Introduction
Few of us will look back fondly at 2020. COVID-19 has killed millions, destroyed the lives and livelihoods of millions more, and triggered the worst global economic crisis since World War II. At the same time, few protagonists of the world’s deadliest wars saw reason to stop fighting each other to battle the virus. Indeed, in Afghanistan, despite peace talks, in Yemen, the Sahel and Somalia, violence and human suffering continued apace. The latter part of the year saw wars reignite in Nagorno-Karabakh and the Central African Republic. A new conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region grinds on, this one especially troubling due not only to its human toll but the risk of spill-over.
Nor has 2021 got off to a great start. Many Europeans greeted the new year in lockdown, facing their third – and possibly gravest – wave of the virus. The pandemic continues its ravages across much of the globe. Hope brought by the quick arrival of effective vaccines is already being tempered by the realisation of just how long it will take to roll them out, especially in parts of the Global South, and the worry that emerging mutations might undercut their efficacy. The full impact of the economic crisis has yet to be felt: it risks destabilising countries where the social contract was already fraying. Then there was the bitter end to Donald Trump’s divisive U.S. presidency. The horror many in Europe and elsewhere felt at watching a mob inspired by Trump’s own words occupy the iconic Capitol building on 6 January only deepened as it became clear, in the days afterward, how much worse it could have been.
A new administration in Washington brings some good news for Europe.
During Trump’s tenure, few other places saw longstanding assumptions about U.S. policy turned so abruptly on their heads, as he questioned alliances, disparaged the EU and European leaders, and mostly ignored European views and interests. President Joe Biden brings opportunities for a reset. Ideally, the U.S. would, with Europe’s support, return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and then seek further agreements with Tehran about its role in the Middle East, thus halting what has been a perilous escalation in U.S.-Iran tension. In Venezuela, like Iran the target of a mostly ineffective “maximum pressure” strategy over the past few years, a new team in Washington could bring an approach more deeply rooted in diplomacy and closer to that of Brussels. European leaders will, rightly, welcome the Biden administration’s plans to return to multilateral diplomacy – and the prospects that in so doing it will work more closely with allies on the UN Security Council, lend greater support to UN peacemaking, lead on tackling the climate crisis and hopefully help coordinate an equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.
But even with a new U.S. administration, the continent’s thorniest geopolitical challenges still loom large. First there is the United States itself. U.S. institutions weathered the last few years, but political gridlock and polarisation, millions of citizens’ belief that Trump won the 2020 vote and the chance that he – or someone with similar authoritarian leanings and antipathy toward traditional allies – could return in 2025 mean that Biden might offer only short respite. Then there is China. The Biden team will look to European allies to help stand up to Chinese trade practices, assertiveness in the South China Sea and other parts of Asia, and growing heft in global institutions. For European leaders, doing so where it serves Europe’s interests, managing with as little friction as possible any divergence with Washington, while avoiding unnecessarily antagonising Beijing and keeping open avenues for coordination on issues like climate change and nuclear proliferation will be no mean feat.
Relations closer to home are no easier. Dealings with Russia are as fraught as ever over Ukraine, alleged Russian election meddling, sanctions and now Moscow’s treatment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Hostility between the Kremlin and Western capitals complicates cooperation where that makes sense, including on rebuilding trade links across the South Caucasus after the Nagorno-Karabakh war. That said, Washington and Moscow’s rapid cooperation to extend the New START treaty suggests the U.S. will try to work with Russia where it can; European states should do the same. Turkey’s relations with EU governments are equally complex. As tensions in the eastern Mediterranean Sea mount, Ankara bridles at what it sees as European ingratitude for its hosting millions of refugees and flexes its muscles in conflicts spanning Europe’s unstable southern and eastern flanks.
Still, despite the geopolitical heartburn, Brussels and European states can do a lot to alleviate some of today’s worst wars and crises. The world may look a rougher place than it did a decade or two ago: major and regional power rivalries fiercer; more actors involved in more conflicts; more of them ready to pursue their ends with violence. But Europe’s diplomatic and economic muscle still give it an edge in running or supporting peacemaking efforts and improving the plight of people whose lives have been upended by war. The new European Peace Facility, a new fund that will pay third states’ military and defence initiatives outside Europe, should allow the EU to more easily support military and defence operations abroad, where those are necessary. As the list of crises below illustrates, efforts to prevent or calm conflicts, or to mitigate the suffering and destruction they cause, can often cut through, work around or continue irrespective of a world order in flux.
"world" - Google News
January 29, 2021 at 07:52PM
https://ift.tt/36lErmu
Watch List 2021 - January 2021 - World - ReliefWeb
"world" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3d80zBJ
https://ift.tt/2WkdbyX
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Watch List 2021 - January 2021 - World - ReliefWeb"
Post a Comment