The IAEA’s annual General Conference meetings have grown successively more contentious in recent years. Geopolitical tensions outside the Agency are increasingly corroding the insulation around the IAEA’s technical work. Noah Mayhew asks: Is the “Vienna Spirit” dead? At the GC, it may not be dead, but it is certainly on life support – and the IAEA’s mission will ultimately bear the cost.
Jenifer Mackby has worked on non-proliferation and international security issues at the Federation of American Scientists, Partnership for a Secure America, Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). She directed a project...
Robert Floyd is an Australian scientist, diplomat, and the current Executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). Floyd was born in Australia and holds a B.Sc from the University of New England, 1980 and a Ph.D from Griffith University in...
Russia’s upcoming Duma election will be the first since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In an unfavourable context, the Kremlin’s political managers have been highly active in sterilising the ballot. Anton Barbashin, Editorial Director of Riddle Russia, examines how these wartime elections are becoming a demonstration of support for the war and Putin’s continued rule.
Twenty-five years after 9/11, Brenda Berkman, the first woman firefighter in the New York City Fire Department and a first responder at the World Trade Center, joins Ilana Bet-El to recount the harrowing reality of that day and the months that followed, reflecting on its lasting impact on responders and the often-overlooked role of women at Ground Zero.
Russia’s elections may be repressive and predictable, but that does not make them meaningless. While no one predicts that United Russia will be denied a majority in the upcoming Duma election, managing the political space has become more difficult than in the past. As Julian G. Waller writes, deviation from the Kremlin’s desired result could have wider consequences for elite politics.