On 1 September 2026 Bishkek hosted seventeen heads of state and government at the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the twenty-sixth in its history, convened on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the organisation's founding. The host, Kyrgyzstan, which had just ended its year-long chairmanship, had a few weeks earlier been elected a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for 2027 and 2028, while in the same election Germany lost the seat reserved for the Western group.
Autor: Maciej Dachowski, Ewa Polak
Opublikowano: 04/09/2026
A few days before the first summit of the Carpathian Integration Initiative, scheduled for September 2026 in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, Warsaw still does not know whom it will send. Volodymyr Zelensky has invited representatives of seven states of the region to the summit, Poland among them, he is steering the project personally, some leaders have already confirmed their attendance and more than five hundred business representatives are expected on site, and yet Poland's decision on the level of its representation still has not been taken.
Autor: Maciej Dachowski
Opublikowano: 01/09/2026
Iran emerges from the war with Israel and the US strengthened, regardless of the costs it has incurred. Unless a permanent collapse in negotiations occurs, it can recover its losses very quickly, and given its potential, it has a chance of becoming one of the world's largest economies within a few years. Crucial in this context is not the nuclear issue, but the high-stakes game over the Strait of Hormuz.
Autor: Witold Repetowicz
Opublikowano: 26/08/2026
The Union Civil Protection Mechanism was created as a tool for fast, targeted assistance between neighbours in response to events that exceed a single state's capacity to respond – from fires, floods and earthquakes to industrial accidents, chemical contamination or man-made disasters. The last two decades, and especially the events of recent years – the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine – have tested it in ways its architects never anticipated: not as a single, closed-ended event, but as a prolonged, multidimensional crisis with no clear end point.
Autor: Ewa Polak
Opublikowano: 24/08/2026
In late March 2026, a month after the outbreak of the war with Iran, Volodymyr Zelensky toured Jeddah, Abu Dhabi, Doha and Amman in three days. With Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Jordan he signed defence cooperation agreements providing for joint investment, joint production and the sharing of experience and solutions in defence against missiles and unmanned aircraft.
Autor: Maciej Dachowski
Opublikowano: 20/08/2026
In recent months we have been witnessing a very significant shift in international relations. What is changing is the way states build their position in the international system. A growing number of middle powers no longer organise their entire strategy around a single centre, nor do they treat relations with competing great powers as mutually exclusive.
Autor: Maciej Dachowski
Opublikowano: 17/08/2026
Autor: Reuben F. Johnson
Opublikowano: 29/07/2026
On June 13, Yoon Suk Yeol, the former president of the Republic of Korea (ROK), was sentenced to two years in prison after being found guilty of illegally receiving opinion polling services worth $179,800 for free from a political broker. Just four days earlier, on June 9, ROK Supreme Court upheld his seven-year prison sentence for obstructing authorities attempts to arrest him over his short-lived imposition of martial law in 2024.
Autor: Zuzanna Kowzan
Opublikowano: 20/07/2026
The summit in Ankara will deliver contracts, memoranda, and letters of intent, yet it will not clarify what Europe lacks most acutely — its own answer to the question of the long-term direction of the transformation being undertaken. At the root of the contemporary identity crisis lies not a deficit of financial resources but the absence of a shared European strategic culture, which Ankara may throw into particularly sharp relief, proving that material rearmament is outpacing the ability to define directions for joint action.
Autor: Patryk Litwiński
Opublikowano: 06/07/2026
Around a decade ago at the Singapore Air Show the executive of a major US defence company told me more than once “my best sales agents are the Chinese. Every time they make a public show of steaming their aircraft carrier out for sea trials or commit another one of their violations of some nation’s territorial waters or build up another one of their artificial islands – that’s when my phone starts ringing. Other nations in the region suddenly want to know how soon they could have some US-made military hardware, especially if they are EDA [Excess Defence Articles].”
Autor: Reuben F. Johnson
Opublikowano: 18/06/2026
Second half of May 2026 was a busy time in Asian diplomacy
Autor: Krzysztof Kozłowski
Opublikowano: 18/06/2026
Todays near standoff between the Philippines and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the Scarborough Shoal is a reminder that over time foreign policy mistakes only expand in their complexity and negative implications.
Autor: Reuben F. Johnson
Opublikowano: 23/04/2026
Away from the deadlines reporting on the US-Israeli war with Iran (now in a hiatus phase), another, concurrent armed conflict has been taking place, expanding in both geographic scope and intensity, namely the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Hezbollah launched projectiles on 1st March into Haifa (all of which were intercepted) as revenge for the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The Israeli responded with a rocket barrage ultimately targeting 50 villages south of the Litani River and southern Beirut (evacuation orders were sent last minute to the Lebanese civilian population), followed by a ground assault. This event marked the outbreak of the seventh armed conflict between Israel and Lebanon since the establishment of the State of Israel
Autor: Karolina Pawlik
Opublikowano: 20/04/2026
Autor: Maciej Dachowski
Opublikowano: 17/04/2026
Autor: Maciej Dachowski, Ewelina Załuska
Opublikowano: 15/04/2026
Cheng Li-wun, Kuomintang’s (KMT – current Taiwanese opposition) leader, just concluded her April 7-12 visit to People’s Republic of China.
Autor: Krzysztof Kozłowski
Opublikowano: 14/04/2026
António Guterres is finishing his ten-year tenure in a world that barely resembles the one the UN was built for. Peace negotiations happen without the organization. Conflicts are managed outside the Security Council. Alternative frameworks are displacing institutions.
Autor: Maciej Dachowski
Opublikowano: 20/03/2026
Autor: Maciej Dachowski
Opublikowano: 06/03/2026
Energy security in the Arctic constitutes a multifaceted phenomenon, encompassing a wide array of concerns, including political, security, socio-economic, technological and identity dimensions. It involves questions of land ownership, the rights of stakeholders, pristine nature, and re-industrialisation delineated through green technologies.
Autor: Karolina Pawlik
Opublikowano: 23/02/2026
Despite continuing to frame itself in great-power terms, Russia is gradually losing the capacity to perform the systemic functions that for decades made it an indispensable actor in the international order.
Autor: Maciej Dachowski
Opublikowano: 12/02/2026
Recent events in relation to Greenland struck a lot of controversy and provoked many reactions. The subject isn’t new as the first time Donald Trump publicly admitted that the US should try to acquire Greenland was 18th August 2019. That day, he confirmed he was considering an attempt to buy Greenland and added that it “would be strategically nice [for the USA to own]”.
Autor: Jagoda Synowiec
Opublikowano: 10/02/2026
For Taiwan the last days of 2025 were characterised by yet another Chinese military drills around the island located 180-kilometers off the coast of mainland China. The drills have been conducted days after the announcement of $11bn U.S. weapons sale to Taiwan, one of the biggest weapon sales in Taiwan’s history.
Autor: Michał Malak
Opublikowano: 04/02/2026
Over the past two decades, China has consolidated its presence in Latin America by exploiting the prolonged shift of U.S. strategic focus toward the Middle East. The resulting economic and infrastructure footprint in Washington’s immediate neighborhood is now seen as a strategic threat. The U.S. response - a new National Security Strategy and the intervention in Venezuela - reaffirmed the Western Hemisphere as non-negotiable to U.S. security.
Autor: Patryk Litwiński
Opublikowano: 29/01/2026
The establishment of the so-called Board of Peace, proposed by the President of the United States Donald Trump, should be understood not as an episode linked solely to Gaza, but as a symptom of a deeper transformation of the international order [1]. For the first time since 1945, a key system-shaping actor is not attempting to reform existing security institutions, but is instead deliberately initiating a mechanism that competes with them.
Autor: Maciej Dachowski
Opublikowano: 20/01/2026
Negotiating the Same War. Russia’s Continuum, America’s Cycles, and Why Momentum Still Isn’t Change?
At the close of 2025, as the war in Ukraine enters its fourth year in full scale form, international attention once again turned to Florida. On 28 December 2025, President Volodymyr Zelensky met with President Donald Trump at Mar a Lago.
Autor: Maciej Dachowski
Opublikowano: 15/01/2026
