Security & Defense

State of the Order: Assessing February 2021

The State of the Order breaks down the month's most important events impacting the democratic world order.

A mom’s guide to coercion and deterrence

By Emma Ashford, Erica Borghard

There’s a silver lining to parenting in a pandemic: It’s an education in the core concepts of international relations, as well as a useful reminder that we’re all operating in a condition of anarchy. Here's a mom’s primer on deterrence, coercion, credibility, and reassurance.

Revitalize NATO’s grand strategy: NATO 20/2020 podcast

By Ambassador Timo Koster and Ivanka Barzashka

Collective strategic analysis is the pathway to a more inclusive, transparent, and systematic process for creating NATO’s next strategic concept.

What the US can learn from the UK about strategic reviews

By Peter Watkins, Will Jessett CBE

The Biden administration has begun work on a slew of strategies—including a new National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, and Nuclear Posture Review—that will form the framework for its approach to security challenges. There’s a lot that it can learn from the British experience of conducting strategic reviews.

Europe’s geostrategic sovereignty and Turkey

By Bahadır Kaleağası

A more positive relationship between the European Union and Turkey is a decade-long project of advocates from all over Europe and across the Atlantic. Drawing on history, witnesses see how this relationship can be an excellent win-win algorithm, as much as it can rapidly turn out to be a lose-lose situation or even a triple win-or-lose equation—with political, economic, and social resonance reaching far beyond the Continent.

The China-Russia moonshot is one more reason for Biden to rethink his Putin strategy

By Frederick Kempe

Moscow sees its space future with China and not the United States, further underscoring its growing strategic alignment with Beijing. The Biden administration must reflect on how the latest Sino-Russian collaboration should be factored into its emerging approach to Vladimir Putin’s Russia.