Global Outlook

The state of India’s health security remains exposed by the ravaging spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. The first wave of the pandemic, which had comparatively fewer fatalities, caused acute economic decline because of the unavoidable national and regional lockdowns imposed to contain the spread of the virus.

After initial test drilling in northern Namibia since the beginning of the year, the Canadian gas and oil exploration company Reconnaissance Energy Africa (ReconAfrica) announced on 15 April 2021 that analyses of the drilling samples had provided evidence of the existence of a "functioning petroleum system".

Three decades ago, at the end of the East-West antagonism, the old world order was gone and the trend for new formats unclear. Different and contradictory prognoses were made. Famously, Francis Fukuyama predicted the end of history and the triumph of capitalism and liberalism.

When Simon Thompson, the chairman of the multinational mining giant Rio Tinto, was criticised by local NGOs at Rio Tinto’s AGM, held on 9 April 2021, over plans for a huge copper mine in Arizona, he responded by arguing that his company is committed to the fight against climate change, and argued that the transition to a low-carbon economy will necessitate the expansion of copper production.

In 2009, as I gazed at the gaping hillside holes in Bamiyan where once two imposing Buddha statues had stood as silent sentinels for more than 1,500 years, two emotions were dominant. The first was the internalisation of the northern limits of India’s borders in the ebb and flow of history. The second was sadness at the cultural vandalism of religious fanatics, little knowing that 11 years later, the UK and US would themselves be consumed with the destruction of statues honouring historical figures based on a Manichean reinterpretation of the past through the prism of current faddish morality.

On March 22, 2021, the Council of the European Union adopted an agreement on the European Peace Facility“ (EPF), a new instrument established by the member states of the European Union, which aims to support activities in the framework of the “Common Security and Defence Policy”.