“After 17 years of supranationality, we are still seeking how to define a common energy policy and what it might be. [...] Could we have done more in one generation? Or were goals only established to achieve a political balance which it was explicitly agreed to ignore, once the machinery began to operate? Historians will have a hard task to distinguish between excessive ambitions and national hypocrisies”.

The concept of Security Sector Reform (SSR) was developed during the 1990s as a response to several problems chiefly faced by countries in post-conflict transitions: weak new governments; conflicting civil-military relations; ill-defined division of tasks between the armed forces, the police, and the judiciary system; and tension between the requirements to stabilize the country and to establish the rule of law.

Young people are the most politically active and impulsive part of any society.

The second half of the XXth century is a unique stage in the history of Brazilian migrations: the attractiveness of Brazil as a country of immigration declines, due to economic hardships and a shift in public perceptions of migrants, who are increasingly framed as a security liability.

-by building dissonance within. Some like to remember fondly the call by Ronald Reagan for Gorbachev “to tear down this wall”. The United States “Won the Cold War” said George Bush Senior in his State of the Union Address. We need to step back and recognize with some humility that the Soviet Union fell largely of its own weight rather than as a result of external pressure. Again today Russia is economically weak. It has become an exporter of raw materials, its industrial sector is weak, and its revenues are already falling. Conditions now offer the opportunity to aggravate Russia’s economic frailty – let’s focus on that.