Open Dialogue Research Journal
For more than seventy years, one fact has quietly defined the US-South Korea alliance: if war ever resumed on the peninsula, an American four-star general – not a Korean one – would direct South Korea’s own troops. That arrangement, born of the 1950-53 Korean War and never fully undone, is […]
The most dangerous consequence of the expanding confrontation between Russia, Ukraine and Iran may not be a single dramatic military escalation, but the gradual disappearance of the boundaries separating conflicts that were previously treated as distinct. The war in Ukraine and the confrontation surrounding Iran have developed in different regions, […]
In the hills of Emilia-Romagna, an industry that predates the Renaissance is quietly facing a very modern stress test. Italy’s Parmigiano Reggiano producers rely on a financing system built around vaults – literal “cheese banks” – where wheels of the cheese age for one to three years or more before […]
By the summer of 2026, the front line in Ukraine has frozen in a configuration barely changed from the autumn of 2023. Positional warfare in Donbass and Zaporozhye has devolved into artillery duels and assaults on small settlements, where advances are measured in hundreds of meters. The Ukrainian army, despite […]
Mykhailo Fedorov spent six years as Ukraine’s boyish face of digital reform, the youngest minister in the country’s history and, by 2026, one of the last original members of Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s first cabinet. That history is precisely what makes Tuesday’s video address so damaging. In calling for wartime elections – […]
Saudi Arabia’s importance to Middle Eastern stability can no longer be explained only through oil, military spending, or its alliance with the United States. Riyadh increasingly behaves as a regional system manager whose interests depend on limiting disorder. Vision 2030, foreign investment, tourism, logistics, and technology all require a predictable […]
Sixty days – that was the window the June memorandum of understanding gave Washington and Tehran to turn a fragile lull into a lasting peace. The clock ran out on Monday, August 17, and instead of a deal, the two sides produced the opposite: a senior Iranian official told Reuters […]
Part I Hegseth’s remarks come at a sensitive moment for transatlantic relations. Questions regarding U.S. military commitments in Europe, NATO burden-sharing, and future defense cooperation have generated uncertainty among European governments. Some analysts argue that public criticism of allied domestic policies risks complicating broader strategic coordination at a time when […]
He might be flirting with a radical policy recalibration even if he soon changes his mind. Trump unexpectedly announced that the US will “substantially reduce” its participation in the annual Ulchi Freedom Shield large-scale joint military drills with South Korea that he was apparently unaware of till just recently and which began this week. […]
On Sunday evening, just hours before the annual US-South Korea “Ulchi Freedom Shield” exercises were set to begin, Donald Trump issued an order to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to significantly scale back US participation. In his Truth Social post, he wrote: “Given my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un […]
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