Revisiting Orbis

In introducing the special Fall 2020 Orbis issue on emerging technologies and national security, guest editor Lawrence Rubin highlighted the importance of “novel technologies, including quantum technologies (such as advanced computing), autonomy, robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), hypersonic weapons, biotechnologies,...

The United States risks falling behind the People’s Republic of China in the development and deployment of next generation technologies. Beijing has launched the world’s first quantum science satellite. It also is now poised to overtake Americans as the...

The post-Cold War period, defined by American leadership promoting garowing integration under a liberal framework—a process aided by changes and developments in technology—is giving way to a new epoch, in which the rise of other major powers, coupled with...

If we are re-entering an era of “great power competition,” then there is an unavoidable question: what role do nuclear weapons play in that competition? China is set to double its nuclear capacity while it pursues its own nuclear...

The original Orbis article, in 2013, focused on how the Euro-zone crisis led to democratic backsliding in the new democracies that emerged in Central Europe, notably in Hungary and Poland. Ambassador Adrian Basora expressed concern that this “could jeopardize...

Implications of the Argument: It’s been a tough few decades for national security analysts with no shortage of how to fix what is wrong with U.S. foreign policy. The 1990s were largely characterized by redefining grand strategy in a...

The original article charted changes in South Asia’s geopolitical landscape since the end of the Cold War, and particularly how other major powers, including the United States, Russia, and China, have adapted to the rise of India and how...

Little to nothing, for two reasons. First, the U.S. leverages a sizeable sunk investment in German bases in very substantial part to support missions that are unrelated in any direct sense to its defense posture in Europe, if indeed...

Under Vladimir Putin, Russia was moving away from its earlier embrace of Atlanticisim, seeing Russia as part of the Western world, and aspiring to emulate the West’s values and standards of governance, but still considered Russia part of an...