The UN General Assembly high-level week is an uber talkfest, so it’s important to use the opportunity to say something important. While most of he media attention has been on some more rambli…

In 2022 my country entered a new era of cruelty. It will take more than one election to get the old, tolerant Sweden back, writes Swedish journalist Martin Gelin

A new concept has emerged to haunt us – the forever war. It’s just one aspect of the bleak global picture today: more armed conflicts than at any time since the second World War; higher milit…

There are three current ceasefires in the Middle East.  One is between Israel and the USA on one side and Iran on the other; each side accuses the other of violating it.  One is between Israel and …

Historians seem to expend a lot of time and energy arguing back and forth over many years on the balance of gains and losses in a war. The arguments tend to be plagued by uncertainties over data an…

The question is whether any government has benefitted from the Gulf War that began on 28 February when Israel and the USA attacked Iran. How do the costs and benefits stack up politically? Whose na…

In the space between peace and war that the Gulf crisis has now entered, and from which it may exit at any point, if only for a brief time, maybe this is a convenient moment to think…

There are reports in several outlets that Iran and the US are getting close to agreement on a memorandum to end the war. The reports are based, so it’s said, on leaks from the Pakistani team …

There are three current ceasefires in the Middle East.  One is between Israel and the USA on one side and Iran on the other; each side accuses the other of violating it.  One is between Israel and …

UNIDIR is an autonomous institution within the United Nations that conducts independent research on disarmament and international security issues.

The ceasefires brightest prospects appear to rest on the ability of the four mediating powers (Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Türkiye as well as Pakistan) to paint it as the off-ramp, down which Trump can…

Trying to make sense of the US-Israel war on Iran – 3 signals out of the noise: – the US military build-up is concerning but does not mean full scale invasion; – the off-ramp has gone missing; &#82…

Outcomes from the war on Iran:

In the context of the breakdown of nuclear arms control, the crisis of world order and the background of ecological disruption, this commentary discusses key aspects of a possible world order that ...

When the USSR invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, assassinated President Hafizullah Amin and installed a more compliant government, it kicked off an era of war and terror that has not ended 47 ye…

Faced by growing insecurity and destabilizing uncertainties, Northeast Asia lacks a regional ...

For Europe, responding to insecurity and responding to ecological disruption are both era-defining challenges. In June last year, NATO decided to respond to the insecurity that member states and ma…

As the world knows, on 3 January 2026, in an operation involving over 150 aircraft, US Special Forces raided Caracas, seized President Maduro and his wife, and took them to New York to be charged a…

YouTube video by Think Vest

IT IS TWO MONTHS since the Gaza peace plan was announced (29 September). A few days later, Hamas gave its conditional acceptance of the deal (3 October). On 8 October, the negotiators agreed a ceas…

The fate of the peace plan for Gaza announced at the White House on Monday is not yet decided. There has, of course, been considerable coverage of it in the news media. Some focusses on its prospec…

Among those sayings that encapsulate political wisdom but are either inaccurate or apocryphal (such as the ancient Chinese curse, ‘May you live in interesting times’ that is neither Chinese nor anc…

Report cites scale of killings and aid blockages and accuses Benjamin Netanyahu of inciting commission of genocide

Feeding the global conversation on peace and security

Time for change. I am stepping down as Director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) at the end of this month, having completed the two five-year terms that are the maxim…

European leaders’ responses to the recent Israeli and United States attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities have been striking for both their muted tone and their apparent acceptance of violations ...

NATO’s new alliance-wide spending target of 5 per cent of GDP sends a strong political message, but at what cost?

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Entrevista con Dan Smith, director de Sipri, uno de los principales think tank del mundo en seguridad y conflictos

On 6 and 9 August this year, we will mark the 80th anniversaries of the two occasions on which nuclear weapons have ever been used in war – the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.* Humanity has perpetrated and experienced a great deal of harm in the past eight decades but nuclear weapons have not been used again. Despite today's widespread and intensifying perception of nuclear risk, the nuclear taboo survives.

There’s a very rightwing furore over the London mayor’s appearance on the new year honours list. But if not him, who? asks Guardian writer Hugh Muir

The head of a leading security research institute says Nihon Hidankyo winning this year's Nobel Peace Prize is a chance to remind world leaders of the humanitarian dimensions of nuclear weapon-related...

Amid the cacophony of overblown claims both for and against, what is so bad about Trump? Or, put the other way round, what is so good about him? Or, to ask my question properly, why is he such a po…

Russia is suspected of deliberately leaking chemical waste into a river, with deadly consequences for wildlife

It is all very well to argue, as I did in my two most recent posts, that far-reaching international cooperation is essential to solve critical world issues and, furthermore, that there are issues on w...

My previous post makes an argument that regular readers of this blog will find familiar: the challenge of ecological disruption including climate change crosses national boundaries and can only be tac...

Researchers, commentators and policy-makers are increasingly aware of the negative effects of climate change for peace and security. Climate change undermines conditions for peace and security for all...

Seventy nine years ago, twice and never since then, nuclear weapons were used in war. One bomb on Hiroshima, one bomb on Nagasaki. Blast, fire and radiation killed between 90,000 and 166,000 people in...

How do you solve a problem like the world order? We have had one – an order, a way of arranging international relations through institutions, treaties, law and norms – for virtually eight decades sinc...

During the 2020s, on current trends, four times as many people (or more) will die in war as in the first decade of this century. Since 2010, the number of armed conflicts each year has almost doubled....