Journal on World Affairs, UCLA
The SolarWinds hack, widely believed to be carried out by Russian state actors, is a wakeup call evidencing the weakness in American cybersecurity. Undetected for over half a year, the hack infiltrated networks of multiple government agencies and Fortune 500 companies, triggering a dispute over whether the United States should retaliate to discourage further cyberattacks.
Gorbachev wanted to create “socialism with a human face.” But in an attempt to save his own country, he was squashed by both his former allies and the new reformers. Uskorenie, perestroika, and glasnost simply pulled away the fragile veil that kept society stifled.
While the recent protests are unlikely to result in substantial changes, they have brought more attention to the issues within Putin’s government. As other countries decide on how to react, actions by European nations may force the Kremlin to adjust its human rights record and decrease the suppression of opposition groups.
Laïcité, or, secularism, has come to represent the cornerstone of a national identity based on French values. For the past century, French politics have made a virtue of secularism by largely banning institutionalized religion from the public sphere.
Many observers warn that the CAI may be China’s way of undermining US-EU relations and preventing the Biden administration from crafting a transatlantic China strategy.
Brexit, however, put the peace between these nations at jeopardy. This is because Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, but it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland, which is still an EU member state. This led to many concerns that Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland would now need to introduce a hard border, restarting their tensions.
America is considering a defense pivot in Europe, which President Donald Trump claims to be in accordance to Russian threats and Germany’s failures to meet their NATO financial obligations. In January, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said America will begin this shift by withdrawing about twelve thousand of the thirty-six thousand American troops from Germany.
On August 9, 2020, Alexander Lukashenko’s seventh presidential victory was announced to the people of Belarus. The news sparked outrage and protests erupted throughout the country’s capital of Minsk with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators flooding the streets claiming that the reelection of the Belarusian dictator was “neither free nor fair.”
After the dismantlement of the Soviet Union in 1991, the newly-formed state of Ukraine was “born nuclear” by inheriting about 4,000 of Moscow’s nuclear weapons, granting it the third largest arsenal in the world. Yet, in 1994, Ukraine committed to full disarmament.
Journal on World Affairs, UCLA