeda in disarray, moderate Muslims were …

At the beginning of 2014, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Intelligence Committee[1] that he “can’t say the threat from the terror network is any less than it was a decade ago”. He further added: “Al-Qaeda probably poses an even bigger challenge today, because its franchises …