Journals
2026 EN
Troitskiy Mikhail
Tacit coercion involves covert, plausibly deniable attacks below the threshold of war that signal an adversary to discreetly adjust its behaviour. Unlike traditional deterrence, which is based on clear red lines and explicit threats, tacit coercion leverages ambiguity and the implied risk of escalation. Examples including Russia’s sabotage of Baltic undersea cables and covert cyber operations illustrate how Russia communicates coercive intent yet maintains official deniability. This allows Moscow to issue warnings without triggering direct conflict, offering targets an off-ramp of inconspicuous compliance. But Western policymakers face a dilemma: they may publicly downplay such incidents while privately recognising the pattern. Over-reliance on ambiguity and off-ramps risks normalising sub-threshold aggression and emboldening it further.
Journals
2026 EN
Bailey Hannah · Hall Todd
The conventional literature on power transitions warns that a rising challenger may seek to dethrone the established power by launching a devastating great-power war. The contemporary international environment, however, differs from that of the past, creating incentives to avoid a major conflagration and instead employ a strategy of amassing international support and improving institutional standing. Given these strategic aims, as a rising power, China is more likely to adopt tactics analogous to a domestic opposition party: promoting an alternative political programme with slogans and manifestos; seeking a greater institutional presence by building support with coalitions and patronage relationships; and using political communications to portray itself positively in contrast to the incumbent power. Based on an examination of three domains of China’s behaviour, this analogy sheds light on the tactics it is using to pursue a greater international leadership role.
Journals
2026 EN
Sauser Mark
The use of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the Russo-Ukrainian war reflects not transformative change, but rather notable innovation within existing military paradigms. While UAVs have demonstrated remarkable tactical capabilities across Eliot Cohen’s three criteria of new weapons, new organisations and new ways of war for a ‘revolution in military affairs’, they have not changed the character of warfare on a wholesale basis. The conflict’s static front lines, maintained for more than 1,000 days despite deployment of millions of uncrewed systems, provide compelling evidence that UAVs enhance rather than replace traditional military capabilities. While Ukraine’s establishment of dedicated ‘Unmanned Systems Forces’ represents unprecedented organisation innovation, they require integration with conventional forces to achieve operational effectiveness, which depends heavily on specific operational conditions, including static defensive positions, predictable target patterns and favourable environmental factors. These systems are substantial force multipliers in combined-arms operations, with capabilities degrading substantially in adverse weather and becoming largely ineffective in contested electromagnetic environments. The main military lesson is to pursue ongoing UAV integration while maintaining comprehensive conventional capabilities.
Journals
2026 EN
Waldman Thomas
The Trump administration’s embrace of coercion, transactional alliance politics and performative displays of strength is often defended as hard-headed realism in an unforgiving international system. Key figures within President Donald Trump’s foreign-policy team have explicitly invoked a stripped-down and distorted reading of Thucydides’ The History of the Peloponnesian War to legitimise this approach, treating the dictum that ‘the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must’ as timeless wisdom rather than as a warning about its consequences. In fact, Thucydides did not celebrate such logic, but rather traced how Athens’ growing reliance on intimidation hollowed out the foundations of its power. The contrast he draws between Periclean grand strategy and the later coercive turn exemplified by the Melian Dialogue shows how unrestrained power corrodes both international influence and domestic cohesion. Focused on Trump’s foreign policy, the Thucydidean lens illuminates the strategic costs of the coercive approach. Power exercised without restraint may compel compliance in the short term, but ultimately accelerates resistance, balancing behaviour and strategic decline.
Resource
2026 EN
Stent Angela
Russia’s Gamble: The Domestic Origins of Russia’s Attack on Ukraine Vladimir Gel’man. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2025. £55.00. 220 pp. If Russia Wins: A Scenario Carlo Masala. London: Atlantic Books, 2025. £9.99. 128 pp. Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy Julia Ioffe. New York: Ecco, 2025. $35.00. 512 pp. Securing Peace in Europe: Strobe Talbott, NATO, and Russia After the Cold War Stephan Kieninger. New York: Columbia University Press, 2025. £30.00/$35.00. 376 pp. The Dark Side of the Earth: Russia’s Short-lived Victory over Totalitarianism Mikhail Zygar. New York: Scribner, 2025. $32.00. 560 pp.
Resource
2026 EN
Smith Karen
Comrades Beyond the Cold War: North Korea and the Liberation of Southern Africa Tycho van der Hoog. London: C. Hurst & Co., 2025. £25.00. 368 pp. Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State Mahmood Mamdani. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2025. £27.95/$32.50. 352 pp. Bottled: How Coca-Cola Became African Sara Byala. London: C. Hurst & Company, 2023. £30.00. 328 pp. Africa, the EU and the Samoa Agreement: Exploring African Agency amid the ‘New Scramble’ Sophia Price and Mark Langan, eds. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2025. £155.00/$200.00. 198 pp. An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence Zeinab Badawi. London: WH Allen, 2024. £25.00. 544 pp.
Journals
2026 EN
Simon Steven
Phase one of the ceasefire in Gaza has sharply reduced the scale of violence. But the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack injected Israeli society with existential purpose. Israeli military power subdued Hizbullah and Iran, which judged that a major war with Israel would diminish them more than exposing the weakness of the ‘axis of resistance’. For Israel, growing isolation affirmed right-wing claims that Hamas was just the tip of an eternal anti-Semitic spear. European and Middle Eastern powers were sufficiently ambivalent about Israel’s brutal response to 7 October that isolation never evolved into punishment. Although many equated Israel’s conduct with genocide, this is not an adjudicated fact, and redress has consisted only of empty gestures towards Palestinian self-determination. Perhaps the most strategically conspicuous aspect of the war was the United States’ lack of leverage over Israel. This casts doubt on whether the far more ambitious phase two will be realised.
Journals
2026 EN
Hokayem Emile
The war against Iran is the continuation of the June 2025 12-day bombings in which Israel and the United States destroyed much of Iran’s nuclear assets and air defences. The outcome was strategically inconclusive. The diplomacy that followed was futile: Iran would not offer the nuclear capitulation the US demanded, and Israel was eager to strike. Iran’s system has proven more resilient and tolerant of pain than the Trump administration expected. Although supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed, his son Mojtaba was expeditiously chosen to replace him. Iran is undeniably weakened and cannot re-emerge as a conventional power in the next decade. But the war has validated the Gulf Arab states’ concerns about their exposure, the United States’ capacity to defend them, the risks of protracted instability and the perils of an unconstrained Israel. The Middle East must now contain a weakened, militarised, angry Iranian regime willing to disrupt regional geo-economic and geopolitical relationships.
Journals
2026 EN
Winner Andrew C.
In late 1983, arms control was dead and the fear of nuclear war was high. In two years, changes in leadership and rapid evolutions of views on the possibility of reciprocation and cooperation led to arms control’s revival. The arms control of the late 1980s and early 1990s not only produced agreements reducing nuclear and conventional arms, but also served as a tool to manage rapid change in the international system. Today, arms control once again appears dead and fears of nuclear war are high. The views of the increased number of nuclear-weapons states on how best to protect and advance their security interests cut against another rapid revival. Today’s dramatic changes in the international system may play out without arms control, or they may produce a recognition that cooperation, even among potential enemies, is not only possible, but desirable.
Journals
2026 EN
Alcaro Riccardo
The strategic challenges faced by the European Union have prompted calls for greater strategic autonomy in a variety of forms, from European sovereignty to ‘open strategic autonomy’ and economic security. While EU efforts have succeeded in strengthening European capabilities, these are still insufficient to prevent major disruptions in the face of conflict or prolonged crises. Diversification strategies reduce vulnerabilities without eliminating dependency, and preventive and retaliatory capacities are uneven and contingent on temporary political consensus. Structural factors, including Europe’s lag in technology development and declining global economic weight, have combined with Russia’s war in Ukraine, the possibility of US disengagement and China’s assertive trade policies to exacerbate fragilities. Institutional constraints and weak political consensus further limit transformative reforms. Continued reliance on the United States, even as Europe diversifies away from unreliable partners, is creating enduring strategic constraints. Strengthening EU autonomy will require political investment in a long-term, epochal project to translate capabilities into capacity for more independent action and to arrest Europe’s strategic decline.