Global Security Briefing

Philip Shetler-Jones is joined by Sanghun Seok and Dr Edward Howell to ask whether 'unification' and 'denuclearisation' are still the lenses through which we should view security on the Korean Peninsula.

For decades, Korean Peninsula security discussions have been framed by North-South relations and nuclear proliferation considerations. But North Korea has dropped the goal of unification and refuses to discuss denuclearisation, while both Koreas have become more prominent players in security dynamics far beyond North-East Asia. This prominence ranges from North Korean troops fighting in Ukraine to South Korea's growing role as an arms supplier to Europe. This episode asks what should replace the old framing.

The episode explores:

• North Korea's current foreign and security policy priorities.
• Why North Korea is fighting in Russia's war against Ukraine, and the consequences.
• How South Korea is responding to the North's more expansive activity.
• The North-South relationship now that unification is off the table.
• The impact on the military balance in North-East Asia and the US alliance system.

· What framework should replace unification and denuclearisation.

Sanghun Seok is a former South Korean career diplomat, a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, and a Senior Associate Fellow at RUSI.

Dr Edward Howell is a Lecturer and Research Fellow at the University of Oxford and the Pharos Foundation, specialising in North and South Korea. His new book, A New Axis of Upheaval: North Korea, Russia, China, Iran, is released in December 2026.

General David Petraeus discusses autonomous warfare, drone technology and the military transformation driven by Ukraine.

Ukraine offers the clearest evidence that warfare is changing in revolutionary ways. Unmanned systems now account for nearly 90% of Russia's killed and wounded on the front line, with around eight million drones produced by Ukraine every year. Software is updated weekly and hardware every few weeks, a pace no Western procurement system matches.

Traditional armoured manoeuvre has effectively stopped, replaced by a dense zone of surveillance and strike drones along the front. For Gen. Petraeus, Senior Vice President of RUSI, this demands a complete institutional overhaul, covering doctrine, force structure, training, procurement and personnel, on a scale far beyond the changes he oversaw during the Iraq surge.

He argues the UK is unusually well placed to lead this shift, given its visibility into the Ukrainian battlefield, political continuity across governments, and a parliamentary system that can move fast, though entrenched interests in legacy platforms will resist the change required.

Key themes discussed:

• The rise of drones and unmanned systems in Ukraine.
• Ukraine as a laboratory for the future of warfare.
• Why militaries need to rethink force structures and procurement.
• The shift from remotely piloted to autonomous systems.
• How artificial intelligence could transform military decision-making.
• Changes needed to training, education and personnel.
• Institutional and political resistance to replacing legacy systems.
• Why the UK is particularly well placed to lead military transformation.

Gen. David Petraeus is Senior Vice President of RUSI, former Commander of US Central Command, former Commander of the Multi-National Force in Iraq, and former Director of the CIA.

In this episode, Tobias Ellwood sets out why he believes we are drifting towards global conflict, and what can still be done to stop it.

The order that has held since 1945 is coming apart. War in Ukraine, confrontation between the US and Iran, unresolved conflict in the Middle East and an intensifying rivalry between Washington and Beijing have produced the most dangerous strategic environment in a generation.

Recorded during a live RUSI members webinar on 19 August 2026, this special episode features RUSI Distinguished Fellow, The Rt Hon Tobias Ellwood, discussing his new book: Ten Steps to Prevent World War Three. The webinar was chaired by RUSI Senior Associate Fellow Professor Beatrice Heuser with an audience Q&A.

Key themes discussed are:

• How the West arrived at this point, and why the rules-based order has broken down.
• Where the risks of escalation are greatest, and how much of it would be deliberate rather than accidental.
• What grey zone warfare means for deterrence and Western defence planning.
• How artificial intelligence and computing will shape the speed and character of future conflict.

The full recording is available to RUSI members on the Institute's website, where you can also sign up if you are not currently a member.

Energy is no longer the preserve of the business pages and is central to questions of European Security.

Disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has left European gas prices far above where they sat at the start of 2026 and reserves are lower than where they need to be for winter.

Jet and diesel markets are tighter than at any point since 2022.

And, across the North Sea, unexplained drones and loitering vessels have become a routine feature of offshore operations.

In this episode, Andrew Gee, Director, International Security at RUSI, is joined by Amund Vik, senior advisor at Eurasia Group and former head of strategy and policy for the Norwegian Labour Party, and Petras Katinas, a research fellow in climate, energy and defence at RUSI Europe.

They discuss the following core questions:

• How exposed will the United Kingdom and Europe energy markets be this winter and is more North Sea energy production any kind of solution?
• Who does Europe now depend on for its energy? Is that reliance a partnership or a vulnerability?
• If energy infrastructure is now a target, what does defending it require? Would a turn to civil nuclear power change the picture?

Japan's significant intelligence reforms reveal how the country's approach to security is becoming more self-reliant and autonomous. But what is being proposed, and why now?

In this edition of Global Security Briefing, host Philip Shetler-Jones, Senior Research Fellow, Indo-Pacific Security at RUSI is joined by Ken Kotani, Professor at Nihon University, Japan and James DJ Brown, Professor of Political Science at Temple University, Japan Campus, to reflect on how Japan is rebuilding its national intelligence capability.

They explore the following core questions:

• Why is this important in terms of the history of the country?
• What are some of the obstacles?
• What does this reform tell us about how Japan is changing in terms of its self-perception and threat perception?
• What are the implications for Japan's relationships with allies and adversaries?

The 2026 NATO Summit convened at a moment of fragile unity for the alliance. What did it deliver? What did it leave unresolved?

In this episode of Global Security Briefing, RUSI's Director-General Rachel Ellehuus is joined by three colleagues, each bringing with them a different perspective on the alliance: Natia Seskuria, Senior Research Fellow for Russian and Eurasian Security, Burcu Ozcelik, Senior Research Fellow for Middle East Security, and Oana Lungescu, Former NATO Spokesperson and RUSI Distinguished Fellow. Burcu and Oana join the recording from Ankara and offer their reflections on the atmosphere on the ground.

The three core questions explored in this episode are:

• What did the summit tell us about how NATO as a whole – and individual members – view Russia?
• Second, what does the summit and its mention of Iran mean for the Middle East, and where does the region now sit among NATO's priorities?
• Third, what does the summit mean for Europe, and where does the transatlantic relationship now stand? What about the roles of Turkey and Ukraine?

Organised crime no longer operates outside international politics. Criminal networks are increasingly present in spaces once associated with intelligence services, foreign policy and national security.

In this edition of Global Security Briefing hosted by Cathy Heanlein, Director of Organised Crime and Policing at RUSI, we look at the blurring of boundaries between crime, statecraft and geopolitics.

The discussion coincides with a new special issue of RUSI's flagship Journal on 'the Changing Face of Organised Crime'. The issue brings together leading experts to examine how crime is evolving in a period of technological disruption, geopolitical competition and profound changes in the international order.

Cathy is joined by Professor Heather Marquette, Professor of Development Politics at the University of Birmingham, and Dr Magda Long, an international security researcher and consultant, to explore the following questions:

• How should we understand the relationship between organised crime and state power?
• Are criminal networks merely opportunistic actors operating in geopolitical spaces, or are they increasingly performing strategic functions for states?
• Is the role played by criminal networks in Russia comparable to what we see in Iran or the Western Balkans, or do different political environments produce different forms of state–crime interaction?
• If states such as Russia and Iran are increasingly using criminal networks to evade sanctions, acquire restricted goods or conduct covert operations, are existing laws, institutions and strategies equipped to respond?

What does the Russian wartime economy look like beneath the official data – and what are the implications for regime stability?

In early June, President Putin took to the stage at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum – Russia's flagship annual showcase for investors and international media – and delivered a characteristically assured account of an economy not just surviving but adapting. Sanctions, he suggested, had been absorbed. Western predictions of collapse had amounted to little more than wishful thinking.

But if we look more closely at the current state of the Russian economy beyond the Kremlin narratives, the picture is more distorted. This is a classic war economy where growth is almost entirely a function of state defence orders, public spending has reached historically elevated levels, and the civilian economy is being systematically drained of labour, capital and technology to feed the military-industrial complex.

In this episode, Natia Seskuria, Senior Research Fellow, Russian and Eurasian Security, is joined by RUSI Associate Fellow Charles Hecker, to discuss Russia's wartime economy and explore the following questions:

• What does the Russian wartime economy actually look like?
• As economic strain intensifies and the logic of state predation deepens, what are the implications for regime stability?
• If the conflict extends to another three to five years, how will Western corporate engagement with Russia evolve – and what risks does that trajectory create for sanctions coherence and Euro-Atlantic security?

Some of the data and sector information in this podcast were sourced from The Bell, written by Alexandra Prokopenko and Alexander Kolyandr. More information on the Russian economy is available at their website: www.thebell.io.

Are we seeing the potential for a diplomatic off-ramp in the latest phase of the Iran crisis, or just another pause in a much longer confrontation?

The broad picture at the beginning of June 2026 is that the US and Iran appear to be trying to move from immediate crisis management to a more structured negotiation, but the process remains extremely fragile. A reported 60-day ceasefire extension would, in theory, create space for talks on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, easing some economic pressure on Iran, and eventually addressing nuclear concerns. But the hardest issues remain unresolved: Iran's enriched uranium, the future of its nuclear programme, sanctions relief, security guarantees, and the sequencing of who moves first.

In this episode, Professor Ali Ansari, RUSI Senior Associate Fellow, International Security at RUSI, joins host Dr Burcu Ozcelik, to explore the following topics:

- What Tehran wants from the current round of talks.

- Understanding Iran's insistence that Lebanon be included in the ceasefire.

- How much room does the Iranian leadership have to compromise, after war and economic pressure, in the renewed negotiations with Washington?

- After spending decades studying the way the US fights wars, has Iran read the US more accurately than Washington and Israel have read Iran?

Dr Olivia Cheung and Lyle Morris join Philip Shetler-Jones to assess President Trump's Beijing visit and the future of US-China relations.

President Trump's visit to Beijing comes at a pivotal moment in US-China relations, with strategic rivalry, economic tensions, and regional security concerns continuing to shape the world's most consequential bilateral relationship.

In this episode of Global Security Briefing, Philip Shetler-Jones is joined by Dr Olivia Cheung, Lecturer in Politics, King's College London and Lyle Morris, Senior Fellow on Foreign Policy and National Security at Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis, to examine the significance of the visit, what each side hoped to achieve, and what the meetings reveal about the future trajectory of relations between Washington and Beijing.

This episode explores:

- The historical and geopolitical context behind President Trump's visit to China.

- China's priorities and how Xi Jinping may be approaching relations with the United States.

- What each side achieved politically, economically and strategically during the visit.

- The implications for Taiwan and US allies in the Indo-Pacific region.

- What the meetings reveal about the future direction of US-China relations.

- Wider implications for global security, international order, and partners such as the United Kingdom.