Unpacking Terrorism, Revolution and Insurgency in Yemen: Real and Imagined Threats to Regional Security
Recent months have seen a seeming escalation in the international threat posed by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a terrorist network that has taken Yemen as its regional base of operations. In light of recent attacks, and resulting embassy closures, Yemen is a rising priority in the Western-led War on Terror. However, this has resulted in a side-lining of other security threats in Yemen, which may cause serious challenges to the authority of the Yemeni Government. In reality, the role of AQAP has been heavily manipulated throughout Yemen’s contemporary history: this was most evident during the 2011 Arab Spring, when both sides in the conflict claimed that Al Qaeda operatives were working with members of the other. Two years later, the true nature of the AQAP threat in Yemen is rarely questioned by external observers, yet remains largely shrouded in mystery. There is a need for more critical approaches to the AQAP challenges, which take the broader context of Yemeni security into account.
Yemen and Somalia: Terrorism, Shadow Networks and the Limitations of State-building
 Yemen and Somalia face parallel challenges: insurgencies, terrorism, economic hardship, and ineffective governments that are perceived to lack legitimacy.  Western engagement in Yemen and Somalia is based on a state-building framework involving diplomacy, development and defence. Yet the priority attached to security-sector interventions undermines the balance of political and economic actions needed for this approach to succeed.  There is a growing tendency among the Western policy community to amalgamate the risk emanating from Yemen and Somalia, on the basis that al-Qaeda affiliates in both countries are recruiting Western citizens, and have the potential to work more closely together.  Both AQAP and al-Shabaab have developed successful narratives around injustice that are not being addressed by existing Western interventions.  On the contrary, Western policies are contributing to a sense among some Yemenis and Somalis of being ‘under attack’ and are drawing them towards radicalization and militancy.  The threat of radicalization extends throughout the far-flung diasporas of Somalia and Yemen, defying efforts at containment within the two countries and requiring new thinking about stemming the appeal of radicalism at source.  Conventional counter-terrorism and counter-piracy strategies are hindered by the existence of multi-million-dollar shadow business networks spanning the Gulf of Aden. European Multinationals
The European Council and The Council of the European Union: Shapers of a European Confederation
The European Council and the Council of the European Union play key roles in the European Union.' The European Council is largely concerned with system-steering, while the Council of the EU undertakes sectoral policymaking. What is common to these roles is the balancing act carried out by both institutions. Both have to mediate the centripetal dynamics of integration, termed cooperative confederalism here, and the centrifugal dynamics which are found in the strongly entrenched territorial nature of power, centered on the member states. Using new institutionalist analysis, the article illuminates different facets of the two institutions 'functioning in mediating the two dynamics.