The Military Academy at ETH Zurich and the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich have published the annual survey «Sicherheit 2018». Since 1999, the study has evaluated long-term trends and tendencies in public opinion on foreign, security and defense policy issues in Switzerland.
This graphic outlines the multi-level stakeholder coordination utilized by Switzerland to address security threats- both physical and cyber. For more on subsidiarity and the evolution of Swiss security policy, see Matthias Bieri and Andreas Wenger’s newest addition to the CSS’ Analyses in Security Policy here. For more CSS charts, maps and graphics, click here.
Image “Blue Flag 2017” courtesy of the Israel Defense Forces/Yuval Shmueli/Flickr. (CC BY-NC 2.0)
This article was originally published by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in May 2018.
Israel has long been wary of Iran’s power projection in the Levant, particularly in Syria. Ties between Tehran and Damascus have been close since the 1979 revolution, but the relationship deepened after Syria’s civil war erupted in 2011. With the Assad regime’s survival at stake, Tehran doubled down on its support, providing critical military assistance—fighters and strategists—and economic aid estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Syria and Iran now have a partnership with existential stakes—for the Assad regime’s longevity and Iran’s enduring position in Syria, the most strategic property in the Levant. USIP’s Mona Yacoubian looks at Iran and Israel’s goals and concerns in Syria and the potential of their shadow war spilling over into a regional conflagration.
Image courtesy of NATO/Flickr. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
This article was originally published by War on the Rocks on 21 May 2018.
On May 17, when NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with President Donald Trump at the White House, part of Stoltenberg’s agenda was to insulate NATO from the political winds whipping through the transatlantic relationship. It’s too early to tell if he succeeded, but it is now entirely possible that when the United States and its allies meet at the NATO Summit in Brussels in July, transatlantic relations will be at their lowest ebb since the 2003 Iraq War. Will the NATO alliance, buffeted by disputes not directly related to its mission, feel the chill of this deep freeze in transatlantic political relations, or be insulated from it?
Image courtesy of Hossam el-Hamalawy/Flickr. (CC BY-SA 2.0)
This article was originally published by Political Violence @ a Glance on 8 May 2018.
What drives governments to crack down on and kill their own civilians in the context of popular uprisings? This is the topic of our newly-released special report with the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. In it, we explore why governments engage in mass killings – or the intentional killing of 1,000 or more civilian noncombatants – in the context of both violent and nonviolent mass uprisings. Among 308 popular uprisings since 1955, we find that mass killings are surprisingly common, yet they are strongly associated with certain types of resistance. More broadly (and strikingly), we find that characteristics of the uprisings are just as significant as features of the states they are confronting.
