Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline conservative aligned with Iran's supreme leader, won the presidential election held in June 2021. His first term in office will be defined by whether he is able to improve Iran's economic performance and, relatedly, whether he is able to achieve sanctions relief as part of ongoing international negotiations over the country's nuclear programme.

When phar­maceutical companies began distributing COVID-19 vaccines in late 2020 and early 2021, the European Union fell immediately behind the United Kingdom and United States in the number of doses administered. It faced shortages while, at the same time, allowing a substantial share of the vaccines it was receiving to be exported. This slow initial roll-out – which happened just as another wave of the pandemic was hitting many EU member states – has been extremely costly in human and economic terms and has battered the reputation of the European Commission.

Australia and New Zealand are close allies but are responding differently to rising Chinese power and influence in the Asia-Pacific. This, in turn, has increased trans-Tasman tensions in several areas. Australia has emphasised its ideological differences with China and has remained critical of China even as the country has imposed economic sanctions on Australian exports. New Zealand’s approach has been ambiguous, with Wellington far less likely than Canberra to criticise China publicly, in part because it is more vulnerable to potential Chinese economic retaliation.

The United States and China appear to believe that digital dominance will bring broader geopolitical and economic power in the coming decades. While the US has made increasingly robust efforts to counter China’s moves in what has been described as a ‘Digital Great Game’, it is possible that the current tactics of both sides may prove counterproductive.

The leaders of Kosovo and Serbia met in Washington on 4 September, agreeing to 16 points related to economic normalisation, increasing their bilateral trade with the US and their respective relationships with Israel. There were elements of political theatre to the signing, but the negotiating process served to jumpstart the European-led dialogues seeking a final political solution to the impasse. The agreements may well bring substantial US investment to the region, and they also serve as an example of Serbia’s recent attempts to chart a foreign policy more independent of Russia.

Japan – with the world’s third-largest economy and a pacifist constitution that limits its military capability – has long used economic tools to pursue its international goals. However, China’s rise as a geo-economic power has driven the Abe administration to reshape its foreign-policy bureaucracy to compete with China in this regard and to recalibrate its approach to economic statecraft.

The threat to public security and the rule of law posed by drug cartels has been the defining domestic issue for Mexico’s presidents for over a decade. The Mexican people hoped security would improve when they elected an outsider president in late 2018 who promoted a new idea for pacifying the cartels – ‘hugs, not bullets’ – but the situation continues to deteriorate.

After a long period of neglect after the end of the Cold War, the so-called Greenland–Iceland–United Kingdom (GIUK) Gap has returned as one of NATO’s major strategic maritime concerns and features prominently in the calculations of others – especially the Russian Navy. Geopolitical, climatic and technological developments mean, however, that the Gap’s strategic significance must be evaluated afresh.