An understanding of the importance of the Gulf States is vital for explaining how the wider Middle East functions, thanks to their wealth, their energy resources, their geostrategic position, and their straddling of many of the MENA region's major faultlines.
The outcome of last October's parliamentary elections has sent Georgia on a bumpy road of political transition. The EU can help by stepping up its engagement and gain a more impartial foothold in the country.
The Cypriot crisis has made it brutally clear just how bad misgovernment with the EU – and the eurozone – really is. The only way to fix this is for genuine banking, fiscal, and economic union within the eurozone, backed by legitimate political instruments.
The collapse of Lebanon’s government has thrust the country into a deepening political crisis. The war in Syria and recent actions by Hezbollah also suggest that internal conflict may return to Lebanon.
Obama said all the right things in Jerusalem, but what next? The visit has offered nothing new on the programmatic side, no plan for going forward.
If Obama begins to grasp the tribal, fluid and divided nature of Israeli politics and how to impact Israeli voters and their leaders, then this visit might be worth something after all.
An escalating crisis in Bulgaria marked by street-protests across the country forced the government's resignation. But the instant wisdom that financial austerity caused it is misleading.
Brussels and Kyiv have been at loggerheads for over a year and the recent EU-Ukraine summit has not broken the deadlock. Will the fling between the EU and Ukraine that is now a decade old end bitterly or will it finally mature into a real partnership?
The latest Eurobarometer figures are showing clearly what the election results have been hinting at: hit by the crisis, Europeans have lost their confidence in the EU. After having saved the euro, we must rescue the legitimacy of the EU.
Xi Jinping, China's new head of state, is not a reformer but a hardline party loyalist. His first months in de facto power do not point towards a new liberal era in China and his rhetoric evokes a China of the past.