With the passing of George Bush the elder, Germany has lost a loyal friend and a committed champion of freedom across the globe. One of the great transatlanticists and an architect of German Reunification, the former US president will always occupy a special place in our history books.

Although he may have be no Abraham Lincoln, or George Washington, or Franklin D. Roosevelt, or even Ronald Reagan, he was a …

We have lost a dear friend and will miss him greatly. Senator John McCain, one of the great transatlanticists and a champion of the free world’s values, is with us no more. His fortitude and statesman’s devotion to a liberal world order made him a towering figure of the transatlantic community of values of our time.

Senator McCain knew there is no alternative to the transatlantic alliance between the United …

In Germany, we are proud of our constitution – and rightfully so. After the terror regime of the National Socialists, the authors of the German Basic Constitutional Laws decided that it was of utmost importance to create a constitutional democracy in which the protection of human dignity, fundamental human rights and civil liberty was guaranteed and enforceable.

Freedom of the press, speech, opinion and information are secured in Article 5 …

Over three years after the launch of the military campaign against the Islamic State, the US-led global coalition, together with Iraqi and Kurdish forces, have accomplished their mission. Ninety-eight percent of the territory IS once held in Syria and Iraq has been recaptured. The caliphate’s most important cities, Raqqa and Mosul, are no longer controlled by jihadists. And of the 40,000 men who once fought for IS, only 3,000 are …

Cyber security is a relatively new foreign policy problem. A decade ago it received little attention, but in 2013 the US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper declared cyber security risks to be the biggest threat facing the nation.

In 1996, only 36 million people or about 1 percent of the world population used the internet. In a mere two decades, that grew to half the world population. Now with …

The arms control horizon is both grim and complex, bogged down by a triple tangle of geopolitical, strategic and technological factors while reflecting the depth and difficulty of today’s security dilemmas. The continued inability to move forward risks deepening them, yet even small advances could signal and encourage an easing of global tensions.

In the 1970s, Cold War arms control negotiations were a key element of US-Soviet détente. When relations …

Conventional warfare tactics, traditionally maintained through rifles and tanks, artillery, and fighter jets, is now centered on the rapid innovation and advancement of IT, artificial intelligence (AI), avionics and cyber technology in developed countries. The battlefield is expanding to five dimensions – ground, sea, air, space and cyber. However, the South Korean military faces a triple handicap. Thus, without technical innovation, it will be difficult to maintain its combat power.…

Beginning in 2014, the High Contracting Parties of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) have held meetings at the United Nations in Geneva to discuss possible limitations on the development and deployment of lethal autonomous weapons systems (AWS). In November 2017, the CCW convened a formal Group of Governmental Experts (GGE), chaired by India’s Ambassador to the UN Amandeep Singh Gill, with a mandate to “assess questions related to …

Let me unequivocally state: The status quo with respect to innocent civilian casualties is utterly and wholly unacceptable. I am not in favor of Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS) nor of lethal weapons of any sort. I would hope that LAWS would never need to be used, as I am against killing in all its manifold forms. But if humanity persists in entering into warfare, which is an unfortunate underlying …

As polarized as the discussion surrounding Nord Stream 2 may be, each side posits legitimate arguments deserving of careful consideration. It is thus essential to discard doomsday scenarios, return to reason and soberly substantiate the debate. Four main issues are at stake:

Detractors of Nord Stream 2 argue that European energy security is already impaired by an over-dependency on Russian gas. As was the case with previous energy cooperation projects, …