In today’s polarized world we witness a decline of multilateralism and arms control. This implies that the world moves towards a multipolar world with an uncontrolled arms race and nuclear deterrence. The abandonment of the INF-Treaty might lead to new deployments of medium range missiles in Asia and Europe. The New START-Treaty is not likely to be extended after 2021 by the US-administration with reference to China’s nuclear weapons.

'Global health crisis and fight against an invisible enemy - NATO readines and resilience, Euro-Atlantic values, solidarity' - this is the name of the International Webinar School. Educational Webinar 5 stresses the importance of Euro-Atlantic values in a global health crisis.

The European Security Architecture is in a deep crisis. The EU faces tough times, major challenges and countless hybrid threats: pandemic and climate change, global migration and refugee crisis, systemic terrorism, pervasive cyber threats and the return of the forgotten conflict with Russia. The number of challenges and conflicts is countless: the violent suppression of the protests in Belarus, the ongoing military conflict in Donbas, the collapse of Libya, the confrontation between Greece and Turkey – just to name a few. All this is taking place against the background of profound changes in the international order, the rise of Asia and a redefinition of the global role of the USA. All these developments clearly illustrate that the EU sorely needs a real common foreign and security policy.

The explosion of large amounts of ammonium nitrate in the port of Beirut in August 2020 has claimed over 190 lives, even more injuries (around 6,500) and about 300 thousand displaced people. To make things worse, it has brought an already increasingly devastating situation in the country to a new level – triggering another upsurge of mass protests that had been going on in the country since October 2019. It seems that urgent/immediate crisis has hit Lebanon on every front.

Short interview on the developments in Belarus in the aftermath of the presidential elections on 9 August 2020