STRATEGIC ALERT Service

Due to the Easter holidays, the next issue of your Strategic Alert Service will be dated April 28, 2022.

A unique combination of international experts from different fields will come together to discuss the urgent need for a new security and development architecture on April 9, 2022, starting 3 pm CET, for a Schiller Institute online conference. The preliminary program of this extraordinary event is provided below, as a supplement to this issue of your Strategic Alert Newsletter. (See […]

Italian economist and China expert Michele Geraci summarized the outcome of the 23rd EU-China summit, that took place by videoconference on April 1, with the following comment: “While [Chinese President] Xi’s message was one of detente, [EU Commission President Ursula] von der Leyen and [EU Council President Charles] Michel let loose with the usual, now inopportune repertoire: human rights, Xinjiang, […]

In the European Union, inflation continues to rise rapidly, reaching an average rate of 7.5% in March on an annualized basis (9.8% in Spain, 7.3% in Germany, 7.2% in Italy, 4.5% in France). ING bank’s The chief Eurozone economist of ING bank, Carsten Brzeski, among others, forecast double-digit inflation for Germany this year. Indeed, all the giant food store chains, […]

The media have been full of atrocious images, allegedly from the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, showing dozens of dead bodies on the ground, which the Ukrainian secret services claim were shot and killed by Russian troops some time before March 30. A few days earlier, videos had circulated showing Russian prisoners near Kharkiv being shot and maimed live, by soldiers […]

One factor tends to be forgotten in the ideologically heated debate now raging in the European Union over whether to implement a total embargo of Russian gas: the repercussions on the Russian economy would be less draconian than here. Of course, 73% of Russian gas exports go to Europe, but they only make up 11% of Russia’s total exports. So […]

The Ukraine-Russia military conflict, two nations that together provide 29% of the world’s wheat exports, has provoked a certain awareness of the precariousness of the world’s food supplies and the dangers of import dependency. For the EU, although food shortages are not yet an issue, the costs of ensuring the availability of food are soaring. The explosion of fossil fuel […]

“We won a victory so big that it can be seen from the moon and certainly from Brussels,”, Hungary’s Prime Minster Viktor Orban told his supporters after his ruling Fidesz party came out of the April 3 parliamentary elections with a comfortable lead of 53%. In neighboring Serbia, President Aleksander Vucic was re-elected on the same day with a landslide […]

Three senior former Ambassadors from the Hellenic Repubic issued a peace proposal on March 31, addressing the current Ukrainian crisis in an effort to avert the “threat of hunger and nuclear annihilation”. Their statement notes that “What has been happening the last month in Ukraine is inconceivable for us and for reasonable people. We thought that the old ‘Westphalian’ world […]

Hours before a no-confidence vote was scheduled for the purpose of removing Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan from office, he dissolved parliament on April 3 and called for early elections. The opposition challenged his action, and has taken the case to the Supreme Court, requesting that the dissolution be ruled unconstitutional. If his action is allowed to stand, an election […]