Germany’s 2022 Zeitenwende (watershed) has been widely interpreted as a break with Berlin’s decades-long attempts to offer security ‘with rather than against Russia’. In the 1970s, West Germany’s social democrat-led government had embarked on Ostpolitik (Eastern policy) as a way of normalising relations with the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and other Soviet satellites by fostering closer economic ties with Moscow. This policy was extended by subsequent governments and even endured, though in new form, after the fall of the Berlin wall. Ostpolitik is now commonly seen to have culminated in a Kremlin-friendly political landscape and an economy dependent on Russian gas. More than two years after Zeitenwende, the jury is still out as to whether Ostpolitik has been dismantled or simply remains on hold. This article shows that although German politics has experienced a seismic shift since the invasion, forces of continuity remain in operation. Ostpolitik was always in part the symptom of a desire to do realpolitik in Europe. This urge is unlikely to disappear.

This article challenges the perception of Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) as a revolutionary shift driven by the explosion of publicly accessible data. Instead, we argue that the rise of OSINT reflects an evolution of traditional intelligence practices: the collection, processing, analysis and dissemination of vast amounts of information. While the exponential growth of open–source data is reshaping the intelligence landscape, it is neither revolutionizing nor democratizing intelligence. Rather, it is prompting both state and non–state actors to explore how best to integrate OSINT practices and enhance digital literacy within their communities. Core OSINT challenges – information overload, reliability, and legal and ethical concerns – remain consistent with broader intelligence issues. Addressing these challenges provides a foundation for consolidating OSINT as a community of practice, and linking it to debates on the disputed role of security expertise in the public debate.

While much critical scholarship has pointed out that liberal peacebuilding can contribute to consolidating authoritarianism in host countries, little is known about the political effects in the deployer country. This article analyses the relationship between foreign and domestic peace processes and far-right forces in Brazil. We ask if Brazil’s leadership role in the United Nations’ Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (2004–17) and its own domestic pacification efforts in Rio de Janeiro with the Pacifying Police Units (2008–14) contributed to the strengthening of the far right in Brazil. Relying on a combination of literature review, document analysis, and fieldwork interviews, we argue that Brazil’s engagement in liberal peacebuilding processes strengthened the far right in Brazil in two important ways. The first was through a military capture of politics, as a large portion of the military elite that participated in both interventions enabled the military to take a more prominent role in Brazil’s domestic politics. Second, Port-au-Prince and Rio de Janeiro became crucial sites for experimentation with a range of policy ideas that Bolsonaro later capitalised on, namely, a punitive turn in security policies and the mobilisation of conservative Evangelical actors and morals to support and justify the military occupation.

Why is there no NATO in Asia? Literature on this question is selective and incomplete. This paper develops a new theory with determinate predictions regarding patron and clients’ alliance design preferences, the alliances that result, the commitments therein, and alliance duration. A subtle but nonetheless persistent form of entrapment problem exists with clients that don’t want a war yet fear adversary aggression. Clients’ commitment to collective security is a hand-tying costly signal that assures the patron of client resolve to defend the status quo and reduces the probability and costs of entrapment. Patrons will rationally prefer to join in an alliance clients who have already made a collective security commitment. Clients are more likely, the paper shows, to make such commitments when their adversary credibly threatens to militarily occupy at least one of them. This is more likely in land than in sea theatres. When clients fail to realise collective security, patron efforts to impose it on them will fail, will result in short lived multilateralism, and will force bilateralism on the patron. The paper uses new archival evidence from Britain and Australia to show how this strategic framework explains variation in alliance design in Europe and Asia.

As social identities are not static but made, actors constantly invest in their public image, financially, institutionally, and aesthetically. This article examines and compares two vignettes of NATO’s public (visual) diplomacy and strategic communication. It shows the changing nature of the visual communication that NATO has applied to rationalise its military force and to fix its collective identity. In addition, the article illustrates that the changing visual communication of the alliance shapes and is shaped by its identity constructions and its quest for ontological security. For the vignette of a force comparison report from 1984, authored by the NATO Information Service, I argue that technical images are conditioning the sensible and possible by normalising the deployment of military force and disciplining anxieties about the self, deterrence, and defence. This look is based on spatial divisions, absent people, and relational objects. Compared to the vignette of NATO’s more recent social media campaign, #NATO2030, published in 2021, I argue that the latter reveals the progressive nature of the alliance by gaze to gender, diversity, and collective security. This shift from a deterrence-fixed to a human-faced episteme symbolises NATO’s ability to secure a stable self while adopting its public diplomacy.

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has been shaped by advocacy from states in the Global South. How should the impacts of this advocacy be understood? This paper argues that whilst Global South and rising-power engagement has shaped R2P, it has not unpicked elements of coloniality that remain embedded in the norm. In placing greater emphasis on state responsibilities to protect over international responsibilities, rising-power advocacy embeds further in R2P a colonial concept of the state which has been mobilised to ward off criticism of the state’s colonial projects in its own peripheries. Moreover, the entrenchment of a colonial concept of the state at the heart of R2P reinforces a diagnosis according to which atrocity crimes occur due to failures within the state in which atrocity takes place. This diagnosis erases the role coloniality plays in the internationalised production of atrocity crimes, whilst also framing outsider states as potential saviours, thereby reproducing colonial saviourisms in R2P. Whilst R2P may be a dewesternised norm, it has thus not been decolonised.

This paper examines China’s evolving security engagement in Africa, focusing on the recent shifts in policy and strategy as China’s global influence expands. By employing a multi-dimensional research approach, including fieldwork with semi-structured interviews, and a thorough analysis of official Chinese documents, the study highlights key examples from Tanzania, Ethiopia, and the African Union. China’s security engagement is characterised by a dual strategy of hard and soft security measures, including military presence, arms transfers, and diplomatic initiatives. The research identifies a significant transition from primarily economic-focused interactions to a more nuanced strategy that incorporates military cooperation and diplomatic interventions. This shift reflects China’s response to the complex geopolitical dynamics within Africa and its broader ambitions on the global stage. While still largely state-centric, China’s engagement is beginning to adopt more assertive security strategies, driven by the need to protect its investments and citizens in conflict-prone regions, as well as to position itself as a responsible global actor in peace and security. Despite these developments, China’s approach remains cautious and reactive, constrained by its policy principles and the complexities of African geopolitics.