This is thus the great puzzle: Are we witnessing a great reshuffling of the pieces of the international order? Will the defenders of the post-1945 international order be successful in preserving its main elements and piecing at least some of them back together? Or will the world continue to move closer to, a “perfect storm,” the cumulative effect of several crises happening simultaneously that could destroy the old international system before we have even begun to build a new one?

Page 40 The Sahel: Traffick Jam
The Sahel region or “African arc of instability” faces an interrelated set of security challenges, which exacerbate each other and have prompted some observers to describe the states in the region as the most vulnerable in the world.3 Although both the United States and the European Union have recognized the importance of the Sahel in their respective regional security strategies,4 for a long time the region did not feature high on the international agenda. This has changed since the French-led intervention in 2013 in Mali, which put the Sahel and its security challenges in the international spotlight. A major challenge to security provision in the region is the area’s sheer size: the western part from Mauritania to Chad alone covers five million square kilometers, roughly half the land area between Lisbon and Moscow. With the security presence in the Sahel's sparsely populated and rural areas being limited, transnational criminal groups are thriving.