Strategic Trends 2015

Two themes are interwoven in the chapters of Strategic Trends 2015: Norms and order. The systemic challenge that Putin's Russia poses to a liberal EU, described by Jonas Grätz, is one of norms and values. The Middle East, the other crisis-ridden region of 2014, seems to be on the verge of a long struggle for a re-establishment, or re-invention, of regional and intra-state order, says Martin Zapfe. The effects of this struggle, and of competing concepts of the state and concepts of ruling within the Middle East, writes Prem Mahadevan, touch Europe directly - not least through a new 'territorial terrorism' embodied by the IS. Beyond those two geographical regions, two other chapters describe spaces where norms may just be emerging. Space, covered by Michael Haas, and Cyberspace, analyzed by Myriam Dunn Cavelty, represent global commons that will further move to the forefront of international affairs - and with them the question of which norms, if any, should guide those affairs. Thus, the diagnosed basic insecurity over the future of international affairs deepens, as it evolves from changes within the balance of power to the questioning of the very system in which state power is generated and applied.