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Issues in European Union and U.S. Foreign Policy, edited by MYnevver Cebeci, represents a timely attempt at analyzing EU and US foreign policy over a wide range of issues through a comparative approach. It involves theory-guided empirical research and analyzes several thematic issues within the specific context of selected geographical issue areas. It focuses on_and actually proposes_a broader framework of cooperation and coordination for the EU and the US.

It represents a possibility that some of the terrorist attacks will be directed against critical infrastructure in the future. An example in this regard is the attack on a water treatment plant in the U.S., where an intruder attempted to raise sodium hydroxide levels more than a hundredfold thus poisoning drinking water supplies. The importance of protection is also illustrated by the cyber-attack on Düsseldorf Hospital in December 2020, when an attack on critical infrastructure has led to a fatal incident in Europe for the first time. At the same time, critical infrastructure protection is further enhanced in the event of a possible hybrid warfare or war situation. Its importance in practice was also illustrated by the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in December 2015, when the BlackEnergy APT group caused a power outage in Ukraine affecting two hundred and twenty-five thousand people. This attack has shown what success an unconventional military element can achieve in the world of current levels of energy use. This study aims at presenting the risks that critical infrastructures involve, followed by the sectors with European critical infrastructures and their main characteristics, as well as some key European infrastructures.

In international politics the situation tends to swing between affirming values and defending one's own interests, national interests first and foremost: in some periods certain values and principles are championed, such as free trade, democracy, socialism and peace, while in others the pursuit of national interests by means of power politics prevails, as happened in the first half of the last century. If we consider "the short century" - the time period proposed by Hobsbawm - immediately after the end of the First World War two opposing conceptions of international politics emerged: the American view, which proposed the League of Nations, to make the world a safe place for democracy, and that of the Communist International, which framed the Soviet Union as the forerunner for the emancipation of the world's proletariat. After the Second World War, these two conceptions shaped the ideological conflict between the two superpowers. The thirty years since the Cold War have seen firstly the breakdown of the Soviet Union, then the slow decline of the US as a superpower. We are now witnessing the birth of a new multipolar world order, with the rise of major new powers, the most important of which is China. Yet it is impossible to say whether we are heading into a period of unstoppable disorder, or experiencing a transition, and if so, what to? The 2020 pandemic has highlighted both the presence of international solidarity, with doctors and researchers around the world doing their utmost to fight the virus, and signs of worrying rivalries between national governments, which have taken advantage of the emergency to increase their power both domestically and internationally.