Journal of Human Security

Abstract: Dear Reader, Those among us who have reached a certain age tend to have developed a long-term perspective and inclination to look back on individual years and to compare them for their respective blessings and injuries. In that sense, 2016 seems to take a special rank as an annus horribilis not just in my own assessment but in numerous commentaries we have come across over the past weeks. Foremost in our awareness featured the surprises: Nobody in my direct acquaintance foretold the Trump phenomenon or the Brexit decision. To find events equally unanticipated and far-reaching, one would have to go back to the 2007/8 financial crash, the 9/11 attacks, the dissolution of the USSR, or the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.