NATO

NATO has wrestled with how to defend its Baltic member states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania ever since their accession to the Alliance in 2004. All three militarily weak countries sit uncomfortably close to NATO’s main adversary, Russia. Making...

The breathtakingly fast Taliban takeover of Afghanistan raised serious questions about U.S. efforts to build military capacity there and in other places. After 20 years of effort costing some $825 billion in direct military expenditures alone, and the...

While the United States is adapting to the challenges of a multipolar world and a global geopolitical recalibration, the People’s Republic of China is employing its geo-economic tools to identify power vacuums in the international landscape and to fill...

In the Winter 2022 issue of Orbis, we are pleased to feature a conversation with Dr. Nils Schmid, foreign policy spokesman for the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and member of the Bundestag, representing the constituency of Nürtingen in Baden-Württemberg....

On October 1, 2021, former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili made a surprise return to Tbilisi after spending eight years in exile. Saakashvili fled Georgia in 2012 after his party lost in the election and he was indicted on charges...

The US administration under President Joe Biden has been looking to initiate a new round of negotiations with Russia on reducing non-strategic nuclear warheads (NSNW). However, Russia’s willingness to engage remains uncertain, and such negotiations have the potential to...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has a monumental vision for his country’s largest city: building a new mega canal through Istanbul. Of course, Istanbul is already home to the Bosporus Strait, whose bisection of Europe and Asia has been...

On September 26, more than 60 million Germans voted to choose their next government. After 16 years in office, Angela Merkel was not on the ballot to lead her center-right alliance of the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social...

  According to press information, on 10 September 2021, the Russian Armed Forces plan to start the one-week-long active phase of this year’s annual strategic-level exercise (STRATEX), Zapad (West) 2021, a bilateral large-scale Russo-Belorussian strategic-level exercise, primarily in Belarus and Russia’s...

  Introduction During March and April 2021, the Russian military conducted a large-scale buildup in its regions bordering Ukraine, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. Scores of videos appeared on TikTok, Telegram, Twitter, and other social media sites...