In Conversation with Adm. Rob Bauer and Eleonora Russell | If You Want Peace, Prepare for War

The following conversation was recorded on March 19, 2026 and has been edited for clarity. You can listen to the conversation here. Natalia Kopytnik: Welcome back to The Ties That Bind, a project of the Foreign Policy Research Institute...

Russia’s Drone Line Experiment

Rob Lee
Dmytro Putiata
April 6, 2026

The following analysis was originally published on Two Marines, a newsletter on Russia’s war in Ukraine, defense technology, and modern warfare, on April 3, 2026. During 2025, the Russian military continued to experiment with improving its employment of uncrewed...

From Tehran to Donbas: What the Iran War Means for Russia and Ukraine

Robert Person
March 6, 2026

The sudden outbreak of war in in Iran has snapped the world’s attention away from Eastern Europe toward the Persian Gulf and wider Middle East. Yet for Ukraine, the implications of this new conflict are anything but peripheral. The...

Better Late Than Never, US and Allies Race toward Ukrainian Counter-Shahed Tech

Joshua Segal
March 5, 2026

This piece is part of Behind the Front, an FPRI project on the future of US and allied national defense. The idea that an Iranian Shahed drone could strike the US Navy’s nerve center in Bahrain during daylight hours,...

Latvia at the UN Security Council

Kaspars Germanis
February 10, 2026

In the Shadow of War and the Threat of International Law Starting in 2026, Latvia will serve as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council (UNSC) for a two-year term. This will be a first in the country’s...

Right Assessment, Wrong Tactics: Europe in the New National Security Strategy

Hajnalka Vincze
December 17, 2025

Unsurprisingly, the National Security Strategy (NSS) has set off a storm across the Atlantic. The German chancellor called parts of the document “unacceptable,” while the president of the European Council warned that Europeans must now “protect themselves even against...