Critically Assessing the “Smart City”
The phrase “smart city” is on the lips of urban planners and policy makers everywhere in recent months. Cities from London and Barcelona to Hangzhou and Rio de Janeiro are being hailed as “smart,” “wired,” and “networked” with...
NATO’s New Cold War: A Nuclear Arms Race in US-Russian relations
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is the world’s most effective collective defense alliance, playing a fundamental role in the structure of transatlantic security. For the United States, NATO ultimately proved...
Securing an Olympic Legacy
Pyeongchang, a rural county in one of the poorest regions in South Korea, recently hosted 60,000 security forces, alongside an influx of security infrastructure that included such state-of-the-art military technology as...
A Powerful Message Delivered With Nerve Toxins
Polonium-laced tea. An ice axe to the head. A ricin-pill fired from an umbrella. Defectors and dissidents have long met their demise uniquely at the hands of Soviet- and Russian-linked security services. Two people were found...
Moving Forward After Pittella
Italians have taken to polls this weekend to vote in what many are considering to be a test not only the for their country, but also for the future of Europe. This election has proven to be a test not only for the ruling...
Legal Migration in an Anxious Europe
Migration has been at the center of debates regarding reforming the European Union ever since a ‘refugee crisis’ hit the continent more than three years ago. Reforming the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) has been on both the...
Cyanide in the Courtroom: International Opinion on Serbia’s Role in the Balkan Conflicts
Last November, twenty two years after he ordered mass killings of Muslim Bosnians, The Hague sentenced Ratko Mladic, aka the Butcher of Bosnia, to life in prison. A week later, Slobodan Praljak took a deadly dose of cyanide...
Proliferating Bollards: Managing the Risk of Terrorism Through Protective Design
On the afternoon of October 31, 2017, a man drove a pickup onto a protected bike lane along New York City’s Westside Highway, killing eight and injuring another twelve. It was the latest in a string of “low-tech” terror attacks...
Quo Vadis Arctic? The EU and its Northern Neighbourhood
The Arctic is melting, and melting fast. In times of starving polar bears going viral, the Arctic has become global climate change’s canary in a coal mine. Over the last ten years, the European Union has also felt an Arctic...
The Romanian Diaspora as an Unlikely Opposition
Diasporas have long been seen by scholars and practitioners of international relations as an important diplomacy tool. A large, active, and politically engaged diaspora can often be used to influence another country’s politics,...