Following Russia’s annexation of the Crimea in March this year, there was plenty of talk about ‘the Bear’s return’ to great power status. Triumphant Russian politicians and media commentators crowed about their country’s return to …
Peter Jennings picks up a theme that has been working its way through the Western security community for some years now, and quite explicitly so since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: hard power is back. That’s …
2014 is the year hard power re-emerged as the driving force in international affairs. Hard power is the actual or threatened use of military force to achieve national objectives. It’s an ugly thing, supposedly a …
Yesterday, the UN General Assembly voted on a resolution, proposed by Ukraine and backed by the United States and European Union, to affirm its commitment to Ukraine’s internationally-recognised borders and to dismiss the Crimean referendum …
Recent events in Crimea have seen a number of commentators (here, here and here) return to the notion that Ukraine made a mistake in the early 1990s by agreeing to give its nuclear weapons back …