Executive Summary: Poland is navigating internationally to maintain the unity of the North Atlantic alliance while anticipating a European defense structure without the United States. U.S. officials have praised Poland as a model for NATO states to emulate in terms of defense spending and military... MORE

Executive Summary: During his re-election as Belarus’s President, Alyaksandr Lukashenka warned Poland that any attempt to annex western Ukraine would precipitate a conflict with Belarus and Russia. Lukashenka’s warnings are part of a broader obsession with Poland’s regional and European influence and support for the... MORE

Executive Summary: On January 1, Poland took over the presidency of the Council of the European Union, emphasizing the need to strengthen European security to deter Russian aggression. The Visegrád Four Group, a multi-national format to bolster Central European solidarity and security, has become redundant,... MORE

Executive Summary: Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014 and, more recently, its equally illegal absorption of Ukraine’s Donbas oblast illustrates the lack of respect Moscow has for Ukraine as a separate state. Kremlin officials are openly talking about changing all Ukraine’s current borders,... MORE

Executive Summary: Poland announced plans to build fortifications on its border with Russia’s Kaliningrad oblast and Belarus, with construction of the “Eastern Shield” defensive line to be completed by 2028. Poland is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) top military spender by percent of its... MORE

Executive Summary: NATO’s outgoing Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, recently offered his first retrospective assessment of the Alliance’s Ukraine policy. Retrospective assessments recognize that the United States and its major allies failed to deter Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022. While member states may have... MORE

Executive Summary: The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has an extensive taxonomy of diplomatic relations, with at least 42 unique combinations of adjectives for different partnerships. The PRC has never delineated the ranking of these partnerships explicitly, though there is enough available information to determine... MORE

Executive Summary: The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has established a framework of authority and values that fosters voluntary compliance from subordinate states, as exemplified by the Solomon Islands’ recent diplomatic alignment with Beijing, abandoning recognition of Taiwan in favor of the PRC. The PRC... MORE

Executive Summary: Twenty-three North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)member states have undertaken bilateral security commitments to Ukraine. The ten-year agreements operate under the umbrella of a Ukraine Compact, outside NATO’s framework, and postpone Ukraine’s NATO membership in deference to Russia. The assistance offers are potentially massive... MORE

Executive Summary: Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó recently visited Belarus to discuss expanding trade amid stringent EU sanctions, cooperating more closely on nuclear energy, and maintaining open lines of communication. Budapest is the only EU capital that recognizes the post-2020 political status quo in Minsk... MORE