The new German coalition government will not rock the foundations of German foreign and security policy. It wants to remain a reliable partner in the EU and NATO. But it sends an important signal for disarmament and arms control efforts. The 177-page coalition agreement contains the following passage on the TPNW: "In light of the results of the NPT Review Conference and in close consultation with our allies, we will constructively accompany the intention of the treaty as observers (not as members) at the Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons."

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is embroiled in a tussle with both French President Emmanuel Macron and US President Joe Biden which, given the power asymmetries, risks leaving Australia exposed and vulnerable in a major-power league above its paygrade.

In recent months, we have often heard that the return of the Cold War is imminent, this time with China. How great is this danger? Some developments point at a dangerous confrontation; others are completely different from the times of the Cold War with the Soviet Union and its allies.

A common intellectual parlour game is to rank American presidents in order of greatness. Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt have long reigned supreme in the top four slots in C-SPAN’s survey of presidential historians. Switching angles and timeframe, although few question the US decision to exit Afghanistan, few defend how it was done. The calamitous domestic political consequences will be matched by lasting damage to the US’s global reputation and interests. This prompts the question: what were the single worst blunders by recent presidents?

In May 2021, the United Nations Security Council met for the first time to discuss the role of emerging technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), in peace and security. In the following month, the Security Council met to discuss how to keep peace in cyberspace, also for the first time, ushering emerging technologies to the highest level of diplomatic efforts at the United Nations (UN).

The diplomatic tug-of-war between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States over restoration of the Iran nuclear agreement (officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) seems almost perennial. The two sides have engaged in brinkmanship, seeking to score maximum benefit against one another.