A multifaceted response from Europe has so far prevented its energy woes from creating widespread social and economic destabilization. But with winter approaching, the crisis is far from over and risks are getting worse.
While European energy prices have eased slightly in recent months, stress continues to build across a continent that has long been dependent on access to cheap Russian energy.
Within days of each other, revealing portraits of the United States and China have been unveiled. In Washington, the Biden administration released its national security strategy. It says much about American psychology at a critical juncture. And Beijing witnessed the opening of the 20th Party Congress on 16 October that will see Xi Jinping confirmed as president for a record third term.
While whispers of the current emerging market debt crisis, the result of the rapidly strengthening dollar, could be heard throughout the summer, virtually no one predicted the blow the dollar’s rise would deal to some other developed economies. But with the dollar reaching levels not seen in a generation, a battering is precisely what several are being unexpectedly dealt.
When the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) recovered the last pocket of territory from under the control of the Islamic State in March 2019, the problem of how to deal with the foreign fighters who had joined IS but were now seeking to return to their countries of origin (or might do so the near future) became increasingly pressing.
Six men accused of helping a gunman who carried out Austria’s first deadly jihadist attack go on trial in a Vienna court on Tuesday.
On November 2, 2020, convicted Islamic State sympathiser Kujtim Fejzulai went on a shooting rampage in downtown Vienna, killing four and wounding 23 others before police shot him dead.
An energy policy that bans investment in some technologies based on ideological views and ignores security of supply is doomed to a strepitous failure.
The energy crisis in the European Union was not created by market failures or lack of alternatives. It was created by political nudging and imposition.
Americans may not even know that China has struck the first blow until months after it has occurred… Americans think China’s war planners think like America’s war planners. Unfortunately, the Chinese ones do not. First strikes, despite what former intelligence officials believe, do not have to look like the invasion of Normandy in 1944.
Over the weekend, in a 55-second YouTube video with dramatic music, the world got a glimpse at a new killing machine that’s more fuel-efficient, quieter and sleek.
General Dynamics, the defense contracting juggernaut, showed off a prototype of its next-generation military tank, the AbramsX. It’s the biggest upgrade of America’s military tank technology since early in the Cold War, former military officials said, which presents both critical design advances and worries about unnecessary military spending.
La crise énergétique n’est pas née des sanctions contre la Russie. Elle est la conséquence des délocalisations, de la spéculation sur les matières premières, de la politique européenne de la démographie…
First, Europe Must Realize That He Might Return
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caught Europe by surprise. Although U.S. intelligence services predicted the Russian offensive almost to the day, few European leaders took heed of their warnings, instead choosing to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin would use nonmilitary means to destabilize Ukraine. Germany’s new chancellor, Olaf Scholz, was among the European leaders who sleepwalked into the crisis. Like much of German society, his administration was completely unprepared for a major war in Europe. For too long, the German government had clung to old certainties: that close energy ties with Russia fostered stability, that trade promoted political change, and that dialogue with Moscow was valuable in and of itself. The awakening was brutal. Overnight, all these cherished assumptions were shattered.