North America
Cuba’s new president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, has two problems to fix. First, the country’s increasingly youthful population demands the goods and services they know are available elsewhere. Second, Cuba has lost most of the international support system that propped upits socialist welfare state. To resolve both, he must open up the economy – but by doing so, he will give the Communist Party and the intelligence services more leverage to use against him.
Europe
Washington’s decision to sell modern U.S. anti-tank missiles to Kiev means that a red line in the West’s involvement in the Ukrainian crisis has been crossed. Whether the delivery of this expensive weapon system to the embattled nation serves U.S. national security interests or brings Kiev closer to reclaiming the territories it had lost to Moscow-backed insurgents is highly debatable.
Maghreb & the Middle East
As Islamic State and jihadist rebels head for defeat in Syria’s civil war, the conflict is becoming more internationalized. Turkey has intervened military in the north against the Kurds, the U.S. has bombed Russian military contractors, and a rocket-propelled chess game between Israel on one side and Iran and Hezbollah on the other is heating up. If the key players aren’t careful, Round 2 in Syria could be a regional conflagration.
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