Since the EU and Turkey concluded their refugee agreement, the central Mediterranean is becoming increasingly important again and is currently the most travelled route for irregular immigration to Europe. A proportion of the refugees and migrants on this route in 2016 came from the Horn of Africa and East Africa. As part of the Khartoum Process, the EU is seeking to cooperate with the countries in this region on migration policy. The Better Migration Management (BMM) programme is one part of these endeavours. Some civil society actors criticize the programme because they believe it disregards human rights and validates despotic regimes. Analysis shows that this claim has, so far, been unjustified. Nevertheless, there is a risk that such cooperation may embolden authoritarian leaders who commit human rights violations. It is, therefore, all the more important to pay attention not only to effectiveness, but also to sustainability and legitimacy when establishing partnerships on migration policy.
Actualmente Rusia no aspira a emprender nuevas aventuras bélicas. El modo sensato de abordar el significado de las maniobras Zapad-2017 sería verlo como parte de la disuasión estratégica dirigida a los países de la OTAN y sus socios.
Si España quiere que el sector exterior se consolide como un pilar de crecimiento económico, debe hacer un esfuerzo para aumentar el grado de sofisticación y diferenciación de su oferta.
Southeast Asia is arming massively. In the past decade, military spending by the region’s states has risen by 57 percent on average. China’s increasingly aggressive behaviour in the Pacific is frequently cited as the trigger for this leap in arms purchases. However, as this study will show, domestic and foreign-policy factors other than the ‘China factor’ have also been decisive for the increase: lasting territorial conflicts, domestic militant revolutionary movements and the powerful political influence of the military. Even if no direct link can be shown to exist between an arms race and an increasing likelihood of violent conflict breaking out, this does not mean that Southeast Asia is gaining in stability through the current arms build-up. On the contrary, the quantitative and qualitative expansion of military capacities has increased both threat perceptions and distrust in the region. In this context, Germany and many of its European neighbours would be well-advised to rethink their role as central arms suppliers to Southeast Asia more strategically and critically. Germany and the EU currently view the arms trade with Southeast Asian customers primarily from an economic perspective. What is needed, however, is a political and strategic discourse on the impact of their arms exports.
During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump unsettled the governments of Japan and South Korea by suggesting they should develop their own nuclear weapons to defend against the missile threat from North Korea. When Pyongyang announced the launch of four missiles towards the island of Guam, a US territory in the West Pacific, President Trump demanded North Korea stop issuing threats against the US or “they will be met with fire and fury”. Instead of bellicose rhetoric, however, diplomacy is needed to bring about de-escalation and dialogue with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Pyongyang has made significant advancements in its nuclear and missile weapons programmes. Washington is now faced with the quandary of how to react to the growing threat both to its allies and to its own territory. None of the policy options available to the US and its allies in the Asia-Pacific region seem promising and can, at best, only be successful in the long term.
An inadvertent worldwide alliance against encryption is emerging, as Western democracies join authoritarian regimes in weakening communication encryption and exploiting spyware. This accelerating global trend undermines efforts to enhance cyber-security. Germany should oppose such developments and intensify its efforts to champion encryption. This will also mean finding alternative instruments to keep terrorism suspects under surveillance without degrading the software security of the entire population.