This weekend’s meeting between the EU, Azerbaijan and Armenia is timely and important, as there are real risks that the humanitarian emergency in Nagorno-Karabakh may be a prelude to wider escalation in the southern Caucasus, writes Jane Kinninmont. As the Minsk Group of governments tasked with addressing the conflict appears to be barely active, the EU role will be critical.
Former Turkish ambassadors to NATO, Ahmet Üzümcü and Mehmet Fatih Ceylan, write that there is untapped potential for closer cooperation between Turkey and the United Kingdom in the defence and security fields.
What do emerging and disruptive technologies like AI mean for the role of humans in war? How might AI-augmented human-machine interaction affect the role of human command in war? And what might an AI commander look like? James Johnson explores these topics and assesses whether or not we are moving towards a situation where AI-enabled autonomous weapons start making strategic decisions, as opposed to humans, during conflict.
The deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus would increase nuclear risks and undermine key nonproliferation norms, but it would not alter the strategic balance in Europe. For Russia, sharing nuclear weapons with Belarus might well backfire politically. NATO countries should therefore resist the impulse to up the nuclear ante.
Ret. Ambassador Spiros Lampridis argues that alongside the war in Ukraine, NATO will need to take a deep dive into its challenges ahead of and during this year’s Vilnius Summit.
After President XI’s visit to Moscow, we asked our network members for their thoughts on what this means for the war in Ukraine and global politics more broadly. Is China ramping up its support for Russia or acting as a calming influence on a potential future junior partner? Read the piece to see our members’ contributions in full.