Summer 2021 - News We don't Want to Hear

There is news we want to hear, and news we try to ignore. These days, Europeans are packing for their summer vacations. The news we don't want to hear is that by the time we return from well-deserved holidays, the next wave of COVID-19 will have gathered force.

Moreover, this wave will largely be the result of our behaviour - too much relaxation of the restrictive measures to contain the pandemic.

But COVID is not the only crisis we are facing. The West has abandoned Afghanistan and Iraq, and Europe is bracing for a new wave of immigration to rival that seen in 2015. These people, fleeing Islamic extremism, would largely qualify for asylum.

The author of this brief has been to Kabul airport, to Mazar-i-Sharif and in particular to the huge Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, under the usual tense circumstances and peril for his life. At that time, it was impossible to imagine that the West would one day withdraw.

But it did, leaving behind a modern population, especially in big cities, which are in grave danger from the backward-looking Taliban forces now seizing power. We cannot turn these people down. They flee to save their lives.

The EU has seen many successive crises. The 2009 financial crisis, the 2013 Ukraine crisis, the 2015 migration crisis, the Brexit crisis, the COVID crisis, the climate crisis.

Make no mistake. Not one of these crises is over. As in Hollywood movies when the villain is apparently vanquished but he somehow comes back from the dead and strikes again, more dangerous than ever.

This is the new normal. We are living on the edge, from crisis to crisis, and the only thing we can do about it is become more resilient. The question is - are we preparing?

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