By Alvaro Perez Cardenes, The European Institute for International Law and International Relations. The Covid-19 pandemic has been an unprecedented crisis in our lifetimes. Governments have had to place strict lockdowns, where non-essential shops have been closed; curfews have been set and even like in the case of Spain, and the population have had to endure several months of confinement, where …

The relations between China and Europe has been fostered since the since the second century BC, when the China’s Emperor exchanged silk for “celestial horses of Ferghana” to maintain his army (Boulnois, 2010). Even if the silk trade was forbidden outside of the Middle Kingdom, such traffic allowed the worlds of East and West to meet through the creation of …

 By Alvaro Perez Cardenes, The European Institute for International Law and International Relations. Expanding the number of member states, which conform the European Union has been one of its main focuses since its inception, as it went from six members in 1951 when the Treaty of Paris was signed to 27 members that are currently in after the recent exit of …

Three decades after the end of the Cold War, the announcement of new sanctions on the Russian Federation from the United States, for meddling in the US elections and for threatening the sovereignty of Ukraine, bring up memories from the past (Hunnicat et al, 2021). However, the world has changed dramatically from the bipolarity of the second half of the …

Since the treaty of Nice in 2001, the European Union created the European Politcy of Common Security (known as the EPCS), led by the high representative of external policies, previously Ravier Solana. But we can’t properly speak about an European army, and what is displayed is more an orientation strategy, like the Strategy of Security in 2003 that identifies the …

The globalization is a process that began in the early eighteenth century, the Enlightenment one. It’s surely not the first opening of the national markets worldwide wave we knew. Indeed, we could begin to speak about globalization since the day when the European ships started to travel around the world: it’s an ancient process that knows some acceleration through time. …

It is the moment that all the grunting and yelling has been leading up to. Few doubted the United States and Iran deep-down preferred diplomacy — even a new deal — to escalating tensions, and possibly military confrontation. Now the moment of truth is here, in a Vienna conference room, where the E3+2 of the nuclear deal (UK, France, Germany, …

17 April 2021 Brussels has been the focus this week of a full court diplomatic offensive by U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken who arrived earlier this week and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin who landed in Belgium Wednesday for his first in-person meeting since the coronavirus pandemic began with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.   The main goal of the meetings …

Russian military maneuvers along the Ukrainian border have caused many to recall the 2014 invasion of Crimea, which U.S. military leaders regularly refer to as a “wake up call” regarding the kind of threat Russia continues to present to America and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Several key areas of concern cited by Western observers and senior U.S. military …

17 April 2021 The US 2020 election still hovers over the Supreme Court with another pending Pennsylvania case Five months after the presidential election and nearly 100 days into President Joe Biden’s term, the Supreme Court is still considering whether to take up a case related to voting rights in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. So far, the justices declined …