Marko Dašić

The withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan during August 2021 puts an end to the longest war that America has ever fought and the first phase of the Global War on Terrorism. In this regard, two important questions arise, which we will try to answer in this paper. First, what are the main external and internal consequences that the United States has faced due to engaging in the “War on Terror”? Second, did the U.S. achieve its goals in that war? The external effects we have identified are the crisis of global leadership, the weakening of relations with the allies, the growth of China in the lee, and the rise of populism. Among the internal ones, we included the strengthening of the presidential function, the increase of state power, more profound social polarization, an increase in budget expenditures, and a growing deficit, as well as human casualties. In the end, we contributed to the debate on the nature of the U.S. “victory”. We are providing the argumentation in the direction that the final output of War on Terror should be named Pyrrhic victory.

In this article, the authors analyze the most significant achievements of the current dynamics of the accession of the Western Balkans to the EU (Process of Stabilization and Association), with a special emphasis on numerous issues that stand in the “European way” of these countries. In this context, a specific analysis will be linked to numerous internal problems in the Western Balkans countries, as well as in their bilateral relations, and how does this affect the possible acceleration of the European integration process. Of course, the authors in this paper devoted considerable attention to the role of “non-EU” countries in the region of the Western Balkans, especially the Russian Federation, the Republic of Turkey and the People's Republic of China. Also, the presentation will discuss how the countries of the Western Europe, which obviously will remain dominant in the European Union in the next period (Germany, France and Italy) will position themselves concerning a new enlargement of the EU to the Western Balkans. Also, the unfinished process of Brexit (2016) opens up some problems when it comes to the entering the countries of the Western Balkans into the European Union. Certainly, there are some "weak points" in the European integration process of the Western Balkans countries (corruption and organized crime in the case of Montenegro, relations with the government in Pristina when it comes to Serbia, etc.).

The United States presidential election, the most important political election in the world, resulted in Donald Trump’s victory. This year’s election was, for many reasons, historical. For the first time ever, one of the major parties’ candidates was a woman, and the winner was the person that collected half the funds the other candidate did, and that has almost no political experience whatsoever. It seems that Donald Trump faced more problems and resistance than any other presidential candidate before him, and was basically written off at the very beginning of the election. He took on other candidates, the Republican Party, the media, political analysts, but also his own nature and character. Later on, he faced the Democratic machinery led by Hillary Clinton. It is hard to even list all the challenges he experienced. However, the biggest one seems to be American demographics – the unfavorable demographic trends Republicans have been dealing with for decades. Trump was narrowing his potential electorate by making harsh and offensive statements about women and minorities, and it seemed it was demographics that would stand in the way of his victory. However, come November 9^th, these expectations turned out to be unjustified. In this paper, we will try to answer how Donald Trump, despite almost all predictions, managed to overcome the “demographic problem” and win the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and we aim to do this by analyzing social and party line divisions, demographic trends and election strategies.