I present an alternative course of history. What if the Russians had achieved their goals and seized Kyiv in February 2022 in a brilliant four-day campaign and, as a result, established a sympathetic government fully implementing Moscow's will? The story begins on 28th February 2022...

Strategia wojskowa to sposób przygotowania wojska, jego rozmieszczenia, szkolenia i ćwiczenia. Polega ona przede wszystkim na długoterminowym rozwijaniu szeroko pojętych zdolności, do których współcześnie bardziej pasuje określenie „system odporności państwa”...

Structural issues, i.e. a set of conflicting interests between the United States and China, prevent them from getting out of the spiral of growing rivalry in the summer of 2023...

Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia before World War II was the first serious opportunity to test the effectiveness of economic sanctions, the economic weapon of the then “international community” — the League of Nations. Specifically, how these sanctions worked in practice against a large state with an industrial base and a real army.

On Thursday 27th April, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan delivered a speech at the Washington-based Brookings Institution think tank...

Australia has entered into an alliance with the US and UK called AUKUS, which we at S&F refer to as the alliance of the nations of the World Ocean, aimed at preventing the consolidation of the Eurasian landmass under the sceptre of China...

The war in Ukraine continues. Its course emphasises the very significant influence of the USA on the political system of Europe...

The decision taken by the government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki in December 1990 to put the "Żarnowiec" Nuclear Power Plant then under construction into liquidation was preceded by a series of earlier political decisions...

Poland is the only country of the former Eastern bloc where no nuclear power plant was built...

This part of the series is a record of conclusions and observations resulting directly from conversations with the participants of this war — soldiers and officers...

Oleksij Arestowicz in his recent conversations, including one with me (which you can watch on social media), has started talking about the need to build a military alliance between Ukraine and Poland...

Today - part three about lessons from the war, for Poland and for our military...

In February this year, war broke out in the east. Russia attacked Ukraine. A certain stage in the history of our region and in the history of the world has come to an end...

What if the Russians wanted to end the conflict by using threats or actually using nuclear weapons...

In February this year, war broke out in the east. Russia attacked Ukraine. A certain stage in the history of our region and in the history of the world has come to an end. For years, here at Strategy&Future, we have been talking and writing about the need to prepare for the new times, to prepare for the reform of the Polish military. These new times have come...

Almost exactly sixty years ago, in October 1962, the Cuban crisis took place...

Sometimes offensive actions and the manoeuvre of heavy units are necessary, but they must be well thought out and planned, because this is completely different from defensive actions...

On the fields of Ukraine, the twentieth-century method of conducting land war (centred on attack, tank columns, a fairly shallow front, and always incomplete reconnaissance, where the fog of war still reigns) is dying out...

How would the situation in Europe and in the world have developed if Kyiv had been captured by the Russians in the first days of the war?

Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan begins a new era of confrontation between the US and China, and with it, marks the beginning of an already open conflict over Eurasia...

We have long proposed at Strategy&Future to increase Poland’s activity "in the eastern direction", in particular in Ukraine...

Jak informują dziennikarze ukraińskiej edycji magazynu „Forbes”, firma DTEK Energo, której właścicielem jest największy ukraiński oligarcha Rinat Achmetow, jest obecnie, w związku z wojną, warta ok. 580 mln dolarów...

Just as one hundred years ago, the war did not bring about the establishment of a federation, despite the Kyiv expedition, Ukrainian attempts supported by Poland, great victories of the Polish soldiers near Warsaw and on the Niemen River...

Interdependence is not a sufficient guarantee of peace, but breaking interdependence makes peace even more fragile and insecure. This is how one could define the essence of the strategic dilemma into which the democratic West has faced Russia since the outbreak of the war in Eastern Europe...

At the beginning of the 21st century, two main geopolitical visions were formed in the European Union...

W niedzielę 27 lutego (na dzień przed spotkaniem rosyjskich i ukraińskich zespołów negocjacyjnych) prezydent Władimir Putin poinformował o postawieniu w stan podwyższonej gotowości sił nuklearnych Federacji Rosyjskiej...

In the 1990s, when Ukraine was forced to give up the nuclear weapons it had inherited from the Soviet Union, John Mearsheimer published a text that is forgotten today, arguing that Ukraine should remain a nuclear state against the will of the United States...

It seems that 2022 may not be easy, bringing many challenges to the world and Poland. We at S&F will list a few of them, focusing on the absolute most important issues...

India and their strategic thinking are generally unknown to us. Their classic Kautilya is not as popular as Sun Tzu or Clausewitz. Furthermore, modern Indian geostrategists or geopoliticians also remain beyond our interest...

The current crisis related to Russian political and military maneuvering, and the West’s reaction to it, forces us to reflect on several issues concerning Poland’s vital interests...

We repeat: the key factor is the level of autonomy, i.e. that (and whether) we build these systems ourselves, put them into orbits...

A revolution in the space domain of human activity is beginning before our eyes, caused by a technological breakthrough...

Michael J. Mazarr, analysing conflicts in the “grey zone” in 2015, as part of a project initiated by the Strategic Studies Institute focusing on the changing nature of contemporary conflicts, attempted to formulate seven hypotheses about the future...

The battlefield for superiority has always been value chains and the resulting global division of labour. They determine new technology and investment cycles...

For centuries, the World Ocean has successfully held back continental powers and dictated the rules on which the world trading system should operate...

Earlier this month, I participated in a debate at a fairly large event, which is the annual Warsaw Security Forum...

Forming new alliances like AUKUS or the QUAD does not mean creating new blocs. “Inter-epoch” alliances, for the time in which we find ourselves, will be less formalised and more loosely structured...

Ultimately, the phenomenon of senility enhances geopolitical change by giving advantage to one side and taking it away from others....

The costs of designing, developing and producing weapons increase with the need to find a remedy for the enemy’s means of combating these weapons. And so the race between defence and attack is in full swing...

Just as art arises from the meeting of culture with circumstances, and just as great art arises from an encounter with extraordinary circumstances, the way of waging war is a meeting of the strategic culture of a state with extreme circumstances, bringing death and destruction, sometimes even the end of that state...

In 2021, any thinking about reform or innovation in the Polish Armed Forces, or more broadly - in the immunity system of the entire Polish state...

For the first time mankind has reached the frontiers of space, not for glory, but simply to win the war. Now he is also reaching out to space to earn money...

The case of NS2, New START, the Three Seas Initiative and Biden’s arrangements with Putin close the period of 30 years of geopolitical pause for Poland...

Here are nine points where, in my opinion, the geopolitical reality is different than at the time of the mental mapping of our elites in the last 200 years...

The biblical story of David leads to several conclusions about the development of weapons and the nature of warfare. New breakthrough technology often feels less advanced than the old...

In the time of Goliath, it was clear and obvious that heavy bronze armour and an iron-tipped spear were the basis of a soldier’s strength...

After the recent talks between Blinken and Lavrov, and the US and Germany getting along over Nordstream, we smelled Rapallo. Obviously different than 100 years ago, but the mechanism is similar...

We are continuing our new series at Strategy&Future, writing simulated speeches for Poland’s politicians on the most important and important issues of foreign policy and grand strategy. We associate it with real events and the opportunities to deliver such speeches...

At the beginning of the 20th century, almost 260,000 Russian troops were stationed in the Polish theatre of war, including 216,000 in Congress Poland itself, of which 170,000 on the right bank of the Vistula...

Both orientations of Polish foreign policy - “Piast” and “Jagiellonian” must deal with the problem emanating from the Smolensk Gate towards Warsaw, to the decision-making and dispositional centre of the Polish state...

The defence of Warsaw in the summer of 1794 is one of the most beautiful pages of the Polish military...

For much of world history, cities have been fortified to defend themselves against attack. To this day, they are a difficult nut to crack for attacking troops, despite modern combat measures. It was no different with Warsaw...

It is now 100 years since the signing of the peace treaty in Riga, which ended Poland’s war in the east with Soviet Russia and established relations in our part of the world for the following 20 years...

Turkey’s drive for military technological independence has shown tremendous results...

Boxing is maybe the best way to explain Turkey’s place in world politics. The weight class of Turkey has changed throughout history, but Turkey was always either a member of the heavyweight division or somewhere between light heavyweight and middleweight...

Perhaps the greatest operational advantage of the USA over the Chinese side is the possibility of waging a modern submarine war in conditions of domination over the enemy, both in terms of combat technology and training of the crews...

In the US plans for a war with China, Australia plays the role of a base for peripheral operations in the Indian Ocean and in the Indonesian straits...

The continued growth of China's power raises a fundamental question: what next, especially in the longer term?

There were many iconic images of the first nuclear age; soldiers moving towards a nuclear mushroom soaring into the sky; videos of the explosions themselves, the famous photo of US troops emerging from trenches...

This is actually not a report yet, but rather an account of what we have already done and indeed where we are going...

The theory of global free trade is fashionable now, just as it was before the First World War...

As I wrote earlier, we are worried on the Vistula River about American security guarantees under the new administration in Washington. But this is not everything...

Poland and the European Intermarium, by Jacek Bartosiak, Autumn 2020

And again, on the Vistula River, we are worried whether our security guarantees will not change after the US elections. Politics is indeed a dynamic, not a static condition. The competition never ends...

In November (or more precisely - November 14) anno domini 1952, in Great Britain the weekly charts were published for the first time...

On 29th August, almost exactly four years after the use of the weapon by the United States, the USSR conducted its first nuclear test, the RDS-1...

Movement is an exchange. Exchange requires money. Exchange and money are economics. Movement, exchange and money require communication. All this requires innovations in connectivity and there are benefits to be reaped...

Before August 6, 1945, Bernard Brodie's future seemed more or less stable; the war in Europe was over; the war in the Pacific would end sooner or later, probably as a result of the long and bloody campaign on the Japanese islands...

Working in a dispersed manner and with exposed flanks means that officers of the combat forces should be educated differently...

You could say that almost everything comes down to the Niemen. A river that is ubiquitous in Polish history, culture and literature. Also, of course, in the history of wars in our part of the world. When it comes to a possible war in defence of the Baltic states, it is no different.

And what will China propose now, when tensions escalate in relations between the great powers, when there is open talk of a "new cold war" which does not even rule out the prospect of a hot war?

The geopolitical and geostrategic pause initiated after the collapse of the USSR has apparently ended. First, after the crisis of 2008, the world economic and trade order shuddered...

This summer was influenced by reports from Belarus, where not only the fate of this country is being decided, but also the security status of the entire Intermarium region, including Poland...

What will come of the lack of cooperation in the consolidation of the European Union and a clear pro-American orientation in the face of tensions on the Brussels-Washington line?

Since joining NATO and the EU, Poland has based its foreign policy on its two most important partners - Germany in economic terms and the US in the military field...

As I write these words, the number of people who have traveled in space since the beginning of our planet has not exceeded 600. Not too many...

We have a serious crisis in Belarus. The basic facts we in general know. It is much more difficult to discern the real, structural forces...

A significant document on the strategic and conceptual games played regarding the conflict between the United States and China is the report produced in September 2015 by the RAND Corporation...

According to data from the World Bank, China’s economy quadrupled in size between 2000 and 2012. Official military budgets grew even faster – from $20 billion in 2000 to $120 billion in 2013...

The AirSea Battle Concept is an operational concept. It does not constitute a strategy and therefore does not cover all of the aspects of a confrontation, including the method by which a final victory will be achieved in a future war with China...

War Plans assume two basic scenarios for achieving a military victory over China: the direct approach and the indirect approach...

The US and China may go to war in the Pacific, soon. As of 2020 the chance of that happening is increasingly significant. Both began preparations for that long ago...

It is important to think carefully about how to draw the right conclusions from past mistakes. Given the growing competition between the United States and China...

After the publication of Graham Allison's book about the upcoming US war with China, the concept of the “Thucydides trap” was often used...

There are different concepts to solve the problem of the lack of an international regime. Although space powers would not necessarily sign up to a regime in the context proposed in the system, seeing how a similar solution works in the Convention on the Law of the Sea, this does not mean that other solutions are not being sought.

Gold rush - this is a term that’s increasingly used in the media in the context of space. Mention is made of a new Wild West and a space race in which not only prestige is at stake...

In his essay “Without America. Australia in the New Asia” published Autumn 2017, Hugh White describes what would happen if Donald Trump called the Australian Prime Minister suddenly...

The legendary German military strategist Helmuth von Moltke was known for not seeing the river, the forest, the field and the hills, but the “terrain"...

The Covid-19 pandemic will eventually pass. Earlier it will change the world, having ploughed global value chains and inevitably changed the principles of globalisation of the last 30 years...

Wadim Tsymburski's concepts belong, one can suppose, to one of the most important theoretical achievements of this school of thinking within the Russian state elite...

Vadim Tsymburski is not a widely known thinker in Poland or elsewhere. Actually, apart from two works...

Within the continent, France was most advantageously situated, due to the location of the Alps, which "end" on France’s eastern border...

Beyond the Greek times facing the East and the Aegean and Black Seas, Europe's geostrategic history begins with Rome...

The modern world and its order come from Europe. This is where the enlightenment and the industrial revolution were born, hence it was the Europeans who set out to colonise the world...

Mackinder predicted that there were three powers that were capable of conquering the World Island – i.e. Eurasia – the place where history is made...

The Polish thread is very important in Mackinder's work. The British geopolitician had to think a lot about observations from the above-mentioned political mission at Denikin's staff and talks with the most important Polish politicians. Thanks to this, Mackinder came to an independent opinion about Poland's political and military situation and its difficult geopolitical dilemmas...

Whilst reflecting on Europe, the Intermarium and Poland, the figure and the achievements of Halford Mackinder - a British geographer and geopolitician - must stay with us for a little longer and in more detail...

As Poland’s conventional deterrence doctrine will be taking shape in the coming years, surface-to-surface missile systems will provide (varying) capability to influence the course and outcome of armed confrontation in both strategic and operational dimensions.

On the eighth day of the war, the 7th Brigade approached the small town of Braniewo at night. The 9th Armoured Cavalry Brigade and the 20th Mechanised Brigade made convergent attacks on Kaliningrad...

Along with the statements of French President Macron, as well as many other politicians and strategists in the West - which testify to the faltering unity of the West and posit for the need to build a "new order" in Europe - Poland should revise its policy of "strategic restraint" in the East conducted so far for the justified sake of the cohesion of the West, and somewhat contrary to the logic of our geopolitical location for 30 years.

Juliusz Mieroszewski and Jerzy Giedroyć, remaining in exile in the West after the last world war, formulated a geopolitical doctrine which contained a simple maxim: "there can be no free Poland without a free Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine."

Since President Bush Senior’s presidency in 1991, the Americans have sought to counter the natural trends of multipolarity in Eurasia, fearing the instability and polarisation that were the bane of earlier periods and led to domination wars. Therefore, US military constituted for the post-Cold War world an ultima ratio regum...

While the post-Cold War golden time has come to an end, it must be remembered that the implementation of Washington's goals was explicitly laid out in what can be seen as a kind of Magna Carta for the grand strategy of the US after the Cold War - the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance...

In the first years of the post-Cold War period, the Americans sought to spread the principles of the Washington Consensus, which concerned the recommendations of the International Monetary Fund and...

Power and the credibility that arises from power are the currency in international relations. It’s a brutal truth perfectly illustrated by the history of the entire 20th century and the position gained by the United States over the past century and at the beginning of the present century...

Regardless of cultural and civilizational differences, Poland’s grand strategy viewed Russia as the landlocked continental power, whose core area was surrounded by five external powers...

Despite - and perhaps precisely - because of the revolutionary nature and the momentum of change, the reform has not been fully completed...

„Russia has only two allies: the army and the fleet” - Tsar Alexander III.

The formula of American alliances is changing. NATO from the collective model is transforming in Europe into a set of bilateral or group mutual assistance, assurance and...

An intense bout of discussion started in Poland after Olga Tokarczuk was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. This essentially boils down to the issue of dealing with understanding who we are and where we live...

To survive (preferably in peacetime conditions), and then when the dust settles - to take the best possible place in the global division of labour...

Have respect unto the covenant; for the dark places of the earth are full of the dwellings of violence...

"If we cease to rule others we are in danger of being ruled ourselves."

The Francis Fukuyama’s optimistic vision of the end of history as defined in early nineties of the XX-th century was to bring to the nations the long-desired...

The Polish War Theatre covers the area from the Oder basin in the west to the Dnieper and Daugava (Dźwina) basins in the east. This area consists of several of the distinct geographies, that is...

The Baltic Sea "turns" near the mouths of the Vistula and the Niemen to the north at the very length in which the Black Sea as the most distant outlet of the Mediterranean Sea...

The Montreux Convention deeply undermined the Soviets’ ambitions in the second half of the XX century, when the priorities had changed and the Soviet assets had to cope with...

If we assume that Russia had any geopolitical obsession, consequently we would not be able to find many of them that have survived throughout the centuries of Russia’s imperial rise.

Ceterum censeo Huawei esse delendam – whether he knew it or not, this was the message that Steve Bannon...

There is only one god – Poseidon – god of the sea; there is only one legitimate church confessing this god...