Ever since Turkey accused its neighbor, Greece, of locking onto Turkish fighter jets with its Russian-made S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems deployed on the island of Crete and placing Turkish aircraft under a radar lock over the eastern Mediterranean during a NATO mission in August 2022, tensions between the two treaty allies have escalated. Indeed, the two countries have come close to war several times in the past, with Turkey’s president issuing a thinly veiled threat and Athens responding with readiness to defend Greece’s sovereignty.
In Tunisia, the development of local governance, enshrined in the 2014 constitution, was a major gain of the 2011 revolution. Political decentralization ensued with the election of 350 town and city councils in 2018. While this process spearheaded a new era of participatory governance at the municipal level, it was not followed by administrative and fiscal decentralization. With the adoption of a new constitution in July 2022, Tunisia is undergoing a new restructuring of the state’s governance architecture.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has highlighted the Black Sea region as a linchpin in Moscow’s broader aggression against the West. U.S. diplomacy and its investments in the region are now being focused and reshaped into a strategic policy to strengthen the West and its Black Sea allies and partners. But success will depend on addressing significant regional vulnerabilities that have become all the more apparent since February.
The NATO air operation in Libya was initially regarded as a success and an opportunity to allow a new generation of Libyans to lead the country out of years of dictatorship.