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As NATO marks its 75th anniversary it is facing a future more uncertain than at any point since the end of the Cold War. The European security environment is changed and challenged by the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, while the Israel-Gaza war poses further challenges. Given this critical moment, this article offers a strategic intervention to highlight and reinforce the essential role of the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda in defence and deterrence, including through the integration of a gender perspective, for NATO members and partners. It does so by bringing together former Chairs of the NATO Committee on Gender Perspectives (NCGP) into conversation about the continued importance of NATO's oldest committee in ensuring NATO's future approach to WPS is fit for purpose. Drawing upon their reflections and insights, we recommend policy points to embed and advance WPS and the gender perspective in NATO's response to this new security environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the majority of studies on collective securitization theory (CST) focus primarily on states as the principal actors, certain scholars also concede the potential occurrence of collective securitization within international organizations. Aligned with this viewpoint, the present article posits that CST framework can serve as a valuable tool in substantiating the commonly voiced notion of complementarity between NATO and EU. With this purpose, specific focus is placed on Russia's war in Ukraine that has been unfolding since February 2022. Hence, all six stages of CST have been taken into consideration to justify the assumption that CST is applicable as an analytical framework to elucidate such complementarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Organizational overlap is a ubiquitous feature in regional governance. Most studies have focused on member states, demonstrating that overlap enables states differently. We still know little about whether and how overlapping organizations impact international bureaucracies and how this shapes the relationship between bureaucratic actors within organizations. We argue that overlap can empower international bureaucrats, but not equally. Those with autonomous resources from member states are the most attractive interlocuters for bureaucrats from other organizations and, hence, likely to become most empowered. Substantive expertise and formal competence are less consequential in this context. We unpack this argument by looking at a policy domain understood to be heavily guarded by member states, security and defence policy. Based on primary documents and interviews, we show that the European Union (EU)–North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) overlap has enabled the European Commission to leverage its position within the EU to its advantage and further encroach on the EU's security and defence activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses how Western mainstream news media framed causal factors of Russia's 2022 invasion of the Ukraine. The article is based on a synthesis and integration of scholarly studies as well as a primary data analysis of Western mainstream newspaper reporting. The research firstly conducts an integrative literature review investigating how Western mainstream news media have reported on Russia and the new Cold War more broadly. Using this as a backdrop, a quantitative and qualitative content study investigates how causes of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine were framed in the US, the UK and the German press. To contextualize news media framing, the second section critically assesses the Western diplomatic and historical record of NATO expansion. The article identifies two competing explanatory frameworks: the dominant Western news media narrative assumes that Russia/Putin's imperial ambitions and nefarious traits have caused the war, and a second narrative, advanced by several scholars, former diplomats and selected journalists, asserts that NATO's eastward expansion created the context for Russia's invasion. The article concludes that the second narrative has been de-emphasized in the news. Such framing is contrary to the historical and documentary record, and links to a marginalization of non-military solutions to solve the conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether countries and their publics are responsive to the international legal commitments they make is the source of long‐standing academic debate. Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine brought real‐world significance to these debates. While Ukraine is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the invasion raised the prospect that other NATO members could be targeted and that Article 5 collective security commitments would be invoked. While recent research suggests that emphasizing mutual defence treaties can increase public support for defending an ally, prior work focuses on US opinion in a less fraught political environment. We constructed and fielded a survey experiment in Italy in the initial weeks of the Ukraine invasion to probe support for defending a NATO ally, the relevance of the Article 5 legal commitment on support for defending an ally, and the potential moderating influence of gender and political party. Our findings show that the Article 5 commitment significantly increased support for defending an ally. Consistent with past research, we find a significant gender gap, with men being more supportive of defending an ally than women; however, both men and women responded to the Article 5 commitment to virtually the same degree. The estimated treatment effect was larger for supporters of right‐wing parties than for the left; however, the difference was not statistically significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the role of the European Union (EU) in the war in Ukraine, from the run-up of the war to its impact on the EU's future structure and functions, within Europe and globally. It begins with an account of the condition of the EU before the war, which it describes as overextended and stagnant with respect to the EU's proclaimed finalité, the "ever closer union of the peoples of Europe." Next, it recounts the use of the EU in early American attempts to include Ukraine in the East European enlargement of NATO, with EU membership as a reward for Ukrainian Westernization. To the EU leadership, this presented an opportunity to revive older, by then largely failed attempts at supranational unification and centralization, by offering to the United States to serve as its transatlantic base for its Ukrainian strategy. Following this, the paper explores the consequences for the EU and its stronger member states of the impending American withdrawal from the Ukrainian war theater, as the US turns to its conflict with China. The final section discusses the conditions under which Europe, the European states, and the EU can hope for some kind of strategic and political autonomy in the emerging new New World Order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the impact of military expenditures on sustainable development in NATO countries. The analysis utilizes annual data for the period between 1995 and 2019. In this study, the Durbin-Hausman panel cointegration test is used to analyze the cointegration relationship between the variables and the Panel AMG estimator is used to estimate the long-run coefficients. The results of the AMG estimator show that military expenditures and industrial production index have a negative effect on sustainable development in NATO countries, while foreign direct investments have a positive effect. The impact of primary energy consumption is negative and less significant than the other negative impacts. The study also analyzes how the impact of military expenditures on sustainable development varies across countries. This analysis reveals the significant differences in the direction, significance, and coefficient size of the relationship among different countries. These findings suggest that the impact of military expenditures on sustainable development varies across countries. Therefore, countries should develop policies to ensure sustainable development by considering their specific dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article scrutinises popular convictions about Turkiye's 'bridge' status between Asia and Europe in the twenty-first century. Unlike during the Cold War, when Turkiye enjoyed geopolitical leverage due to its proximity to Europe and the Soviet Union, today's geopolitics is shaped by China's rise and the shift of commercial nodes away from the Atlantic and towards the Pacific. This renders Turkiye a peripheral actor in Asia-to-Europe commodity flows, as well as in the ongoing rivalry between Washington and Beijing. Other factors adversely affecting Turkiye's geopolitical significance include the decarbonisation process and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The European Union's declining demand for fossil fuels challenges Turkiye's ambition to become an energy corridor between Central Asia and Europe. Likewise, Turkiye's secondary role in the global supply chains for technology (semiconductors, cobalt, silicon) is undermining its bridge status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the unprecedented level of cooperation and support behind defending Ukraine, no criteria or timeline for Ukraine's accession to NATO were established at the July 2024 NATO summit in Washington. Meanwhile, the window for Ukraine's accession may be closing as NATO member states become more risk averse and transatlantic support for Ukraine more brittle. Establishing the sequence of developments that would make membership ripe would at least restore NATO's control over the process. NATO could explicitly frame the membership option as integral to ending the war and bringing security and stability to the region. Senior officials would need to present a clear account of how and under what assumptions Ukraine's membership in NATO could come about. The West Germany model, though it would not be easy to digest or implement, remains the most plausible one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies the international cooperation concept of issue linkage to identify an overlooked pathway to successful security assistance. We argue that providers can effectively incentivise recipients to implement otherwise undesirable reforms when they explicitly link implementation to another good whose value to the recipient outweighs the costs of the reforms. Drawing on original interviews, we find support for our argument in post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), where the United States used the promise of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program to incentivise BiH to integrate its three armies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores a little-known archive of historical aerial photographs curated by the General Directorate of Mapping of the Republic of Türkiye's Ministry of Defense and discusses the historical context of their production by US Navy aerial photography squadrons in the 1950s. While the images themselves enable a technical analysis of the method of their collection, contemporary military manuals, domain-specific magazines and newsletters, and eyewitness accounts of how similar photographs were captured fill out the contexts of their production for cartographic purposes, with information about the aircraft involved, their cameras and camera configurations, and mission characteristics. Continuing sections situate the aerial surveys within the framework of US-led initiatives in mapping NATO territories following World War II. As one example of what must have been many special mapping agreements made between NATO countries at this time, the US cartographic surveys over Türkiye discussed here are an expression of postwar realignments of global power, put to the purposes of containment-based security preparations and infrastructure development, and neatly intertwining American military and commercial interests early in the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world is entering an era of nuclear disorder. Therefore, this article aims to examine the European engagement with nuclear weapon questions at the beginning of this disorder. The research questions are: in what ways does Europe engage with nuclear issues? And how to make sense of the divergence and ambivalent stances among European states on nuclear weapons? The review identified engagement regarding non-proliferation and divergence on disarmament at the EU level, but mostly disengagement with nuclear deterrence questions outside of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), apart from short-lived discussions on the so-called 'Eurodeterrent'. Regarding the former observation, it becomes increasingly hard to forge common positions on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament within an EU context. The latter observation is exemplified by recurring but ephemeral debates on a European nuclear deterrent. To understand the divergence and ambivalent stances, several factors are of importance, varying from the primacy of national interest to geography. Consequently, while the world is entering an era of nuclear disorder, Europeans should start a strategic dialogue on the necessity of nuclear weapons without undermining transatlantic relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sten Rynning's book provides a comprehensive history of NATO, focusing on its founding and the challenges it has faced over the years. The book covers the period from 1939 to 2024, including events such as the Cold War, NATO's enlargement, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Rynning argues that NATO is most effective when it focuses on its core role as a defensive alliance and guarantor of European security. The book offers policy recommendations for addressing current challenges and explores different perspectives on NATO's future. Overall, the book provides a nuanced understanding of NATO's history and the choices it faces in the changing security landscape. [Extracted from the article]

The public places an important constraint on funding security in Europe, and austerity risks making the constraint tighter. Several recent studies show that curtailing military spending is a popular way to reduce debt in Europe. Yet it remains unclear if military spending aversion persists when threats are salient. We fielded an original survey experiment in Italy weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine to examine how information about security threats influences military spending preferences and fiscal trade-offs. We found that information about threats increases support for military spending. To validate the survey experiment, we recontacted and remeasured our respondent's preferences three weeks after Russia's invasion and find evidence consistent with our initial experiment. Our findings suggest that, while public opposition to military spending remains high in Italy, external threats dampen the public's opposition to military spending, even under high debt burdens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of the Russian state has been closely linked with the development of the autocephalous Russian Orthodox Church. Russian identity is deeply rooted in Orthodoxy: Russian literature, music, architecture and philosophy all bear a strong religious mark. The birth of the Russian state is also tied to the concept of Moscow as the Third Rome. Over time, the head of the Russian state has been invested with this mission to preserve orthodoxy embodied in Russian statehood. The attempts of the state to politicise religious institutions or to use religious teachings for political gains are not a new phenomenon and are certainly apparent to Russian Orthodoxy, including in the context of the conflict in Ukraine. The disturbing absence of distance displayed by the Church authorities towards the use of force has isolated the Patriarch, but has also triggered discontent within the ranks of the clergy. Dissonant voices have spoken regardless of the pressure exerted to silence them. In the complex history of State—Church relations, the symphony between the temporal and spiritual powers has fluctuated from complete subjugation of the Church under the authority of the State to a more autonomous and independent Church. On the margins of this volatile relationship, Orthodox believers and movements have always emerged to challenge both. This article pays tribute to the long tradition of dissonant Russian Orthodox voices and attempts to demonstrate the continuity of this tradition in the context of the conflict in Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses the role and understanding of war's most inflexible factor—time—and its associated pressures and advantages in the Russo-Ukrainian War. While there seems to be no consensus on who might prevail (and of course the elements of what constitutes victory itself can vary), the passage of time—frequently understood in military terms as endurance and exhaustion—is a useful framework to assess the direction of the war, relative advantage at various stages, who may ultimately prevail, and under what conditions that may be possible. Although timetables and schedules have played an enormous role in military history, there appears to be no systematic assessment of the role of time in relation to strategy and victory in the Russo-Ukrainian war. This article sets out to fill that gap through a systematic comparison of time's passing and time pressures facing the combatants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While increased strategic competition poses a challenge to the global governance agenda writ large, the concomitant increased demand for security is in principle a boon to international security governance's prime exemplar, NATO. Adding insights from international policy diffusion to the agenda of strategic competition, this article proposes that NATO supports the alliance's primary, external function of deterrence and defense by providing strategic epistemic capital to its members through meditative and inquisitive forms of governance. These ensure that member nations keep abreast of the evolving best practice of defense and military affairs, and underpin overall convergence of defense policies and military practices, from consensus-based strategic wayfinding to tactical interoperability on the battlefield. Crucially, the alliance is also a brokerage of strategic sensemaking. Seeing NATO through the prism of an international organization like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development thus deepens our understanding of how the alliance functions as well as of its resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study integrates two strands of the alliance burden-sharing literature: the research exploring the impact of the patron's ability to credibly threaten abandonment and allies' incentives to burden shift, and the call to disaggregate defense spending when evaluating burden sharing. We contend that allies burden shift by reallocating funds away from capabilities designed to counter threats the patron is unlikely to abandon. Using a novel dataset on naval power, we examine the impact of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) 2014 Wales Pledge and find a notable reduction in non-US NATO naval capabilities post-pledge. We argue that this trend reflects members' confidence that the US is unlikely to renege on its commitment to protect vital Sea Lines of Communications (SLOCs). Since the US cannot credibly threaten to abandon its commitment to protect the alliance's SLOCs, NATO members' increase in overall defense spending was shifted away from investments in naval capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russia's annexation of Crimea and war on Ukraine has led to upheaval in NATO's discourse and practice. Taking a step back from the security debate, this article contends that the very process of responding to Russian aggression has led to the reimagining of NATO's identity. While NATO tends to present change as continuity, this article's mixed methods analysis illuminates how a trio of new and ambitious self-representations have risen to prominence within NATO's post-Crimea discourse. NATO has anointed itself defender of the international rules-basedorder and purveyor of truth and facts amidst a world of disinformation, while pushing a resilience policy agenda that expands its authority into new domestic domains. Problematizing these shifts, the article warns that NATO's new narrative ignores its own role in the problems it seeks to solve and thus risks undermining NATO efforts to rally global support for Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the legal nature and specific features of legal regulation of lobbying as a separate legal institution based on a comparative study of the approaches existing in the US, the EU Member States and Ukraine in the context of European and Euro-Atlantic integration processes being a priority area of the foreign policy and legal development of our state. The author analyses the peculiarities of legal regulation of lobbying activities in Ukraine and identifies the key issues of and prospects for the functioning of the practical and theoretical lobbying model in Ukraine in the context of European and Euro-Atlantic integration processes. On the eve of adoption of the Law of Ukraine 'On Lobbying', the lack of proper legislative regulation of lobbying in our country was recognized as a problem of state and social development of the country at the EU and NATO levels. Therefore, of entities that influence (lobby) the interests of third parties or groups of parties while adopting legal acts by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, executive authorities and local self-government bodies had to be resolved after the beginning of official negotiations on Ukraine's accession to the European Union and its rapprochement with the North Atlantic Alliance. On 23 February 2024, the Ukrainian Parliament adopted the Law of Ukraine 'On Lobbying' which not only defined the key principles of interaction between officials representing the state authorities and local self-government bodies with the stakeholders and lobbying entities, but also outlined the basic principles, methods and legal framework of lobbying in Ukraine. On 29 November 2023, an adapted Annual National Programme was presented at the meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council. It became the most concise and practical, as it focuses on reforms in the security and defence sector and democratic transformation tasks that Ukraine is implementing within the framework of its Euro-Atlantic integration. However, the establishment of the legal institution of lobbying in our state requires amending the existing legal acts that also regulate the terms and procedures for conducting lobbying activities; introducing responsibility of all parties to this process; imposing effective control over the lobbying process; and the impossibility of limiting the participation of civil society organizations in public policy making that should help overcome corruption and fulfill the criteria being necessary for Ukraine's accession to the EU and NATO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delves into the analysis of the legal mechanisms used to ensure the sovereignty of member states within the EU and NATO. The research methodology is not just a process but a comprehensive approach that involves analysing both organisations' essential documents and treaties and studying the practical application of legal mechanisms in different member states. The study's practical significance is not to be underestimated, as it aims to formulate recommendations for improving legal procedures that effectively enforce member states' sovereignty, thereby increasing security and stability. The article also highlights the impact of crime as a significant challenge to creating a stable society on peacebuilding and human rights. It covers the experience of EU and NATO member states in implementing and enforcing legal norms to protect national interests and sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transparency of the job roles of civilian personnel has emerged as an important aspect to consider in the framework of the transformation of the ministries or departments of defense in NATO member countries, but also in non-NATO countries. Acknowledged internationally as significant to successful and democratic policy-making, defense ministries are expected to ensure an increased openness toward the public. This article concentrates on the job roles of civilian personnel of the defense ministries and the regulation of the level of their transparency. The assumption was to see a large presence of transparency practices in the defense ministries. While the overwhelming pattern is that there is some transparency provided of job roles, in many of countries researched it is seen that the job roles of the civilian personnel of the defense ministries are not public. It is found that the transparency practices reflect different legal systems and defense characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The successful conclusion of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) has challenged the global nuclear order, but was dependent on bypassing the nuclear weapon states (NWS) and their allies. This has led critics to dismiss its practical value for nuclear disarmament. Proponents of the ban treaty, however, hope for a “transformative political dynamic” that delegitimizes nuclear weapons and leads to NWS and their allies joining the TPNW. This article contributes both conceptually and empirically to the discussion of this “transformative political dynamic”. It deals with the role of nuclear weapons for NATO membership and the strategies for legitimizing and delegitimizing nuclear weapons. The case study on Belgium analyzes the processes of coalition building and the discursive strategies related to Belgium’s nuclear role in NATO. The study shows that the exchange of symbolic arms control and disarmament initiatives for the approval of military budgets and the acquiescence to the claimed nuclear obligations of NATO membership stands on shaky ground.

Despite the fact that NATO is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, there is an ongoing debate on the essence and nature of the alliance, its role in international relations in general and the architecture of European security in particular. These discussions are especially relevant now as the system of international relations has entered a period of global transformation. The fact that the alliance has undergone numerous organizational and identity changes throughout its long history makes the problem of understanding the phenomenon of NATO all the more difficult. In order to address this challenge, the article focuses on the key features of NATO’s partnership policy in the post-bipolar world. The author concludes that in the wake of the Cold War, NATO faced a profound identity crisis and set a course for a radical functional expansion, in particular within the framework of partnership policy, by including the issues of post-conflict reconstruction, human and gender security, public diplomacy, climate change, etc. into its agenda. All this seemed to indicate a radical shift of NATO from a traditional military-political association towards a genuine ‘security community’. However, the conflict in Ukraine and the deep impasse between Russia and the West, largely provoked by the NATO’s partnership and enlargement policy, has again brought to the forefront of the bloc’s collective identity-building the traditional binary ‘friend-and-foe’ logic and, especially, self-representation as a military alliance.

By the early 2020s, the NATO representatives have adopted an increasingly alarmist rhetoric regarding China’s strengthening positions in the international relations. In 2022, the PRC was officially qualified as a ‘systemic challenge’ to the countries of the alliance. These attempts to securitize the Chinese factor in the NATO’s discourse are particularly noteworthy since they can hardly be rationalized by traditional military-political, economic or ideological reasons. The author argues that these reasons stem from the NATO’s search for a new, global identity. In order to test this hypothesis, the article traces the evolution of the alliance’s collective self-representations from the Cold War period up to the present day. The author shows that during the Cold War, when NATO positioned itself as a military-political alliance aimed at deterring the ‘Soviet threat’, the alliance’s relations with China developed steadily and constructively despite political and ideological differences. In the post-bipolar period, the Chinese factor has lost its importance even more, as NATO was actively considering the idea of repositioning itself as a ‘security community’. Attention to the PRC in the NATO discourse increased significantly in the 2010s, when the alliance set a course towards a radical expansion of its mandate in international relations and self-representation as a global security actor. However, as the author emphasizes, during this period there still have been no attempts to securitize China, and relations between the PRC and NATO were marked by positive dynamics. The shift in the perception of the PRC in the NATO’s official discourse took place in the second half of the 2010s — early 2020s and stemmed from the apparent difficulties in asserting the global identity of the alliance and the growing great-power rivalry in the international arena. From this perspective, increasing efforts to securitize the PRC could be ascribed to the continuous evolution of the alliance’s collective identity and the desire of its leaders to close ranks in the face of new strategic challenges. However, the author shows that the deterioration of relations between NATO member states and Russia, a traditional ‘significant other’ for the alliance, renders meaningless any further attempts to securitize China, which continue still more by inertia.

In the aftermath of the Cold War, both scholars and experts frequently questioned the political relevance of security alliances, given the declining intensity of armed conflicts and the decreasing probability of major interstate wars. However, the post-bipolar international reality marked by the burgeoning of new alliances and coalitions, with old associations being reformed and/or expanded in membership rendered these questions obsolete. In fact, states not only continue to consider military alliance as an important foreign policy tool but actively develop new forms of alliances and coalitions. The article identifies the key trends in the evolution of military and political alliances over the period from the 1990s till the 2010s. Firstly, the authors highlight the waning interest of the leading powers towards formalized allied relations, since they increasingly perceive the latter as an unnecessary burden. At the same time, the researchers note that the leading powers adhered to different approaches to alliance and coalition building in the post-bipolar period. While the United States strengthened the transatlantic core (NATO) in the U.S.-centered network of alliances, relying on more flexible plurilateral formats in other regions of the world, Russia, India, and China did not seek to expand their respective blocs, providing collective security guarantees selectively. That said, all major powers share interest in promoting and developing asymmetric alliances both as tools to deter potential opponents and leverages over junior partners amidst the struggle for spheres of influence. Secondly, the authors conclude that the key feature of the post-Cold War coalition-building is the so-called ritual alliance, when military and political commitments are included in the agenda of regional integration groupings as an addition to substantive issues of cooperation rather than the reverse. Finally, in the 1990s and 2010s, the range of formats of an alliance expanded: from the traditional priorities of territorial defense, the focus has shifted towards expeditionary operations as a part of coalitions, the latter including not only sovereign states but also non-state patronage networks. In conclusion, the authors note that the major powers will continue to promote combined forms of alliances, as the loyalty of partners becomes of increasing strategic importance against the background of growing interstate rivalry.

Against the backdrop of the rapid degradation and destruction of the international security architecture dating back to the Cold War, the problems of arms control in general and the proliferation of nuclear weapons in particular assume new significance. There is an increasing need to search for new multilateral forms of interstate cooperation in this area, which would make it possible to adapt the established models of arms control to the realities of the emerging polycentric world order. In this regard, the history of relations between the members of the military-political blocs during the Cold War could offer some valuable lessons. This article examines three cases related to the deliberations between NATO allies on the prohibition of nuclear weapons tests, the preparation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and negotiations on the mutual reduction of armed forces and conventional armaments in Central Europe. The study shows that though the United States had the final say in developing solutions to arms control problems in all three cases, the positions of its NATO allies significantly affected both the course of the negotiation and the content of the agreements. The author concludes that one of the main lessons to be learnt from the discussions of 1963–1975 is what ignorance of the lessons from the past can lead to. Disregard for the experience of the interwar negotiations did not allow then to unleash the full potential of a multilateral inter-bloc dialogue on arms control. Now this lesson is becoming more relevant than ever before.