Thirty years ago today, the International Court of Justice drew a direct line between nuclear threats and the potential use of nuclear weapons. Yet as nuclear rhetoric returns to the centre of international politics, ELN Policy Fellow Jana Baldus argues the Court’s landmark advisory opinion remains an essential legal guide, and a call to action.
European security architecture is at a crossroads as NATO and the EU search for new roles amid growing uncertainty over the future of transatlantic security. With debate over a more European NATO and a European nuclear umbrella gathering pace, Tarja Cronberg argues that the Ankara summit will test whether allies can move beyond technical debates about defence spending and burden-sharing to articulate a collective vision for Europe’s future security order.
ELN network members assess whether the Ankara summit marks a turning point for Europe’s role within NATO or a transition shaped by the US. They discuss defence spending, strategic autonomy, and the choices European governments must make to bolster the alliance in an uncertain security environment.
Ahead of the NATO summit in Ankara, calls for higher defence spending are dominating the agenda. But military investment alone cannot guarantee Europe’s security. Sabine Mengelberg argues that NATO’s long-term strength depends equally on political cohesion and shared values, foundations that sustain deterrence and the alliance’s ability to confront security challenges.
With the United States reducing its strategic role in Europe, NATO is entering a new era of European leadership. ELN Executive Director Robert Ondrejcsák argues that Europe’s priority should be strengthening alliance capabilities rather than creating parallel structures, while examining how rising defence spending, shifting military power within the continent, and new security partnerships will shape NATO’s long-term “Europeanisation”.
What are the consequences stemming from the seeming end of NATO’s global role? ELN Senior Associate Fellow Nicholas Williams looks back at two decades of NATO’s “out-of-area operations”, arguing that foreign crisis management missions have become strategic liabilities rather than assets, exposing European troops to global conflicts while doing little to enhance European security.
The evolving confrontation between Europe and Russia is not a temporary crisis but a long-term condition that must be managed. In this report, ELN Senior Policy Fellow Alexander Graef sets out a strategy for governing a prolonged and adversarial relationship with Moscow beyond the war, focused on strengthening European political agency, credible deterrence, and governing escalation risks.
This report by Ganna Pogrebna and ELN Senior Policy Fellow Rishi Paul presents findings from an ELN workshop that examined the ‘human’ and ‘machine’ components of bias and their points of interaction. The report highlights how human judgment and AI systems can interact in ways that reinforce, rather than reduce, risk.
Gender perspectives are integral to credible, effective, and inclusive disarmament and arms control. This policy brief by ELN Policy Fellow Jana Baldus examines the gender backlash in multilateral disarmament and arms control, and its implications. It suggests two approaches to preserve progress on gender equality and intersectional gender perspectives and calls on states, international organisations, and civil society to act collectively to defend and further advance gender perspectives.
On the eve of the United States of America’s 250th anniversary, ELN Senior Associate Fellow Ilana Bet-El is joined in conversation with Laurel Rapp, Director of the US and North America Programme at Chatham House, to discuss the US experiment and how recent developments across Greenland, Venezuela and Iran – as well as domestically – have altered global perceptions of the US.
Following the signing of the 14-point peace plan in Versailles, it would appear that the war in the Middle East is over, at least according to President Trump. However, the absence of both Israel and Lebanon from the agreement would suggest otherwise. Suzan Haidamous, Beirut-based correspondent for the Washington Post, joins ELN Senior Associate Fellow Ilana Bet-El to break down events in Lebanon and the wider region.
Assessing risk is a vast and growing field, made ever more complex and expansive by the introduction of technology, especially AI. Tinatin Japaridze, YGLN member and Director of Geopolitics at Anadyr Horizon joins ELN Senior Associate Fellow Ilana Bet-El to analyse how the ever-changing nature of global affairs intersects with emerging technologies to transform our conceptions of risk.
Former and serving senior officials, military leaders, and experts from across the Euro-Atlantic region call for strengthened fail-safe measures to prevent accidental nuclear use.
Former and serving senior officials, military leaders, and experts from across the Euro-Atlantic region call for support for space security and stability.
Former and serving senior officials, military leaders, and experts from across the Euro-Atlantic region put forward three urgent steps for nuclear-armed states to take to build on the essential principle that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.
Understanding Russia’s wartime economy and why it matters for Euro-Atlantic security
When the cornerstone cracks: the NPT and the future of the global nuclear order
Understanding Hungary’s political earthquake and the rise of Péter Magyar
Ten years after Brexit, Europe can no longer afford UK-EU security separation
