DIPLOMACY ID

From Expert Publications to Real Projects

Ivan Sisnev — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 11:30:31 +0000

Ivan Sisnev

Policy Memo (Three Options) | Global Vision & Solutions

Policy question: How can an international expert community move beyond publishing insights and debating ideas to developing credible, collaborative initiatives that create practical value?

Central proposition: The true value of an expert community lies not only in the knowledge it generates, but in its ability to transform that knowledge into collective action.

1. The Knowledge-to-Action Gap

Expert communities publish analysis, compare experiences and bring together perspectives that rarely meet elsewhere. Yet discussion often ends just as practical potential emerges. A compelling article receives thoughtful comments; participants recognise a shared concern; then attention moves to the next publication.

This is a problem of continuity, ownership and coordination, not intelligence or goodwill. A discussion does not automatically produce a clearly defined problem, a person willing to lead, a working team, a budget or an organisation capable of implementing a solution. Experts may agree on objectives without agreeing on methods. Others may see opportunities but lack the time or institutional mandate to pursue them.

A persuasive argument is not yet a validated project: assumptions, stakeholders, risks and responsibilities must all be examined.

The challenge is to build a pathway between reflection and implementation without sacrificing the independence and openness that make expert communities valuable.

2. Three Models for Turning Knowledge into Action

Option A — The Expert Forum

Operating logic: Create a trusted space for publications, commentary, professional exchanges and constructive disagreement. Participation is accessible, and contributors retain considerable freedom to choose topics and engage at their own pace.

Strengths: The forum can draw in diverse specialists, surface emerging questions and connect people across disciplines and borders. Its low barrier to participation helps ideas emerge before their practical significance is fully understood.

Limitations: Conversations can become fragmented. Promising propositions may disappear into an archive, and there may be no accountable mechanism for turning interest into sustained collaboration.

Best use: Discovery, perspective-sharing and building relationships.

Success measure: Quality and diversity of contributions, substantive interaction and the number of promising ideas identified—not publication volume alone.

Option B — The Collaborative Think Tank

Operating logic: Assemble small, multidisciplinary working groups around defined questions. Experts combine analysis, evidence, regional knowledge and peer review to produce joint reports, scenarios or policy recommendations.

Strengths: A shared research question and editorial process can turn individual viewpoints into more rigorous collective knowledge. Named coordinators, research milestones and review standards improve continuity and credibility.

Limitations: Research collaboration needs sustained effort, agreed methodology and sometimes funding. Even high-quality recommendations may have no institution willing to implement them.

Best use: Questions requiring comparative analysis, structured problem definition or policy design.

Success measure: Completed and reviewed outputs, uptake by relevant organisations and evidence that findings clarify actionable choices.

Option C — The Project Incubator

Operating logic: Select sufficiently mature ideas and help their proponents develop concrete initiatives—partnerships, pilots, training programmes, investment concepts or applied research projects.

Strengths: It explicitly connects knowledge with execution. A project charter can identify beneficiaries, partners, resources, milestones and expected results. Feedback from implementation can then improve subsequent research.

Limitations: Incubation is resource-intensive and introduces new obligations: financial transparency, project governance, legal review, risk management and clear accountability. A platform should not mistake enthusiasm for feasibility or imply that it can finance and deliver every proposal.

Best use: Opportunities with a defined problem, committed participants, plausible delivery partners and measurable benefits.

Success measure: Viable pilots, committed partnerships, milestones achieved and independently verifiable outcomes.

3. Recommended Approach: One Community, Three Complementary Functions

The options should not be treated as three competing institutional identities. A staged model—forum first, collaborative research when warranted, incubation only when justified—offers the most credible route. It preserves broad participation while concentrating scarce implementation resources on the strongest opportunities.

Not every publication needs to become a project. Critical reflection and evidence that an idea is not ready are valuable outcomes too.

A practical decision rule is to move an idea forward only when it passes an explicit readiness check: Is the problem specific? Are the affected stakeholders identifiable? Is there a plausible intervention? Are the risks and uncertainties stated? Do committed people have the capacity to do the work? A clear “not yet” is better than a ceremonial working group that never meets.

4. From Discussion to Implementation

A transparent six-step process can make cooperation repeatable:

Publication: An author sets out a problem, argument or opportunity, including what remains uncertain.
Expert discussion: Contributors test assumptions, bring alternative perspectives and identify potential areas of shared interest.
Working group: A small team volunteers, names a coordinator, agrees on scope and defines a short, time-bound research task.
Project concept: The group produces a concise brief stating the objective, beneficiaries, deliverables, resource needs, risks, indicators and decision points.
Partner search: Potential academic, business, civic or institutional partners are approached on the basis of the developed concept—not vague enthusiasm.
Implementation and learning: Where resources and approvals are secured, the team launches a pilot, measures results and reports what worked, what failed and what should change.

Each transition should have a responsible owner and a go / revise / stop decision. Where confidentiality permits, public progress summaries reinforce accountability. Authorship of an idea does not automatically confer project control, and volunteering creates no unlimited obligation.

5. The Role of Digital Platforms and AI

Digital infrastructure can lower the coordination costs that often prevent experts from working together. Structured topic pages, searchable profiles, interest signals, shared workspaces, versioned project briefs and milestone tracking can give a conversation a lasting organisational memory.

AI can help classify publications by theme, summarise long discussions, identify unanswered questions, suggest potentially relevant expertise and convert a preliminary concept into a draft research plan. It can also help teams compare scenarios, track stated assumptions and prepare multilingual working materials. These are useful support functions, not substitutes for expertise or consent.

A responsible platform should make safeguards visible. AI-generated summaries can misrepresent disagreement; automated matching can miss important contextual factors; confidential information cannot be treated as unrestricted training material. Recommendations should be explainable and reviewable, sensitive data protected and experts free to decline participation. Human participants must decide what deserves attention, what evidence is trustworthy and whether a proposed project should proceed.

Technology can make collaboration easier. It cannot manufacture trust, professional accountability or a genuine shared purpose.

6. A Vision for DIPLOMACY.ID

DIPLOMACY.ID can pursue a distinctive ambition: to connect intellectual exchange with practical international cooperation, while remaining realistic about the distance between the two. Its first responsibility is to be a credible home for informed publications and substantive discussion. Its next opportunity is to help participants recognise when a conversation merits deeper collaboration.

The platform could introduce an initiative pathway: flag a promising theme, invite interested experts, appoint a coordinator, undertake a short scoping exercise and present a reviewed concept to potential partners. Initiatives might involve joint research, professional training, business dialogue or locally anchored pilots. The form should follow the problem.

This is a vision and proposed operating design—not a claim that every feature, partnership or delivery capability already exists. The immediate priority should be a small number of carefully documented pilot collaborations. Each pilot could test whether the platform helps people move from a useful publication to an accountable team and a concrete next step.

The long-term measure of success would not be the number of articles, comments or registered experts in isolation. It would be the quality of connections formed, the work completed together and the difference that work makes beyond the platform.

The essential shift is from asking “What do experts think?” to also asking “What can experts responsibly accomplish together?”

Knowledge sharing remains the foundation. Meaningful collaboration is the bridge. Real-world impact is the ambition—and it must be demonstrated, not merely declared.

Oncology and AI: Promise, Evidence and Boundaries

Bahodur Kamolov — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 10:58:40 +0000

Analytical explainer | Science, Technology, AI, Cyber & Space

Artificial intelligence is entering oncology at a moment when clinicians face growing volumes of imaging, pathology and molecular data. The possibilities are substantial: identifying suspicious findings, reducing repetitive tasks, improving the consistency of treatment planning and accelerating research. But cancer care is also a field in which a convincing-looking error can have serious consequences.

The right question is not whether AI can recognise patterns. It is whether a specific AI system can improve a specific decision, for a specific patient population, with risks that are understood and managed. That distinction separates a promising laboratory result from responsible clinical practice.

1. Promise: where AI can make a practical difference

Screening and image interpretation. In the Swedish randomised MASAI trial involving approximately 106,000 women, AI-supported mammography was compared with standard double reading by radiologists. In the 2026 primary-outcome analysis, screening sensitivity was 80.5% with AI support versus 73.8% with standard reading, while specificity was 98.5% in both groups. The rate of cancers identified between scheduled screening rounds met the trial's non-inferiority criterion, but a statistically established reduction in interval cancers was not demonstrated. These are important screening-performance results, not proof that AI reduces breast-cancer mortality. [1]

Digital pathology. AI can help pathologists examine digitised tissue slides by highlighting regions that merit closer attention. A concrete example is Paige Prostate, authorised by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2021 to assistpathologists in identifying suspicious foci on prostate-biopsy images. Its defined role is assistance with image review; it is not a licence to replace the pathologist or the full diagnostic work-up. [2]

Radiotherapy planning. Machine-learning tools can help produce organ contours and radiation treatment plans, potentially reducing repetitive work and variation. In an NCI-highlighted multicancer planning study, physicians judged 88% of automatically generated plans acceptable without changes and 98% acceptable after minor adjustments. This supports a workflow benefit, but plan acceptability is not the same endpoint as better survival or fewer complications. [3]

Research and precision oncology. AI can analyse combinations of histology, genomic measurements and clinical records to generate hypotheses about disease biology, prognosis and potential treatment response. These applications may help prioritise research. Yet a correlation learned from a dataset is not automatically a validated biomarker, and a model that predicts an outcome does not necessarily show which treatment will improve it. Independent validation and treatment-guiding evidence remain essential. [4]

2. Evidence: three questions that must not be confused

What is being measured?	What a positive study can establish	What it cannot automatically establish
Technical performance	Accuracy, sensitivity, specificity or agreement with experts on a defined dataset.	That the same system performs well in other hospitals, patient groups or future clinical conditions.
Clinical workflow	Shorter reading times, more consistent contours or fewer repetitive tasks.	That patient outcomes are improved or overall care becomes safer.
Patient benefit	With an appropriate study design: effects on meaningful endpoints such as complications, unnecessary procedures, quality of life or cancer outcomes.	That benefits exceed harms in every population or remain stable after software changes.

This hierarchy matters because AI can improve a surrogate measure while producing uncertain downstream value. Computer-aided polyp detection during colonoscopy, for example, may increase detection of small lesions, but a 2025 BMJ clinical practice guideline found no direct evidence for critical outcomes such as colorectal cancer incidence or mortality and issued a weak recommendation against routine use in adults undergoing colonoscopy. This is not a judgment against every AI endoscopy system; it is an illustration of why detection gains alone are insufficient. [5]

3. Visual scenario: a patient journey with AI — and human checkpoints

The following is a hypothetical pathway for a person undergoing investigation for possible prostate cancer. It is an explanatory scenario, not a case report, diagnostic protocol or recommendation for an individual patient.

Stage 1 — Initial assessment

AI may organise medical information and help identify findings requiring review. AI-assisted interpretation of prostate MRI is being studied.

Human checkpoint: A clinician evaluates symptoms, risk factors, test limitations and whether further tests are appropriate.

Stage 2 — Tissue diagnosis

AI may flag suspicious regions on digitised prostate-biopsy slides for the pathologist.

Human checkpoint: The pathologist reviews the tissue and establishes the diagnosis within the validated workflow. Defined, authorised assistive tools already exist. [2]

Stage 3 — Treatment discussion

AI may combine records and research evidence into a structured summary and suggest questions for a multidisciplinary team.

Human checkpoint: The oncology team considers cancer stage, pathology, patient preferences, comorbidities and clinical guidelines. Automated treatment selection is not established as a general standard.

Stage 4 — Treatment planning

If radiotherapy is selected, AI may support contouring and generation of candidate treatment plans.

Human checkpoint: Radiation oncologists and medical physicists verify dose, contours and constraints for organs at risk. Evidence supports workflow improvements in specific tasks. [3]

Stage 5 — Follow-up

AI may help track structured data and identify signals for clinical review, if the system is validated for that purpose.

Human checkpoint: Clinicians interpret results, adverse effects and patient concerns. Software cannot independently declare recurrence or change therapy.

The critical principle is that every AI-supported step must have an explicit clinical responsibility. This scenario does not imply that a single integrated AI system exists or is approved to perform all five tasks.

4. Boundaries: where overconfidence becomes dangerous

Generalisation is not guaranteed. An algorithm trained on images from one institution may encounter different scanners, staining methods, demographics, disease prevalence or clinical workflows elsewhere. Before adoption, developers and hospitals need external validation and local performance monitoring—not merely an impressive score on the original test dataset. The National Cancer Institute warns that unrepresentative training data can perpetuate medical bias. [4]

Errors have different clinical costs. False negatives may delay investigation; false positives may cause anxiety, unnecessary procedures and additional workload. A model optimised for detection needs to be evaluated against these trade-offs, not only its average accuracy.

Prediction is not treatment selection. A system that estimates recurrence risk or probable survival does not thereby prove that its recommended drug, operation or radiation regimen improves outcomes. Oncology treatment decisions require appropriately validated biomarkers, clinical evidence, examination of alternatives and patient preferences.

Generative AI is a separate category. Large language models can draft summaries or patient-facing explanations, but may invent references, omit qualifying information or present incorrect advice fluently. The European Society for Medical Oncology's ELCAP guidance distinguishes patient-facing, clinician-facing and background systems, stressing validation, privacy protection and professional oversight. The WHO likewise warns about misleading outputs, automation bias and cybersecurity risks. [6, 7]

Regulatory clearance is task-specific. Inclusion on the FDA's list of AI-enabled devices means a device has met applicable requirements for its defined intended use; it does not certify that every AI product is safe or that a cleared product can be used for unrelated cancer diagnoses. Hospitals must also account for their own jurisdiction, procurement standards and clinical governance. [8]

5. The five-question test for responsible adoption

What exact clinical task? Define the decision, user, intended population and the result that would constitute a meaningful improvement.
What level of evidence? Distinguish retrospective performance, prospective workflow testing and clinical outcomes; examine false positives and false negatives.
Will it generalise here? Check external validation, population representativeness, scanner or laboratory differences and performance in subgroups.
Who remains accountable? Establish human review, informed consent where appropriate, data protection, incident reporting and clear escalation when AI and clinician disagree.
What happens after deployment? Monitor errors, disparities, software updates, changing clinical practice and the effects on patients over time.

The real promise: better decisions, not automated medicine

The strongest case for AI in oncology is neither that it will replace physicians nor that every algorithm will transform outcomes. It is that well-tested systems can help clinicians use scarce time and complex information more effectively. Screening performance, pathological review and radiotherapy planning already provide specific examples of that potential. At the same time, many of the most ambitious claims about autonomous diagnosis, treatment choice and personalised prognosis remain dependent on more rigorous clinical testing.

Oncology needs innovation that can survive the discipline of evidence. The boundary between assistance and responsibility must remain clear: AI may support a clinical judgment, but patients should not be asked to carry the consequences of an unvalidated one.

Selected sources

The Fog of Tech

Andrey Matuzov — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 15:08:27 +0000

Why the Future of War Can’t Escape the Past

Mara Karlin | October 20, 2026

At a time when debates about national security tend to be polarized along partisan and ideological lines, there is one thing analysts and policymakers across the political spectrum seem to agree on: the future of warfare will be determined by technology. Hypersonic missiles, quantum computing, drone swarms, and artificial intelligence have all been hailed as transformative technologies that will shape battlefields, remake strategies, and upend established military doctrines.

Without question, these technologies are already having a tremendous impact. In Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, Ukraine, and elsewhere, every party with the capacity to employ artificial intelligence and autonomous systems has done so—in the air, on land, and at sea, and at times in massive numbers. And there is also no question that in order to maintain its status as the world’s preeminent fighting force, the U.S. military must ensure that it has the most sophisticated and cutting-edge capabilities available. To continue developing and operationalizing these technologies, defense planners should prioritize scaling and integrating them and developing innovative operational concepts to employ them. The risk of being overtaken by rivals such as China is real.

But an equally significant risk exists: call it “the technology trap,” in which policymakers develop a misplaced sense of certainty about how innovations will change war and what warfare will look like in the future, while not paying enough attention to the unchanging fundamentals of war. An excessive focus on the role of technology would be shortsighted and lead militaries in dangerous directions, especially if planners are highly confident about how new capabilities will develop and make decisions in line with that confidence—which will almost certainly be misplaced.

For war planners, faith in technological answers can obscure the most fundamental questions: Who kills, who dies, and who decides? In the post–Cold War era, this myopia has contributed to dreadful outcomes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, and Gaza. In the decade to come, as U.S.-Chinese tensions persist, the fog of tech could help pave the way for a disastrous great-power war. Policymakers should worry less about getting the right technology at the right time and more about how fixating on technology might make them lose sight of the essential elements of war and find comfort in false certainty.

THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY

More than 50 years ago, the military historian Michael Howard famously cautioned that future wars are unknowable. “I am tempted indeed to declare dogmatically that whatever doctrine the Armed Forces are working on now, they have got it wrong,” he wrote. “I am also tempted to declare that it does not matter that they have got it wrong. What does matter is their capacity to get it right quickly when the moment arrives.”

But Howard may have been a bit too sanguine about the costs of getting it wrong. For Americans, the paradigmatic example from recent history is how the U.S. military’s technological prowess in the 1990–91 Gulf War seemed to herald a new, high-tech American way of war that would guarantee victory in the post–Cold War era. Instead, Washington slowly and painfully learned that the technological advantages that beat Saddam Hussein’s regime could not defeat insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq during the post-9/11 wars.

Predicting the role of technology in future wars has become even harder today thanks to the speed, scale, and complexity of contemporary technological progress. In the past, transformative innovations tended to be expensive at their outset—in resources or personnel—or required specialized knowledge and skills accessible to only a few. Think of the combined power of the rifle, the railroad, and the telegraph in the nineteenth century, or fighter jets and nuclear weapons in the twentieth century. By contrast, many of today’s technologies have low barriers to entry: they are cheap to produce, and access to the knowledge necessary to make them has been democratized and globalized. Enemies today often face each other on more equal battlefields, making it trickier for war planners to understand when and for how long new tools will confer an outsize advantage.

Focusing too much on procuring the shiniest equipment also obscures the ways that high-end technology works in tandemwith more basic tools. In the 2010s, defense planners failed to account for this dynamic when predicting future battlefields, which they believed would be dominated by sophisticated platforms. In 2017, a senior Pentagon official declared that the F-35 stealth fighter would be “a war winner.” The 2018 National Defense Strategy, drafted under the direction of Elbridge Colby, who now serves as undersecretary of defense, anticipated that a few primarily high-end capabilities—including advanced computing, artificial intelligence, robotics, hypersonics, and biotechnology—would “ensure we will be able to fight and win the wars of the future.”

Instead, what emerged were conflicts such as the war in Ukraine, which can be described as World War I meets World War III. Sophisticated Russian ballistic missiles wreak havoc on Ukrainian cities, as do precision-guided glide bombs delivered by fighter aircraft out of the range of air defenses. At the same time, however, highly lethal bombs are dropped by drones carried aloft by simple balloons, and one of the most effective antidrone defenses consists of fishermen’s nets (or similar netting) draped over security checkpoints, critical infrastructure, and, in the case of Izium, an entire small Ukrainian city. A sense of certainty that sophisticated tech would dominate battlefields represented a failure of imagination that has produced real-world consequences: a dozen years ago, few would have predicted that during a U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, cheap Iranian drones would assault soft targets in Gulf Arab states, as they have since February.

THE CENTER OF GRAVITY

An obsession with technology can obscure the precept that war remains a human endeavor. As the military theorist Carl von Clausewitz said almost two centuries ago, “War is not the action of a living force upon a lifeless mass . . . but always the collision of two living forces.” Technology can inadvertently make war appear mechanical and sterile. But the nature of war has not changed. Its language is violence, and technology simply offers new and different ways to communicate. Therefore, the fundamental questions of war remain salient regardless of technological change: What are the ends (particularly with respect to politics), the ways, and the means?

Perhaps the most perilous time for leaders to be distracted by the allure of technology is when considering whether to go to war in the first place. They often mistakenly believe that technology will make doing so less costly in political terms, particularly if they assume innovations will help reduce casualties. A fixation on the tangible and quantifiable advantages technology confers can detract from vital debate and discussion of the broader consequences of resorting to violence. This dynamic likely influenced Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine. Putin and his advisers believed that the Russian military was sufficiently capable thanks to a massive technological reform effort that began in 2009. In the run-up to the 2022 full-scale invasion, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu proudly claimed that more than 70 percent of Russia’s military had advanced weapons. Within weeks of the invasion, it had become clear this had conferred little advantage on Moscow. The same goes for the U.S.-Israeli attempt to topple the Iranian regime in 2026, a decision shaped in part by the belief that the sophistication of the American military, particularly when compared with its opponent, made success almost inevitable. In the wake of U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites in 2025, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared that the attack showed Tehran that Washington’s military capabilities are “nearly unlimited.” In fact, the limits of those capabilities became glaringly obvious when the Iranian regime withstood the 2026 onslaught and even managed to close the Strait of Hormuz.

Military mechanics preparing unmanned ground vehicles for field use, Kharkiv, Ukraine, May 2026 – Thomas Peter / Reuters

There are ways to avoid the technology trap. The first is to determine a clear goal before going to war. Planners must develop a theory of victory before a single shot is fired and then steadily put that theory into practice. These critical processes cannot be negated by or outsourced to technology. Before launching the 2026 war on Iran, the Trump administration failed to clearly articulate the operation’s goal, instead offering a shifting set of justifications and rationales and various descriptions of the desired end state. The hope seems to have been that technological wizardry would make it possible to achieve everything on a long wish list without having to prioritize or navigate tradeoffs.

To clarify goals, planners must identify what Clausewitz termed “the center of gravity” of a military operation: “the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends.” This is where an opponent’s power originates, so it needs to be the focus of a military’s attention and resources. During the 1990–91 Gulf War, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, General Norman Schwarzkopf, identified the center of gravity as Saddam Hussein’s command and control of his military. Accordingly, U.S. strategy focused on impeding Saddam’s ability to communicate with his troops and weakening the Iraqi military’s ability to execute orders—a state of affairs that helped convince Saddam to accept a cease-fire. Without this clarity about where to direct efforts and how to measure their impact, a military will struggle to achieve its ends. Early in the 2003 Iraq war, the U.S. military’s inability to identify the Iraqi population as the center of gravity—that is, failing to understand that the political and military leadership no longer wielded control—resulted in years of devastating losses by encouraging tactics that fomented anti-American sentiment, fueled an insurgency, and made it more difficult to establish a credible and functioning government.

Another way to avoid the technology trap is to conduct deliberate, impartial, and regular reviews of lessons learned during and between wars. Iran closely studied the attacks that Israel and the United States carried out on its nuclear sites in 2025. Recognizing that another war would likely pose an existential risk to the Islamic Republic regime, Iranian security officials engaged in a serious and intense effort to prepare. By devolving command and control at both the political and the military levels during the 2026 war, the regime has survived a lengthy onslaught. U.S. allies are, of course, equally capable of such adaptation. In recent years, NATO’s Joint Analysis and Lessons Learned Centre has maintained a team of researchers dedicated to studying the war in Ukraine, a smart way to institutionalize this task and a potential model to apply to other theaters.

ALL FOR ONE, ONE FOR ALL?

The combination of a focus on strategic aims, preparation, and learning remains crucial for effective decision-making in war and cannot be replaced by technology. Similarly, the ways and means of warfare are influenced by technology but have not been fundamentally changed by it. Consider, first, the importance of coalitions and the difficulties of managing them. Going to war exposes the distinct and sometimes even opposing interests, objectives, and perspectives of allies. Planners can devise workarounds when they face disagreements in the heat of conflict, but those may be short-term fixes that mask strategic cleavages.

In early 2026, the United States and Israel launched the war on Iran relying solely on each other. Although the U.S. and Israeli militaries have never operated more closely together in the history of their relationship, their limited success calls into question the partnership’s strategic acumen, despite its remarkable technological capabilities. The two countries notably failed to bring in other partners in the region or in Europe. Early on, several U.S. allies and partners denied the American military access to their territory, bases, and airspace. Although U.S. defense planners have always understood that they might not receive such permissions—Turkey, for example, was unwilling to let the U.S. military invade Iraq from Turkish territory in 2003—the resistance this time was of a different quality and scale. Although most countries ultimately acquiesced, the ones that initially declined threw a wrench into U.S. defense planning, since the American way of war is predicated on an unparalleled global basing network. According to several media reports, Israel found ways around this challenge by setting up a military staging area in Iran during the 2025 war and one in Iraq in 2026. But the ad hoc nature of such creative approaches causes problems for military planning.

As the war has dragged on, the Arab Gulf states have not formally joined the U.S.-Israeli coalition, although at various times during the conflict, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have used military force against Iran. Their willingness to use force was significant in and of itself, but it did not influence the battlefield, despite some of the sophisticated capabilities those countries possess. On the other side, Iran masterfully managed its proxy, the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, pulling it into the conflict and enabling Tehran to project power through relatively unsophisticated technologies such as rockets, mortars, and most notably, cheap drones that Hezbollah repeatedly deployed against Israeli soldiers in Lebanon and Israeli civilians inside Israel. Meanwhile, Russia also helped Iran target U.S. military facilities in the Gulf, resulting in devastating (though not determinative) consequences.

The complexities of coalition maintenance are on display in Europe, as well, where defense planners are wrestling with a security trilemma. First, they must figure out how to incorporate a highly capable and modernized Ukrainian military into continental defense planning. As Germany turbocharges investments in its military, Europe must also contend with a shift in its internal balance of military power—one with uneasy historical echoes. And, incredibly, during the past year, Europeans have had to consider the risk of aggression on the part of the United States, as President Donald Trump mused about securing U.S. control of Greenland. These three realities introduce a host of tradeoffs into European strategy, since prioritizing any one of them would likely make it harder to deal with the other two—and no technology offers a way out.

SAFETY FIRST

Technological determinism can also lead to faulty assumptions about casualties—both civilian and military. Today, target selection is increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, and strikes are increasingly carried out by autonomous systems. Many have argued that these technological advances will improve targeting and better protect civilians. To date, however, it is unclear whether autonomous systems have delivered on this promise. During the war in Gaza, for example, Israeli military personnel have been able to rapidly approve targets generated by an artificial intelligence system called Lavender. But such systems reflect the rules of engagement set by decision-makers, and after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel in 2023, the Israeli military raised the level of civilian casualties it would accept when striking Hamas militants. Perhaps for that reason,researchers who conducted an experiment testing the decision-making of around 2,000 Israeli military personnel found that in hypothetical scenarios involving high levels of collateral damage, they demonstrated “algorithmic aversion” and a desire to rely more on human decision-making.

Ironically, civilians may become more vulnerable, not less, as new technologies make it harder to attack military personnel and targets, increasing the risk of collateral damage and even providing some parties with an incentive to deliberately attack civilians and soft targets. Many militaries, including the American one, increasingly employ technology to minimize the risks borne by their own forces. This desire for immaculate war is not new. Nearly 700,000 U.S. service members participated in the Gulf War in 1990–91, and contrary to expectations of a bloodbath, only 143 of them died, an outcome that bolstered arguments that technology had made it possible to carry out major military operations with minimal risk to American troops. Two years later, the Battle of Mogadishu undercut that view, as the U.S. military withdrew from Somalia after 18 service members died in a protracted fight with Somali militants armed with cheap and relatively low-tech weapons such as rifles, machine guns, and rocket-propelled grenades. Early in the present century, the rapid American overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan rekindled the dream of relatively bloodless warfare made possible by innovations. But the grinding fights that followed there and in Iraq once again poured cold water on the idea.

Technological hopes spring eternal, however, and the U.S. military once again seems to be planning operations that use high-tech tools to reduce risks to its personnel. In an operation carried out in Venezuela this past January, that meant employing special operations forces complemented by space-based and cyber platforms and more than 150 aircraft and drones—all to capture a single person, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. In Iran, it has meant waging a war to transform conditions on the ground, but with attacks carried out primarily from the air and by sea.

To be sure, this approach is linked to the fact that the United States is not engaged in existential wars. And when the U.S. military has fought an adversary that perceives the conflict as existential, as in the Iranian case, American officials are often surprised that their adversaries refuse to back down and are willing to absorb staggering losses. Even if technology allows for fewer American casualties, that does not mean it should short-circuit robust political debate about whether to go to war. Casualties, after all, are hardly the only cost that contemporary warfare can impose. Even wars that produce relatively low casualties can destroy economies, bring down governments, and rip apart societies.

BACK TO BASICS

Countries that haven’t waged war in many decades, such as China, may be even more susceptible than the United States to the technology trap. Such countries might focus on acquiring innovative tools rather than preparing for adversaries that know how to integrate new technologies at scale. This may present some opportunities for Washington given its substantial recent experience in formulating concepts of operation tied to technological advancements. But countries such as China might be no less confident about their capabilities, even though they are significantly less experienced, which means the risks of miscalculation and escalation could easily increase.

Deep faith in new technologies could result in much smaller militaries, as machines replace human personnel. In the United States, this shift could widen the gap that already exists between ordinary Americans and those who serve, as even fewer Americans will have connections to—and therefore care about—how, when, where, and why Washington resorts to military force. This detachment of the military from the society it serves is corrosive to the institution itself and to democracy more broadly since it undermines the principle that war-making should reflect the will of the people. Countries that rely on conscription won’t face quite the same problem, but technological determinism will affect their relationships with their publics, as well: even if such countries need fewer citizens to serve, the technology trap could still reduce social cohesion by further marginalizing the sectors of society from which conscripts tend to be drawn.

Perhaps the most pernicious effect of the technology trap might be the way it could hollow out deterrence, as policymakers are tempted to adopt a myopic approach to the use of force shaped by deterministic views of technology’s impact on the battlefield. Deterrence requires an adversary to cogently read signals regarding capability and will. If both parties in a conflict have confidence in their own capabilities and in those of the other side, they may face increasing pressure to outdo each other in demonstrating a greater will to fight. Such a dynamic could result in a dangerous escalation spiral, particularly if it is paired with assumptions that technology will minimize the role and responsibilities of humans.

It is possible to escape the fog of tech. The most important thing for strategists and officials to grasp is that even though the means of warfighting will keep changing, the fundamental nature of war will not. There is not, and will never be, a shortcut—technological or otherwise—to answering the hard questions one must confront before sending troops to fight, kill, and die.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

MARA KARLIN is Professor of Practice at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution. She served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities during the Biden administration and in policy roles at the Pentagon during the Obama and George W. Bush administrations.

Tourism as Quiet Diplomacy

Rajko Ruzicka — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 12:34:55 +0000

Rajko Ruzicka

Comparative Country Lens | Croatia and Türkiye | Economy, Trade & Finance

Diplomacy usually brings to mind summits, treaties and official statements. Tourism operates differently. It creates contact through ordinary experiences: a family staying with a local host, a tour operator developing a new route, an airline opening a connection, or a hotel investing in a destination. These encounters do not settle political disputes. They can, however, create knowledge, trust and commercial relationships across borders—often without being described as diplomacy at all.

That is what makes tourism a form of "quiet diplomacy": its influence is indirect, cumulative and difficult to measure. Croatia and Türkiye offer two revealing perspectives. Both have internationally recognisable destinations and depend on visitors from abroad, but they operate at different scales and organise their tourism sectors in different ways. Their comparison helps us distinguish the potential diplomatic value of tourism from the economic figures that are easier to count.

Two countries, two models of international connection

Dimension	Croatia	Türkiye
International reach	Deeply connected to nearby European visitor markets, especially Germany, Slovenia and Austria.	A large and varied visitor base, with Russia, Germany and the United Kingdom among the leading markets.
National approach	A destination model increasingly focused on sustainable, higher-value and year-round tourism, including stronger local destination management.	A nationally coordinated promotion model combining destination branding, cultural heritage and sector-wide sustainability standards.
Economic link	Tourism is central to services exports and local SMEs, including hospitality, transport and food producers.	Tourism supports substantial service-export revenues and commercial networks across a large, diversified tourism market.
Diplomatic opportunity	Long-term familiarity and repeat connections between neighbouring societies.	Contact among visitors and businesses from a wide range of political and cultural environments.

The "diplomatic opportunity" row is an analytical interpretation, not a measured outcome or a claim that tourism automatically improves interstate relations.

Croatia: familiarity as a form of influence

Croatia's international tourism economy is strongly connected to established European travel patterns. According to the Croatian National Tourist Board, the country recorded more than 21.8 million tourist arrivals and 110.1 million overnight stays in 2025 in its eVisitor system. Visitors from Germany accounted for 22.3 million overnight stays; Slovenia accounted for 11.1 million and Austria for 8.2 million. The figures point to sustained movement between Croatia and its nearby European markets. (Croatian National Tourist Board, January 2026)

Repeated travel matters differently from a one-off publicity campaign. A visitor returning to the same town may build relationships with accommodation providers, restaurants, local businesses and neighbours. Such ties can make another society feel more familiar and create commercial opportunities beyond the original holiday. Yet frequency of travel alone does not establish that political trust has increased; that would need to be tested rather than presumed.

Croatia's next challenge is not simply to attract more people. Of the 110.1 million overnight stays recorded in 2025, 104.6 million were on the Adriatic coast. Tourism therefore remains geographically concentrated. The country's Sustainable Tourism Development Strategy to 2030 aims to spread benefits more evenly across the year and territory, protect cultural and natural resources and improve the quality of life of residents. (Croatian National Tourist Board, strategic documents; OECD, Croatia tourism profile, 2026)

This has a quiet-diplomacy dimension. If visitors discover inland communities, local food producers, craftspeople and smaller cultural destinations, the international image of Croatia becomes richer than a coastline alone. The benefit is strongest when local people share in the resulting income and retain confidence in how tourism is managed.

Türkiye: global reach through culture and connectivity

Türkiye illustrates a different scale of international contact. The OECD reports 64 million international visitors and USD 65.2 billion in tourism revenue in 2025. The leading source markets included the Russian Federation, Germany and the United Kingdom. These figures describe a far larger international tourism market, though its visitor methodology should not be equated directly with Croatia's eVisitor arrivals. (OECD, Türkiye tourism profile, 2026)

The country also uses a more centralised international promotion structure. Established in 2019, the Türkiye Tourism Promotion and Development Agency (TGA) has an explicit mandate to promote its cultural and natural heritage, strengthen the national destination brand and support tourism investment and service quality. (TGA, About Us)

Through travel, visitors encounter a country in ways that foreign-policy headlines cannot fully convey: its cities, historic sites, food, cultural traditions and everyday hospitality. This creates an opportunity to complicate simplistic perceptions. It is an opportunity, not a guarantee. Travellers can also carry home negative experiences, and wider political disagreements may affect demand or perceptions independently of the tourism sector.

Türkiye's tourism strategy is not limited to promotion. Its environmental and cultural sustainability programme has been rolled out across all 81 provinces, with staged criteria for accommodation businesses. That investment in standards matters commercially, but it is also relevant to national reputation: a country's international image depends on what visitors actually experience, not only on how it advertises itself. (OECD, Türkiye tourism profile, 2026)

Where tourism meets trade and investment

In both countries, tourism should be considered part of a wider economic relationship rather than an isolated leisure industry. Flights and ferry connections expand mobility. Hotels buy food, furniture, digital services and equipment. Travel fairs introduce businesses to new partners. Visitors may later return for education, professional events or investment. These are plausible channels through which tourism can strengthen cross-border relationships; they are not evidence that every visitor produces a diplomatic benefit.

The economic significance is substantial in both cases. The OECD estimates that travel exports accounted for 65.8% of Croatia's service exports in 2024 and 49% of Türkiye's in 2024. Those measures make tourism important to national economic resilience and international commercial exposure. They do not measure soft power directly. (OECD: Croatia; OECD: Türkiye)

There is a particular role here for small and medium-sized enterprises. A family-run guesthouse, a restaurant using local agricultural products or a regional tour operator can become a repeated point of contact between societies. For governments seeking long-term economic partnerships, this bottom-up network may be as important as a single national advertising campaign.

What tourism cannot do

The concept of quiet diplomacy can become misleading if we confuse exposure with agreement. More tourist arrivals do not automatically mean less geopolitical tension, better bilateral relations or mutual understanding. Tourism depends on safety, affordability, transport and the economic conditions of source markets—factors that can change quickly. Nor should the pursuit of national prestige come at the expense of residents.

The Croatian case highlights pressures around seasonality, coastal concentration and the balance between accommodation growth and community needs. The Turkish case highlights the challenges of managing a much larger visitor market while maintaining quality, sustainability and a credible international brand. The OECD's 2026 tourism outlook stresses that resilience, environmental stewardship and benefits for host communities are now central tests of tourism policy. (OECD Tourism Trends and Policies 2026)

Tourism works best as quiet diplomacy when the exchange is reciprocal: visitors leave with a more informed understanding of their host country, and host communities gain fair and durable economic benefits.

How should we judge success?

Visitor totals and tourism receipts remain essential, but they are incomplete. A more useful assessment of tourism's diplomatic potential would combine commercial and social measures:

Depth of relationships: repeat visits, durable travel partnerships and the diversity of international source markets.
Local economic value: income reaching regional businesses, employment quality and opportunities for local suppliers.
Quality of exchange: visitors' perceptions before and after a trip, alongside residents' views of tourism.
Resilience: whether commercial and cultural connections can be maintained during political or economic disruption.
Sustainability: whether visitor growth preserves the communities and heritage that make meaningful exchange possible.

These are proposed indicators, not a validated index of diplomatic influence. They would nevertheless test the idea of quiet diplomacy more seriously than simply equating rising visitor numbers with rising national prestige.

The lesson from Croatia and Türkiye

Croatia demonstrates the value of familiarity: repeated cross-border travel can connect neighbouring societies and regional economies over time. Türkiye demonstrates the value of breadth: a large, internationally promoted tourism sector creates contact across diverse markets and cultures. Both models also show why sustainable, credible experiences matter more than slogans.

Tourism will not replace embassies or resolve disputes at negotiating tables. Its contribution is quieter. It can make other countries less abstract, open commercial doors, and support relationships that are not entirely dependent on the political climate of the day.

The question is not whether tourism is diplomacy in disguise. It is how countries can turn everyday travel into more durable human and economic connections—without pretending that those connections alone can overcome geopolitics.

France’s Social Tensions: Causes Beyond Slogans

Stephan Belaiche — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 07:26:03 +0000

Stephan Belaiche

Scenario brief | Horizon: 2035

France's social tensions are often reduced to competing slogans: the cost of living, immigration, public order, discrimination, pensions or the supposed distance between Paris and the rest of the country. Each points to a real debate. None, on its own, explains why very different grievances can produce a recurring sense that the social contract is failing.

Looking towards 2035, the central question is not whether France will experience another protest or confrontation. It is whether institutions can rebuild the connection between the Republic's promise of equal opportunity and the everyday experience of its citizens. This brief outlines the structural pressures behind the tensions, then explores three plausible, not predictive, pathways for the next decade.

The starting point: what the evidence shows

Economic insecurity persists alongside national wealth. According to INSEE, 15.4% of people living in ordinary housing in metropolitan France were below the relative monetary poverty line in 2024, or approximately 9.8 million people. Material and social deprivation affected 13.5% of the population at the beginning of 2025. These figures do not mean that all households are becoming poorer; they show that hardship remains substantial, even as average living standards move. (INSEE, July 2026; INSEE, April 2026)

Place shapes opportunity. In France's designated priority urban neighbourhoods (quartiers prioritaires de la politique de la ville, or QPV), the unemployment rate was 16.6% in 2024, compared with 7.5% nationally. That difference should not be confused with a uniform description of the suburbs or of their residents. It does, however, expose a persistent gap in access to work. (ANCT/ONPV, June 2026)

National political trust is unusually fragile. The 2026 CEVIPOF barometer found that 15% of respondents trusted political parties, while 60% trusted mayors. At the same time, 82% regarded democracy as a good system of government. The distinction matters: distrust of political actors does not automatically amount to rejection of democracy itself. (CEVIPOF, February 2026)

Beyond the slogans: five pressures that interact

1. Purchasing power and the geography of daily life.

A national inflation figure cannot capture the lived cost of commuting, housing, childcare or heating. A household in a peripheral town and one in a high-demand metropolitan area may feel squeezed for very different reasons. Housing shortages can also limit mobility: when people cannot afford to move near jobs or training, economic opportunity becomes harder to reach. The European Commission's 2026 country assessment identifies substantial housing-supply constraints in France, particularly in high-demand areas. (European Commission, 2026)

2. Equal citizenship versus unequal opportunity.

France's republican ideal is universal, but access to work, housing and institutional recognition is not experienced equally. In a February 2026 report, the Defender of Rights documented discrimination linked to perceived origin across several stages of young people's lives, including education, employment and housing. Reducing these tensions to either immigration alone or economics alone would miss how several disadvantages can reinforce one another. (Défenseur des droits, February 2026)

3. A crisis of political credibility, not just communication.

When public promises repeatedly seem disconnected from results, official explanations lose persuasive force. Better messaging cannot compensate for poor delivery. The contrast between low confidence in national parties and considerably higher trust in mayors suggests that proximity, visibility and the ability to solve practical problems remain important sources of legitimacy.

4. Security, fairness and mutual recognition.

Residents can demand protection from violence while also expecting impartial treatment and respect from public institutions. These are not mutually exclusive concerns. A debate framed as an absolute choice between order and justice risks deepening divisions instead of resolving them. Disputes over policing, discrimination and representation are therefore part of the same wider question: who believes the state hears and protects them?

5. Generational pressure and shrinking fiscal room.

France is ageing, and spending demands for pensions, healthcare and long-term care will compete with investments in education, housing and opportunity for younger generations. The OECD reported public debt at 115.5% of GDP in 2025. The difficult political question is not merely how much France spends, but whether the costs and benefits of adjustment are perceived as fair. (OECD Economic Survey: France, June 2026)

Three scenarios for France in 2035

These scenarios are alternative pathways, not forecasts. They do not assign numerical probabilities. Actual outcomes may combine elements of more than one scenario, and political choices, economic conditions and unexpected events will affect which direction France takes.

Scenario 1 — Renewed social contract

By 2035: France remains politically argumentative, but fewer citizens regard disagreement as proof that institutions are indifferent to them. Improvements in housing access, education-to-work transitions and local public services begin to narrow visible opportunity gaps. National and local authorities become more effective at explaining trade-offs and demonstrating results.

What drives it: Sustained employment and skills initiatives in disadvantaged areas; clearer accountability for public-service delivery; practical anti-discrimination enforcement; investment that connects peripheral communities to opportunity; and reform processes that give affected groups a credible voice.

Signals to watch: Narrowing employment gaps between QPV and other urban areas; improved housing affordability; fewer reported barriers to access; and a recovery in trust that extends beyond local officeholders.

Principal risk: Policy gains remain uneven, allowing a renewed shock to revive the belief that improvements are reserved for a few places or groups.

Scenario 2 — Managed fragmentation

By 2035: France avoids prolonged nationwide disorder, but social tensions remain cyclical. Some cities and regions improve while others lag. Governments respond to protests and crises with targeted concessions, yet fail to generate a shared sense of long-term direction. Disagreement becomes manageable without becoming less deep.

What drives it: Modest growth; selective, short-term policy fixes; uneven local capacity; constrained public finances; and national debates that increasingly sort complex problems into rival political identities.

Signals to watch: Persistently low trust in national institutions; recurring disputes over pensions, budgets or public services; stable but large territorial employment gaps; and fragmented political coalitions that struggle to maintain reforms.

Principal risk: The system becomes skilled at containing symptoms while the underlying disparities and loss of credibility harden.

Scenario 3 — Recurrent social rupture

By 2035: Repeated economic or political shocks turn separate grievances into overlapping crises. Deepened housing stress, weak employment prospects in already disadvantaged areas and perceived unequal treatment reinforce distrust. Confrontations become more frequent or harder to de-escalate; communities increasingly disagree not only on policies but on the legitimacy of the institutions responsible for them.

What drives it: A prolonged economic slowdown or severe fiscal adjustment without visible burden-sharing; worsening access to housing and public services; failure to address discrimination and public-order concerns together; and political strategies that reward polarisation rather than workable compromise.

Signals to watch: Rising deprivation or unemployment; widening territorial gaps; a sustained fall in confidence in both national and local institutions; and more frequent episodes in which local incidents trigger broader national mobilisation.

Principal risk: Emergency responses dominate public policy, leaving fewer resources and less trust for preventive action.

What could change the trajectory?

The three paths hinge on a limited set of choices. Economic opportunity has to become tangible across territories, not merely visible in national averages. Public services need measurable standards and local accountability. Equality before institutions must be demonstrated in access to jobs, housing and fair treatment. And fiscal reform needs a credible account of who bears the costs and who gains from it.

For businesses and civic organisations, this is not only a government question. Employers influence access to opportunity, career progression and perceptions of fairness; local partnerships can strengthen the pathways between education, skills and work. Yet private initiatives cannot substitute for public legitimacy or the rule of law.

One further distinction is essential: demonstrations, strikes and public criticism are normal features of a democratic society. Their existence alone is not evidence of social collapse. The more revealing measures are whether grievances can be addressed peacefully, whether institutions are responsive, and whether citizens continue to believe that the future is open to them.

The 2035 question

France does not face a single social divide that one slogan, election or reform can resolve. It faces the cumulative effects of economic insecurity, unequal access to opportunity, strained public credibility and difficult choices about intergenerational fairness.

The decisive question for 2035 is whether France can turn its promise of equality into sufficiently credible everyday outcomes. If it can, conflict will remain part of democracy without continually threatening social cohesion. If it cannot, even technically competent reforms may struggle to win the legitimacy needed to endure.

A Multipolar World Without Shared Rules?

Nelson Wong — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 18:03:13 +0000

Nelson Wong

Myth-versus-fact explainer | International Order & Geopolitics

Does a multipolar world necessarily mean a world without shared rules? Nuclear security offers a revealing test. The old framework of strategic stability emerged from a confrontation between two principal powers that, despite their rivalry, developed channels of communication, arms-control arrangements and a degree of mutual understanding. Today, more actors, divergent security perceptions and new technologies are putting that framework under strain.

The issue is not whether nuclear weapons have lost their destructive power, or whether international agreements have ceased to matter. It is whether inherited rules and assumptions remain sufficient to manage nuclear risks in a divided, increasingly multipolar world.

Myth 1: Multipolarity makes shared nuclear rules impossible.

Fact: Multipolarity makes common rules harder to negotiate and sustain; it does not eliminate the need for them.

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) continues to embody a common framework built around three pillars: non-proliferation, peaceful uses of nuclear energy and disarmament. Yet its effectiveness depends on a wider security environment and on confidence that the rules are both meaningful and reasonably fair. That confidence is weakening as the nuclear order becomes more fragmented.

A central challenge is legitimacy. The NPT distinguishes between states recognised as nuclear-weapon states and those that have undertaken not to acquire nuclear arms. For many countries of the Global South, this asymmetry raises an enduring question: why should the privileges and restrictions of the nuclear order fall so unevenly? The 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons reflects a challenge to the legitimacy of nuclear weapons, even though the principal nuclear powers have not joined it.

Shared rules therefore remain possible and necessary, but they cannot be taken for granted simply because treaties exist.

Myth 2: Cold War deterrence still provides a reliable blueprint for today's nuclear world.

Fact: Classical deterrence was shaped by exceptional historical circumstances that no longer fully apply.

The Cold War model centred on two dominant nuclear powers, relatively recognisable escalation pathways, functioning communication channels and an assumption that adversaries could anticipate each other's responses. Even then, deterrence was never a flawless exercise in rational calculation. Misperception, bureaucratic pressures and the possibility of catastrophic error were always present.

Today's nuclear environment is more complex. China cannot simply be treated as another Soviet Union: its strategic culture, capabilities and approach to escalation are different. Other nuclear and nuclear-threshold actors add further layers of uncertainty. A signal intended as restraint by one government may be interpreted as preparation for escalation by another.

This does not mean deterrence has disappeared. The threat of unacceptable retaliation still matters. It means that a framework designed for a largely bipolar rivalry cannot, by itself, explain or manage the risks of multipolar nuclear competition.

Myth 3: Nuclear deterrence works independently of treaties and communication.

Fact: Nuclear capabilities do not replace verification, transparency and channels for managing crises.

Classical deterrence was supported by an institutional environment that helped adversaries interpret one another's actions. The expiry of the New START Treaty in February 2026 left the United States and Russia without a legally binding bilateral nuclear-arms-control treaty. The loss of verification mechanisms, notifications and regular data exchanges reduces visibility at precisely the moment when the strategic environment is becoming more difficult to read.

Two dimensions of stability are at stake. Crisis stability depends on preventing incentives for a first strike during a confrontation. Arms-race stability depends on reducing incentives for an unchecked buildup of nuclear forces. Neither can be assumed to follow automatically from the possession of destructive weapons.

Without practical safeguards, governments face greater risks of miscalculation and fewer opportunities to correct dangerous misunderstandings.

Myth 4: Non-proliferation is only a matter of persuading states to obey treaties.

Fact: Security expectations shape whether states see nuclear restraint as sustainable.

The non-proliferation bargain has a political dimension beyond its formal provisions. States that renounce nuclear weapons must be able to believe that restraint does not leave them permanently exposed to coercion or attack. The military operation against Iran in 2026 illustrates this concern in particularly sharp form. Iran was an NPT party and was engaged in diplomacy, yet was attacked by the United States and Israel. In this reading, the consequences extend beyond the immediate conflict: other governments may question whether agreements and negotiations offer adequate protection.

That does not mean every non-nuclear state will seek a bomb. Technical and economic barriers remain substantial. The deeper danger is that the normative argument for restraint becomes less persuasive when security assurances appear unreliable.

Myth 5: A new arms-control system can simply impose the same limits on every nuclear power.

Fact: A multipolar framework must reckon with unequal arsenals and different security positions.

Expanding arms control beyond Washington and Moscow is a reasonable long-term objective, but the route is contested. The United States has pressed for China's inclusion. China points to the large disparity between its arsenal and those of the United States and Russia, which together possess the overwhelming majority of the world's nuclear weapons. Russia has argued that any wider arrangement should also take account of the United Kingdom and France.

These competing positions reveal the problem with applying one bilateral template to a wider group of nuclear powers. A viable framework will have to acknowledge asymmetries rather than assume they do not exist. In the meantime, the pursuit of a comprehensive future agreement should not prevent efforts to preserve workable constraints and communication in the present.

Myth 6: Artificial intelligence will make nuclear decision-making more predictable.

Fact: AI may improve some analytical capabilities, but its integration into nuclear decision-support systems introduces additional risks.

Classical deterrence presumes that human decision-makers have enough time and reliable information to weigh consequences. AI-enabled systems may compress the time available for judgement, introduce opaque recommendations or amplify errors in sensor data. The danger is not that autonomous AI already controls nuclear launches. It is that faster, less transparent decision processes can narrow the space for human restraint and de-escalation.

The 1983 Petrov incident illustrates the importance of the human capacity to question a warning rather than automatically act upon it. Preserving that capacity becomes more urgent as technology accelerates the pace of crisis decisions.

What follows: Rules must evolve with the balance of power.

A multipolar nuclear world without effective shared safeguards would be more exposed to uncertainty, arms racing and accidental escalation. But the deterioration of old arrangements is not an argument for abandoning collective rules. It is an argument for renewing them.

That work begins with restoring crisis-communication channels and developing practical instruments for reducing nuclear risks. It also requires addressing AI-related dangers, reinforcing non-proliferation institutions, creating space for scientific dialogue across political divides and giving non-nuclear states and the Global South a more meaningful role in nuclear governance. Public understanding matters as well: nuclear policies should not escape scrutiny merely because their technical language is difficult.

The decisive distinction is between a world in which old rules are no longer adequate and a world in which shared rules are no longer possible. The first describes the challenge of the emerging nuclear order. The second is a conclusion we cannot afford to accept.

Editor's note: This explainer is an editorial adaptation of two articles by Nelson Wong, both originally published by the Valdai Discussion Club: “Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime in a Divided World” (12 March 2026) and “Why Classical Nuclear Deterrence Is Losing Its Relevance” (28 September 2026). The myth-versus-fact structure and wording have been adapted for this publication; the arguments are drawn exclusively from these two texts.

World War III: When a Forecast Becomes a Political Project

Sergey Vergus — Sat, 3 Oct 2026 19:49:19 +0000

Can a universal account of world history also promote a particular geopolitical alignment? Timur Gazi’s talk invites that question. It also requires us to distinguish what the speaker actually says from the conclusions we draw about his position.

Watch Timur Gazi’s original talk, “World War III,” on YouTube. The video is in Russian. An English translation of the spoken transcript follows the analysis below. All timestamps refer to this recording.

The speaker offers a comprehensive picture: conventional explanations of war are superficial; larger historical projects operate behind states; and the transformation of those projects inevitably produces global conflict. The account is compelling because it connects disparate events through a single design. But narrative coherence does not, by itself, establish that such a design exists.

The argument develops through five successive steps. First, at approximately 02:06–05:17, Gazi redefines the world wars. He treats the First and Second World Wars primarily as a European cycle of reorganisation and describes the coming war as the first truly worldwide one. This encourages the audience to regard familiar historical categories as obstacles to understanding what lies ahead.

Second, at 05:17–09:27, he incorporates military conflict into a theory of competing historical projects. In his account, nation-states are reaching the end of their lifespan and will give way to a new Middle Ages with different forms of social organisation. The revival of an Islamic project and a downward trajectory of human development are part of the same picture. Technological progress, on this view, compensates for human decline rather than disproving it. These are assumptions about history and human nature that the audience is asked to accept alongside the political forecast.

Third, at 09:57–12:23, he addresses the form of future warfare. Most conflict will be conducted through intermediaries, local wars and dependent forces. Here he draws on a recognisable feature of international relations. Yet the existence of proxy warfare does not establish that all such conflicts form part of one coordinated global process.

Fourth, at 12:23–18:08, the prediction becomes highly specific: Russia and China must fight a major war. Two scenarios are presented. In the American scenario, a strong Russia attacks a weakened China, allowing the United States to exploit the exhaustion of both. In the British scenario, a strong China attacks a weakened Russia, forcing the Americans to intervene and become exhausted themselves. These are the speaker’s scenarios. The talk offers no documentary evidence that precisely these coordinated plans exist.

Finally, at 18:35–20:55, the framework is applied to contemporary diplomacy. Turkey appears as Russia’s ally, while Putin–Erdoğan negotiations are assigned a supposedly hidden central purpose: preparing a confrontation with the United States through intermediaries. The phrase “Russia, Turkey: friendship forever” closes this passage. The audience is then told that the process is already underway and that virtually nobody can escape its consequences.

What is useful in this approach? The speaker encourages us to examine war in relation to changes in institutions and international order, to take indirect conflict seriously, and to avoid assuming that Western states have identical interests. These are worthwhile analytical questions. The difficulty arises when questions become unconditional answers and possible scenarios become historical necessities.

The clearest logical gap lies between advantage and intention. A particular outcome may benefit a state without having been designed by that state. An intention does not establish the ability to carry it out. The ability to influence events does not amount to complete control over their outcome. The talk repeatedly moves between these distinct propositions without adequately demonstrating the connections.

Its historical foundations also need scrutiny. Describing the Second World War as essentially European, with only limited American participation, severely understates its scope. According to the Australian War Memorial, almost a million Australians served in the war, in theatres including Europe, the Mediterranean, North Africa, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Australia itself came under attack. Japan’s post-war reconstruction also began directly after its surrender in 1945, before the Korean War. The historical analogy supporting the forecast therefore requires substantial qualification.

Another difficulty is the changing scale of the actors being discussed. States, elites, religious communities and civilisational projects appear as comparable entities possessing a unified will. But who makes decisions on behalf of a project? How is its membership established? What observable evidence distinguishes its actions from ordinary competition between states? Without answers, these concepts function primarily as interpretive devices.

A forecast must also be open to testing. If the coming world war can be identified through direct military confrontation, local uprisings or merely a difficult financial situation, almost any development can be fitted into the initial framework. A claim to have identified an “algorithm” becomes more persuasive when its author specifies the circumstances under which it would be considered wrong.

This leads to my hypothesis about the political function of the talk. I consider the following interpretation possible: under the guise of a general “algorithm” of world history, the speaker may be indirectly promoting an alignment with Turkey and, potentially, a pan-Turkist project. I offer this as a reading of the narrative, not as an established fact about the speaker’s intentions, affiliations or sponsors.

The allocation of roles provides grounds for this interpretation. The nation-state is declared a declining form. China is assigned the role of Russia’s inevitable future enemy. Turkey is introduced as a natural ally without a separate demonstration that this alliance will endure. An audience may therefore accept a particular geopolitical orientation as part of a comprehensive explanation of history, without examining it as an independent political choice.

The central question is whether an alliance with Turkey has actually been derived from the general theory, or whether it has first been placed inside that theory and then presented as an obvious consequence. I lean towards the latter reading. Even that, however, does not establish the promotion of pan-Turkism specifically.

An alignment with Turkey, political unity among Turkic peoples, and an Islamic supranational project have different foundations and potentially different boundaries. This recording explicitly discusses the revival of an Islamic project and presents a Russian–Turkish alliance positively. It does not formulate a programme for uniting Turkic peoples around a common political centre. Attributing such a programme to the speaker solely because of his favourable treatment of Turkey would be too quick a conclusion.

There is also evidence that any test of my hypothesis must consider. In an interview with Vesti.az on 26 March 2025, Shangareev questions Turkey’s capacity to create an independent Turkic centre of power. He also criticises a Greater Turan scenario that, in his speculation, China might use against Russia. This does not establish his position at every point in time or on every possible form of Turkic integration. It does, however, complicate any unqualified description of him as a consistent advocate of Turan. Dismissing contrary evidence as further “camouflage” would make our own hypothesis impossible to test.

I can state a narrower conclusion with greater confidence: the talk gives a particular understanding of Russia’s allies and adversaries the status of historical inevitability. A possible pan-Turkist orientation remains a question for further investigation; the favourable treatment of Turkey and the religious framework are directly visible in the text. Deliberate concealment of a political objective cannot be established from this recording alone.

My central question for this framework is how much independent political choice it leaves Russia if its adversary, its ally and its major war have already been assigned in advance.

Three tests could advance the discussion. What documents substantiate the alleged American and British plans? What specific mechanism makes a Russia–China war inevitable rather than merely possible? What observable events, within what time frame, would lead the speaker to revise his model? Answers would allow the theory to be assessed through its explanatory and predictive strength, rather than only through the persuasiveness of its presentation.

Sources for independent verification

1. Timur Gazi, “World War III” — original Russian-language recording.

2. Australian War Memorial — Second World War.

3. Office of the Historian — Occupation and Reconstruction of Japan, 1945–52.

4. Timur Shangareev, “Azerbaijan as the Key to a New Map of the World,” Vesti.az interview, 26 March 2025.

English translation of the spoken transcript

The following section contains the speaker’s words, translated from Russian, rather than the analysis above. It is based on an automatic transcript of the supplied recording and lightly edited for readability. The speaker’s assertions and tone are retained; this does not constitute their endorsement or factual verification. Two unclear passages are marked. “YaMa” is retained as heard, without an assumed expansion.

The opening montage repeats excerpts that also occur later. Speech ends at approximately 20:55; the recording runs to approximately 21:14.

Opening montage

[00:00] What does the average person think of as a world war? Napoleon, the First World War, the Second World War. But if we look at it globally, why are they called world wars? By and large, these were purely European wars with limited American participation. Calling those earlier wars world wars is, of course, a form of Eurocentrism. The Third World War will be a genuinely worldwide war.

[00:25] What, then, is the coming war? It is the transformation of the Western project into the Roman project, the transformation of the Jewish project into the Yahudi project, the transformation of the Eastern project into the YaMa project, and the revival of the Islamic project on the ruins of the Caliphate project. A world war changes everything. It will destroy nation-states completely. That is it: a new Middle Ages.

[00:52] A completely different organisational and legal form for human society on this planet. The world war will develop along two lines: hybrid warfare across the globe, gradually turning into one full-scale war between Russia and China. The process has already begun, and there is no place on Earth that will escape the effects of the coming war.

Main talk

[01:35] Peace, mercy and the blessings of Allah be upon you. In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Today I would like to talk about world war. Everyone knows what a world war is. In fact, people have a poor understanding of it. Like any general, everyone is prepared for the previous war. Only a few are ready for the next one: precisely those who are organising it.

[02:06] What does the average person think of as a world war? Napoleon, the First World War, the Second World War. But if we take a broader view, why are they called world wars? By and large, these were purely European wars with limited participation by Americans, specifically Americans from the United States.

[02:38] Some Brazilian, or an Australian, could not have cared less about that war. Yes, a few expeditionary corps came over. So calling those earlier wars world wars is, of course, Eurocentrism. With a certain stretch, you can call the Second World War a world war because China and Japan participated.

[03:09] Even then, that was far from the whole world. Now, dear friends, the Third World War really will be worldwide. Nobody will be left out, as the saying goes; everyone will get their share. Each will receive according to their deeds. A kind of miniature apocalypse is coming in the near future. Why do I say this with such confidence?

[03:38] There will be a Third World War because of the transformation of the projects. These two absolutely terrible things overlap. There is an old Chinese curse: may you live in an age of change. Well, yes, we all live in an age of change. The First World War set terrible mechanisms in motion for the restructuring of Europe itself.

[04:05] For example, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and empire disappeared. The German Empire disappeared. The Russian Empire disappeared. The Japanese Empire barely survived. Britain was profoundly reshaped.

[04:31] The First World War set these processes of change in motion. I would even say that dividing this into a First and a Second World War is not entirely correct. Future historians, I think, will describe it as a kind of thirty-year war. [A brief phrase is unclear in the transcript.] This war lasted from 1914 to 1945.

[05:00] The reorganisation of Europe was completed in 1945. Let me repeat: China and Japan were secondary in this case. For China and Japan, all of that came later, starting with the Korean War.

[05:17] The Korean and Vietnamese wars brought changes to the Far East, whereas 1945 completed the transformation of the European theatre of political action. As we know, war is the continuation of politics by other means. What, then, is the coming war? It is the transformation of the Western project into the Roman project, and the transformation of the Jewish project...

[05:46] ...into the Yahudi project; the transformation of the Eastern project into the YaMa project; and the revival of the Islamic project on the ruins of the Caliphate project. That is what awaits us. A world war changes everything. The First World War, which we are again provisionally treating as the period from 1914 to 1945...

[06:14] ...destroyed imperial statehood and completed the transition to nation-states. It completed their construction, their peak of development. The Third World War, or the last war, as I call it — at least I think it will be the last within our lifetimes...

[06:38] ...will destroy nation-states completely. That is it: a new Middle Ages. A completely different organisational and legal form for human society on this planet. Nation-states, which reflect the age of modernity, are passing away. They are coming to an end. A new Middle Ages is arriving.

[07:11] A new feudalism will replace them at a new stage. Everyone probably remembers the dialectical spiral of development. Nietzsche’s view was that humanity develops in a circle: a kind of eternal recurrence.

[07:30] Only Friedrich Nietzsche’s sick brain could have come up with such nonsense. Then people thought about it and decided that there is, after all, a spiral of development: everything repeats at a new stage, with certain similarities. Returning to chronology, much of the theory of periodicity and the chronology built around it rests on this spiral: for example, the idea that things repeat every hundred years, and so on. [The wording of this passage about chronology is partly unclear.]

[07:59] There certainly is a spiral of development, but not as Comrade Hegel imagined it, when progressives argued that humanity was moving towards a bright future and everything was advancing upwards. No: everything moves downwards. Humanity is degenerating, descending further and further. And technological progress, which we now regard as the measure of humanity’s development, is by no means simply a benefit.

[08:29] Technological progress conceals — or rather offsets — the decline of the human being as the master of this world. Roughly speaking, people once lived for a thousand years; now they live for sixty or seventy. But they have various products of technological progress. It is like someone losing their legs and being fitted with excellent prostheses. The prostheses are excellent, certainly.

[08:58] Yesterday they were made of iron, today they are titanium, and tomorrow they will be plastic with some sort of electronics. But living legs are better. They really are. The transformation of the projects must take place during a war. That is how it always happens. Or rather, perhaps that is not quite right: war is a consequence of the transformation of the projects.

[09:27] These boundaries and frameworks collapse; shells are broken and skins are shed. Everything breaks and cracks, and a new creature is born amid blood and mud. It is frightening and bloody. How will all of this manifest itself in the world for us ordinary mortals? Let us put it this way.

[09:57] The kinds of wars that the generals are frightening us with now, inspecting bomb shelters in Moscow and declaring that we will turn everyone into nuclear ash, will not happen. Or rather, there will be one such war, but only one. The others will resemble the war now taking place in Syria.

[10:28] There is a fashionable new expression, hybrid warfare. That is the prototype of the coming world war. It will not be like Germany in 1944, when Soviet tank armadas were flattening it on the ground and American air armadas were flattening it from above...

[10:56] ...while the heroic Germans gathered their last Volkssturm fighters, aged fourteen to eighty, and resisted the onslaught under a unified command. That will not happen. There will be no direct clash of superpowers, super-empires and mighty nation-states. Everything will be conducted through intermediaries.

[11:30] When we are frightened with the prospect of a clash with America, yes, of course there will be one. A conflict between Russia and its allies and the United States is inevitable. That is normal. Everyone wants it. Everyone needs it, including the United States, Russia, Britain and the Chinese.

[11:51] That is why it will happen. But it will not mean Tu-95s taking off on one side and B-1Bs on the other to bomb New York and Moscow. That will not happen. These confrontations will take place in Syria, in some place like Vietnam or North Korea, or in Africa. That is the kind of confrontation there will be.

[12:23] The major global confrontation between two superpowers will be between Russia and China. There will be only one such confrontation. It is inevitable; everyone needs it. The question is what form it will take. The Americans want a strong Russia to attack a weak China, whereas the British want...

[12:50] ...a weak Russia to be attacked by a strong China. Why? For us it makes little difference, does it? A blow to the forehead or a blow to the brow: we live here, and we will have to fight either way. But what is the point? China must be brought down in order to bring down the United States, because the United States is too closely tied to China. Without China, it is vulnerable.

[13:21] As I keep saying, China played an enormous role in the development of the United States. How China collapses will determine America’s subsequent fate. If it happens as it did in the First and Second World Wars, when the great European, or Eurasian, powers fought one another while the Americans supplied weapons and money...

[13:53] ...and poured fuel on the fire in various other ways, then entered at the right moment, when the main players had already been bled dry, and emerged as the winners — then, yes. Under the American plan, Russia clashes with China. China...

[14:16] ...is reduced to ruins, Russia is completely drained, and the Americans come in and seize all those territories. Just like that, without any real effort: a little bombing, a few missiles, some expeditionary forces. Marines land beside every factory, troops are deployed, and everything is fine. Almost no serious losses. They establish definitive hegemony in Southeast Asia.

[14:46] That is the American plan. But suppose the British plan works: a strong China attacks a weak Russia, and Russia cannot withstand the blow or offer anything against the Chinese hordes pouring towards Lake Baikal. By the way, Nikita Mikhalkov made a good video about how China could take over Russia. It is all very sensible, very accurate.

[15:16] Nikita Sergeyevich does not want to live under the Chinese, and he is shouting about it. His pro-American orientation is quite visible, incidentally, even though he considers himself a Russian aristocrat. Anyway, let us leave Nikita Sergeyevich aside. At that point the Americans will have to fight in earnest. They will have to carry out a ground operation with their own forces.

[15:47] They will have to announce mobilisation and send a gigantic expeditionary force. China is not Afghanistan. You cannot send just one or two hundred thousand people there. Millions of service personnel will have to go. The experience of recent wars shows that you cannot hold territory without a ground invasion. Until a soldier sets foot...

[16:20] ...on a piece of land, it has not been conquered, however much you pound it with missiles, bombs or tactical nuclear weapons. If the Americans go in, they will collapse. They will not withstand this war. They managed Korea. They managed Vietnam only with enormous difficulty.

[16:42] British agents — all those Beatles and other hippies — effectively brought about a civil war inside the United States itself. An extremely interesting subject, by the way. We can and should examine it, God willing. But Americans today are no longer the same. The ideology of freedom laid down at the founding of the United States has gradually run its course.

[17:13] Very briefly, a few words about the United States. When Americans fought and struggled, they were strong. The British, who hate them with a fierce hatred, fought them for many years and tried to bring them down by force. Eventually, they realised that the Americans first had to be corrupted by wealth. And they corrupted them. Now Americans have grown accustomed to the good life.

[17:44] They are not prepared to make sacrifices. These are not Texans from the days of the Indian Wars. These are today’s enormous Americans, accustomed to eating hamburgers. They will not withstand it. So the world war will develop along two lines.

[18:08] Hybrid warfare throughout the world will gradually develop into one full-scale war involving Russia, China and, naturally, the United States. We will discuss this much more, God willing. For now, that is the picture. So when Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin meets Erdoğan in Ankara...

[18:35] ...Istanbul and elsewhere, of course they discuss cooperation: TurkStream, vegetables, tourism and visa-free travel. But their main subject is war with the United States. Where and how will Russia, together with its ally Turkey, fight the United States? Indirectly, I repeat.

[19:07] Through intermediaries: through Donbas, Free Syrian Armies, Assad and assorted Vietnamese comrades in somewhere like Cam Ranh. That is modern warfare. Russia, Turkey: friendship forever.

[19:29] We will keep moving that way until we are all locked together in one shrieking tangle. So those who hope to live happily ever after will not have their wishes fulfilled. The process is already underway. That is how it is going. There is no escaping it, and there is no place on Earth...

[20:03] ...that will escape the effects of the coming war. In some places the effect will be greater, in others smaller. There will be particular enclaves, such as Switzerland and New Zealand, which the elite of the Western project has set aside as places to emigrate to...

[20:28] ...in case something goes wrong and an errant little bomb explodes somewhere near Paris. But that will most likely not happen. There will simply be riots, wars and uprisings, or a difficult financial situation.

US-Russia Contacts and Ukraine Negotiations: Matuzov on Q News

Viacheslav Matuzov — Sat, 3 Oct 2026 06:56:23 +0000

Q News, In Focus | YouTube publication: 30 September 2026 | Date stated in the broadcaster’s description: 29 September 2026 | 17:12

The interview examines whether renewed US-Russia contacts can advance a settlement in Ukraine. Questions cover diplomatic obstacles, military operations alongside negotiations, Western pressure, territorial disagreements, NATO, European participation and security guarantees.

Matuzov considers dialogue important beyond bilateral relations, but describes the conflict as part of a broader confrontation over international security. He argues that Moscow regards Western military involvement near Russia as unacceptable and seeks a lasting settlement rather than a temporary ceasefire. He expresses distrust of Western commitments, invokes previous negotiations, and advocates an agreement based on a balance of interests. These are his interpretations, not independently established findings or an official Russian statement.

Source note: The full original interview is embedded above. This accompanying editorial overview uses the channel’s description and the English transcript displayed by YouTube. The transcript contains recognition errors; uncertain proper names and disputed historical allegations are not reconstructed here. The upload date and the date supplied in the description are recorded separately.

Watch the original interview on Q News

Experimentation and Results: Deng Xiaoping's Southern Talks

Deng Xiaoping — Thu, 1 Oct 2026 17:41:12 +0000

Source dates: 18 January–21 February 1992. Published excerpts from talks in Wuchang, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shanghai. Editorial overview.

Deng urges officials to experiment more boldly and judge policies through their effects on production, national capacity and living standards. He distinguishes the instruments of economic management from the political identity of a system: planning and markets can both be used in different institutional settings.

He advocates learning from foreign technology and management while keeping the overall strategic direction stable. Successful experiments should be extended; unsuccessful ones should be altered or stopped. He also identifies common prosperity as a goal and warns against permanent polarization between rich and poor.

The published text brings together remarks made across several locations, rather than reproducing one continuous speech. Read as a whole, it shows how Deng combined tactical flexibility with political continuity. It is a statement of his development programme, not proof that its distributive objectives were subsequently achieved.

Read the English text.

The Political Limits of Reform: Deng Xiaoping's June 1989 Address

Deng Xiaoping — Thu, 1 Oct 2026 17:41:07 +0000

Source date: 9 June 1989. Address to senior officers commanding the martial-law troops in Beijing. Editorial overview.

Deng praises the armed forces and defends the authorities' suppression of the protests. He portrays the crisis as an attempt to overthrow the party and socialism. That characterization is his justification, not an independent description adopted by this review.

At the same time, he argues against abandoning economic reform or closing China to the outside world. He treats continued development and the preservation of party authority as compatible commitments.

The address is indispensable to a balanced reading of his political thought. Economic experimentation did not imply acceptance of opposition capable of displacing Communist Party rule. This source documents Deng's public defence of state coercion. It cannot, by itself, establish an independent account of civilian casualties or the full decision-making sequence behind the crackdown.

Read the English text.