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The Military Academy at ETH Zurich and the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich have published the annual survey «Sicherheit 2019». Since 1999, the study has evaluated long-term trends and tendencies in public opinion on foreign, security and defense policy issues in Switzerland.

Technology accelerates, automates, and exercises capabilities that are greater than human abilities. And yet, within International Relations, the role of technology remains under-studied. This edited volume by Marijn Hoijtink and Matthias Leese responds to this gap with a series of empirically rich and pertinent chapters on the future of warfare, satellite imagery of North Korea, the US’ drone program, blockchains and finance, predictive policing and border management databases, and more.

What accounts for successful mediation in peace talks? This article by Allard Duursma and Isak Svensson argues that one insightful and innovative way to answer this question is to take the agenda of mediators into account. Based on this novel conception, the text’s authors find that a “sticks and carrots” approach is only effective when the goal of the negotiations is concluding an agreement, but ineffective when the goal is formulating an agenda for negotiations or implementing an agreement.

How can we explain a state’s decision to pursue or to abandon nuclear weapon-related activities? Looking at the cases of West Germany, South Korea and Pakistan, this article by Jonas Schneider argues that in order to understand these decisions fully, researchers should take into account the characteristics of the leaders involved. 

Disaster risk reduction policies can mitigate the most harmful impacts of natural hazards. This new CSS Analysis by Tim Prior and Florian Roth argues that lack of political support has often hamstrung effective prevention and preparedness, even though early action yields multiple benefits – to more than just the economy. A global conference in Geneva in May 2019, co-hosted by the UN and Switzerland, calls for political, financial and societal investments to reap the ‘resilience dividend’.

This CSS Analysis by Florian J. Egloff and Prof. Andreas Wenger argues that cyber incidents are increasingly being publicly attributed to specific perpetrators. The public attributions issued by states and cybersecurity companies often lack both transparency and verifiability. Strengthening trust in public attributions requires institutional mechanisms at the international level as well as the engagement of the state, the corporate sector, and civil society.