A Crash Course in the Wake of the US Presidential Elections

The Japanese-American defense alliance has been a defining factor in Japan’s foreign and defense policy for more than 70 years. With the enactment of the pacifist constitution in 1947, this new rulebook—and especially its famed Article 9—stripped the country of its sovereign right to wield war as a way of sorting out international conflicts, while it also established a prohibition on maintaining air, navy, or ground forces as part of a national army.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on 31 January 2020 that, as per his pre-election promise, he “got Brexit done.” After three years of tiring negotiations, the United Kingdom ceased to be a member state of the European Union. According to the plans, the still ongoing transition period would end with a UK-EU agreement on 31 December 2020. At the same time, the transition period puts London into a delicate situation, as it is no longer part of the EU, has no say in its decisions, but is still obliged to align with its rules, while also remaining member of the single market and customs union. It is no coincidence then that the British government has emphasised the importance of negotiating a trade deal with the EU before the end of the transition period.

can it be still bypassed?

In the last decade it became increasingly difficult for the European Union (EU) Member States (MS) to decide how the common European budget, the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), should be allocated between different priorities. The Union faces a raising number of challenges. External threats like migration, geopolitical tensions and trade wars are more common. Such issues make the settlement of internal affairs troublesome as well. Areas such as digitalisation or artificial intelligence (AI), that have received little attention from high politics before, are turning into top priorities along with the fight against climate change and the EU’s lengthy rule of law debate.

An Assessment of India’s Act East Policy

The Act East Policy was launched six years ago, and it was considered a major foreign policy initiative by India’s newly elected National Democratic Alliance government led by Narendra Modi. It was expected to bolster India’s engagement with the East, building on the success of the Look East Policy—its earlier avatar. Our latest analysis discusses the history, the goals, and the achievements of this cooperation and also comments on its likely future after the worldwide pandemic and the recent Chinese–Indian stand-off.

Selected Analyses by the Antall József Knowledge Centre Research Team

The unprecedented extent of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19 or also referred to as SARS-CoV 2) caught most of the experts by surprise. From its first appearance in late 2019 in Asia to its quick spread to other continents in early 2020 the pandemic made an unprecedented mark on global affairs in the 21st century. The researchers of the Antall József Knowledge Centre produced a set of short analyses in the past months that take a specific look at the widespread effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. From international relations to the future of the tourism and fashion industry, from the Middle East to the Western Balkans the prolonged presence of the virus is and will affect a large segment of our political, economic and social discourse.

September marks the first year in office of the second Conte government. The frail Italian coalition executive, born out of necessity at the end of a very turbulent summer, although still including the Five Stars Movement (M5S) as its largest party, took a totally different political direction from the previous “green-yellow” governing experiment. In fact, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, despite being once again at the head of a populist-led coalition, has succeeded in giving his executive a more moderate mark, marginalising the most radical elements inside the M5S and shifting the centre of gravity of the government more to the centre-left.

The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly become a global public health crisis, with powerful security ramifications. NATO countries have been disproportionately impacted by the outbreak; five out of ten countries with the highest number of fatalities (as of late June 2020) were NATO allies. As of August 2020, the global death toll overpassed 800,000, with an estimated 23.8 million infections. The increased stress on public health systems has pushed many of them to maximum capacity.