Twenty-five years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the temptation is to mark the anniversary by retelling the day itself, the burning towers, the grounded flights, the images that an entire generation absorbed before it fully understood what it was watching. That story has already been told many times over, in documentaries, congressional hearings, and the exhaustive record of the 9/11 Commission. The more useful anniversary exercise is harder: asking not what happene

For years, Europe treated missile defense as a supporting capability. That assumption has changed in favor of strategic priorities. The decision by Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine and the United Kingdom to establish a defensive Anti-Ballistic Missile Coalition is more than another multinational defense initiative. It reflects a broader shift in European security thinking, one that recognizes long range missile threats as a defi

On July 13, the United Kingdom and the European Union unveiled their first coordinated cyber sanctions package against Russia, targeting senior intelligence officials, cybercriminals, front companies, malware operators, and disinformation actors involved in Russia's hybrid operations. Alongside the sanctions, the EU and the UK jointly attributed a cyberattack against Poland's energy infrastructure to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), while France and Germany summoned R

Photo: OpenAI By Megi Benia The Russian strike that damaged the Dormition Cathedral of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra is more than an attack on a UNESCO World Heritage Site or one of the holiest places in Eastern Orthodoxy. It exposes a deeper contradiction that has long characterized Russia's relationship with religion, history, and power. For centuries, Russia has sought to portray itself as the heir to the Orthodox Christian world through the policy of the "Third Rome." Following

Photo: OpenAI By Megi Benia Contributors: Tinatin Gachechiladze, Mariam Gamdlishvili, Mariam Orjonikidze Wägmark On May 26, 2026, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit days before the Parliamentary election in Armenia became one of the most strategically consequential moments in recent Western engagement in the South Caucasus. Unlike previous high-level visits focused primarily on democratic reform or economic cooperation, Rubio’s visit was overwhelmingly security-orien

Photo: AI Gemini By Megi Benia For much of the modern era, national defense was understood primarily in military terms. Security was measured through force posture, troop readiness, weapons systems, territorial control, and the capacity to defeat an external aggressor. Those elements remain indispensable. No serious state can ignore conventional defence. Yet the strategic environment has changed. Many of today’s most consequential threats do not begin with armored formations