NORDEFCO – A Blueprint for Regional Defence Cooperation?

This paper examines the Nordic Defence Cooperation (NORDEFCO) as a case study in pragmatic, regional defence collaboration. Despite being founded by states with divergent political alignments and defence doctrines, NORDEFCO has evolved into a flexible and low-threshold framework that promotes operational efficiency, logistical coordination, and strategic interoperability among its members. By tracing NORDEFCO’s institutional structure and historical development, the study assesses the model’s successes and limitations. While NORDEFCO’s achievements, such as multinational exercises, intelligence sharing, and education programmes, demonstrate the value of voluntary, sovereignty-conscious cooperation, its replicability is constrained by the unique geopolitical and cultural cohesion of the Nordic region. The paper further aims to provide an outlook into NORDEFCO’s possible avenues of expansion and prospective transformation following the NATO membership accession of all its members. The study concludes that NORDEFCO-NATO coalescence is crucial to overcome the agreement’s limitations to achieve real Nordic defence integration, arguing that NORDEFCO is likely to retain its relevance under NATO command thanks to its region-specific capability enhancement projects.

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A New Chapter in EU-UK Relations? Insights from the 2025 EU-UK Summit

The EU-UK summit, held on May 19th at Lancaster House in London, marked a decisive moment in post-Brexit European politics. As the first formal summit since the UK’s departure from the European Union, the meeting brought together key EU officials, namely European Council President António Costa, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and High Representative Kaja Kallas, alongside UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer (Tocci, 2025). Amidst a backdrop of global geopolitical turmoil, the summit symbolised a renewed commitment to security and defence cooperation.

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Climate threats as justifying derogations under Article 15 ECHR?

This paper examines whether Article 15 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) can serve as a legal foundation for addressing security threats arising from climate change. Through doctrinal analysis and case-based comparisons, it explores how climate-driven crises may justify rights derogations under Article 15. The findings show that while such an approach aligns with the EU’s Joint Communication on the climate-security nexus, it risks reinforcing coercive, state-centric responses. The paper concludes that a shift towards a human security framework offers a more ethical and effective path, emphasising individual protection and structural climate justice over militarised solutions.

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Episode 8: Wargames and Beyond: How NATO Prepares for Modern Conflict

In this episode of StrategicALLY, hosts Livia Perrulli and Nicola Bonsegna are joined by Major Stephen Nelson, Simulation Officer at the U.S. Army Futures Command and former Program Director for NATO’s Next Generation Modelling and Simulation. Together, we explore the strategic use of modelling, simulation, and wargaming in NATO and U.S. Army planning. We discuss how these tools support defence foresight, operational readiness, and multinational cooperation. Major Nelson shares insights on NATO’s efforts to build a common synthetic environment, enhance interoperability among Allies, and embrace new technologies such as AI, digital twins, and cloud-based platforms. Podcast edited by Livia Perrulli.

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Rethinking European Defence: The European Defence Mechanism Proposal

On 12 April 2025, the European Union (EU) finance ministers, joined by their counterparts from the UK, Norway, and Switzerland, expressed their support for a joint defence fund aimed at collectively purchasing and owning military equipment. The initiative would bring together EU and selected non-EU countries to streamline defence spending and enhance coordination (Strupczewski & Badohal, 2025). This proposal originates from a report by the Bruegel think tank, commissioned by the Polish Presidency of the Council of the EU. Its premise is the urgent need for the EU to achieve strategic autonomy, reversing decades of economic dependencies and fragmented strategic planning. This is deemed essential to effectively respond to contemporary threats, chief among them, a potential attack from Russia (Bortoletto, 2025; Wolff et al., 2025), following the diminishing reliability of the United States as Europe's primary security guarantor.

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