Publications

To join NATO, prospective members typically must follow a MAP, or membership action plan. The MAP has been NATO’s standard bureaucratic procedure to convert applicants into members for over two decades. After Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic joined...

Throughout Russia’s current, renewed invasion of Ukraine, the three Baltic states have been continually working to improve their defense, even as they send military aid to Ukraine (the scale of which—compared to the Baltics’ own defense budgets—is staggering). The...

  Note: Research for this analysis was completed on October 13, 2022. The text does not reflect events since that date. Executive Summary Russia’s war on Ukraine is poised to bring into being a new European security order. Although...

As Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine enters its fifth month, a significant date has recently passed in another country — Belarus. May 23 marked one year since Belarusian authorities hijacked a commercial Ryanair flight transporting passengers, including Belarusian opposition figure Roman...

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reaffirmed NATO’s purpose and the importance of collective defense. It has also pushed defense of the Baltic states back into the alliance’s limelight. The key lesson so far has been that more military power...

For decades, Germany pursued close economic and political ties with Russia. It did so because German political and strategic leaders thought consistent engagement would result in geopolitical stability for Europe. They also thought it would lead to the eventual...

Introduction On May 2–3 2022, the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Syria/Iraq Office and the Foreign Policy Research Institute convened a panel of foreign policy experts for a dialogue on security challenges present in the Eastern Mediterranean. The first day addressed state fragility...

The United States and its allies in the West have been unable to use the threat of military force to coerce Russia into stopping its war in Ukraine. In part, this is because the West is more concerned about...

Editor’s note: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and renewed interest on the part of both Finland and Sweden to consider formal membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has brought new scrutiny to security threats in the Baltic Sea basin....

Abstract This article revisits the key factors that have reshaped European security to serve as a baseline for framing two distinct paths that will determine the continent’s security architecture in the coming decades. At the center of this discussion...