ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Analysis Editor's Note: The following is an internal Stratfor document listing significant meetings and events planned for the next week. Stratfor analysts use this to stay informed of the activities and travel of world leaders and to guide their areas of focus for the week. EUROPE April 28: EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will meet with new Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic and other Serbian government officials in Belgrade to discuss Serbia's ties with the European Union and the normalization of relations between Serbia and Kosovo. April 28: Slovakia and Ukraine plan to sign a memorandum on the possible reverse flow of natural gas. April 28-29: Tunisian Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa will visit Paris to meet with French Prime Minister Manuel Valls. April 29: The French parliament will discuss the spending cuts proposed by the French government. April 29: The EU Political and Security Committee will meet in Brussels. April 30-May 2: Pakistani ...

Supporters of a Palestinian accord with a poster of Mahmoud Abbas outside the Hamas prime minister's home in Gaza City on April 23, 2014.(SAID KHATIB/AFP/Getty Images) Summary Despite the announcement of a power-sharing agreement between Hamas and Fatah that would end the rift between the Palestinian faction that governs Gaza and the one that rules the West Bank, much must happen before a single coalition government rules all the Palestinian territories. Still, the mere fact that the two sides have begun formalizing a path toward political unification of the territories has widespread implications for the region. The impact will fall not just on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also on various regional players and the United States. Analysis The Fatah-Hamas deal allows for a five-week period to form a technocratic interim government, with new elections in six months. A senior leader from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas' main Islamist rival, said that this structure could...

Summary NATO was originally created as a counterweight to the might of the Soviet Union after World War II. The deep yet fractious roots that enabled the alliance to prosper have also presented challenges to its leadership and management. More than an organization, NATO is best envisioned as an overarching structure made up of individual, autonomous parts, each with different thought processes, competencies and imperatives. NATO adapted to survive beyond the Cold War but its continued existence remains under threat. Analysis The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was conceived and designed as an intergovernmental military alliance, based on the principle of collective defense. At its inception four years after the end of World War II, NATO was primarily seen as a deterrent against Soviet aggression in Western Europe, keeping vulnerable states in a Western orbit and checking the rise of Eurasian power. Click to Enlarge As a core contributor, the U.S. military footprint in Europe was ...