The growing gap between rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and inadequate verification mechanisms has created several challenges for the technology. In this context, global AI governance has become a central topic of discussion in the tech world. However, the discourse around AI focuses primarily on how the technology will be regulated. The central problem of global AI governance is no longer whether AI should be regulated, but whether states possess the power to regulate the actors and infrastructures on which they increasingly depend.  

The international system has begun responding swiftly to evolving AI dynamics. Notably, the UN Global Digital Compact has established a framework for digital cooperation. The General Assembly has created the Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence, along with a Dialogue on AI Governance. In parallel, the European Union (EU) has moved towards an enforceable risk-based regulation through the AI Act. Likewise, the Council of Europe has also launched the first internationally binding treaty on AI. These initiatives are a step in the right direction. However, they lack a coherent global regime or direction, which impacts their effectiveness.  

As the latest initiatives show, the U.S. relies on targeted export controls on advanced chips, voluntary frameworks, and a pro-innovation approach that preserves U.S. dominance. China, on the other hand, favors a state-driven approach, built around controls on generative AI. The EU, by contrast, prioritizes enforceable rules for high-risk and general-purpose AI, along with strong fundamental rights protection. The emerging AI order is therefore not one model, but several operating simultaneously. This fragmentation is not accidental. It reflects competing power struggles among national interests. In such an environment, the search for a global AI governance appears misguided.  

Future AI governance is likely to mirror a hybrid model of international finance or trade regimes. Against this backdrop, private companies remain incredibly powerful, given their monopoly over data, models, computing power, and expertise, which are concentrated in a handful of private companies. This trend creates a governance paradox. Governments aim to regulate the private sector while remaining excessively dependent on it, creating a capacity challenge.  

These trends point to three prominent developments for the future. Regulatory fragmentation is likely to intensify as rival technological blocs establish incompatible standards. Ultimately, technologically backward states opt accordingly. Second is procedural multilateralism, where states agree on universal principles, but actual power remains concentrated among a few powerful entities. The third option is that states retain their distinct regulatory systems but agree on some conditions. These scenarios and trends are not mutually exclusive and can coexist, with different approaches emerging across sectors. As a result, the landscape is expected to remain complex. Whichever the scenario, the technological ecosystems are likely to become tools of influence vis-à-vis cloud access, advanced semiconductors, data centers, export policies, global supply chains, digital infrastructure, and divergent AI standards.  

For the Global South, the ongoing trend poses multifaceted challenges. The foremost is structural dependence. While these states may draft their own AI policies, they will remain dependent on foreign technology. Likewise, consensus among states remains elusive. This becomes increasingly complex in a future environment where AI governance may become more infrastructural. This might involve the development of measurable controls. The key challenge for the Global South is not mere exclusion; it is participation without agenda-setting influence. In addition, AI innovation moves much faster than regulation, creating a governance lag and adding to the challenges. The main priority is to define a meaningful role for itself in this environment. Its main priority should be to integrate into regional frameworks, shared datasets, and coordinated diplomatic moves.  

The international organizations have a limited but important part in global governance. They can expand their role by laying the ground for common scientific assessments, incident-sharing mechanisms, and capacity building. The approach should complement existing frameworks while acknowledging divergent national systems. Fostering coordination where political consensus allows remains central for relevant international organizations.  

AI Governance in the contemporary era is complex. As the ongoing developments suggest, the future of AI governance will not be manifested as a single regulator or a universal AI rulebook. Instead, it will emerge as a highly contested polycentric order, characterized by an environment where laws, norms, technical standards, and UN/international organization-led coordination overlap. In this context, the U.S., China, and the EU will continue to assert their dominance and institutionalize their edge into rules and norms. In parallel, countries in the Global South are likely to resist and consolidate their own influence. The pivotal challenge in such an environment will not be whether AI is governed. Instead, it will be whose security interests and priorities prevail in the technological age. Hence, the tussle will be to convert technological capability into institutional influence. 

Shaza Arif is a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Aerospace and Security Studies (CASS), Islamabad, casss.thinkers@casstt.com. The views in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of NIDS.

The Politics of Global AI Governance was originally published on Global Security Review.

In 2017, two people unknowingly working as proxies for North Korean intelligence approached Kim Jong Nam at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. In what they thought was a practical joke for a television program, the women took turns wiping Kim’s face with a cloth, which was later determined to be laced with a deadly chemical weapon, VX nerve agent. Kim’s nervous system began to shut down, and within minutes he was dead. North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, had successfully deployed a dangerous chemical weapon on foreign soil and assassinated his half-brother, deemed by the regime as a political threat. The assassination of Kim Jong Nam confirmed that Pyongyang had weaponized the covert delivery of chemical agents and had no hesitation in using them.

While significant focus is placed on Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs, and rightly so, there is inadequate attention to the threat from the regime’s chemical and biological weapons programs. North Korea reportedly possesses a variety of chemical and biological agents. Despite decades of sanctions, the regime has proven adept at building and leveraging dual use industrial infrastructure to produce chemical and biological weapons. This infrastructure allows North Korea to maintain deniability while producing at scale. North Korea can deliver chemical and biological weapons in a variety of ways. Biological weapons can be introduced covertly into vulnerable supply chains. The regime has made plans to send special forces infected with biological agents into enemy territory. Moreover, conventional weapon systems, such as artillery and rockets, could deliver chemical and biological agents over large areas.

North Korea has multiple pathways to accelerate its biological and chemical weapons programs. Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) is one such pathway. CRISPR is a gene-editing technology that modifies DNA sequences to achieve various objectives. For example, an existing biological weapon could be modified to target specific animal, food, or human populations. Another pathway includes leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to augment gaps in scientific research. AI could both expand the threat from CRISPR or help North Korea develop entirely new weapons. North Korea’s deepening relationship with Russia is a third pathway. Russia has decades of experience developing and testing biological weapons going back to the Cold War, and has demonstrated its willingness to use chemical weapons for assassination and allegedly on the battlefield in Ukraine. A lack of consequences has undoubtedly given Moscow and Pyongyang the confidence to further develop these capabilities. Moreover, it is concerning that Russia appears to have few constraints on what knowledge and technology it transfers to North Korea. If Moscow decides to share its vast knowledge of chemical and biological weapons with Pyongyang, there is little Washington can do.

Beyond ethical considerations, Western military and political observers have long questioned the utility of these weapons on the battlefield. Chemical and biological weapons are sensitive to moisture, temperature, and other environmental factors. Does any of this matter to decisionmakers in Pyongyang? Consider that North Korea would not succeed in causing mass

casualties. It is plausible that the regime would be satisfied with causing mass disruption to military logistics, terrifying civilian populations, and complicating allied calculations and possible responses. In this scenario, Washington’s limited theater nuclear options may not credibly deter Pyongyang.

Furthermore, it is questionable whether a President would escalate to nuclear weapons, thereby risking North Korean retaliation against the homeland or elsewhere in the Pacific. This emboldens the regime, giving it confidence to engage in lesser forms of aggression with minimal risk. Kim’s confidence is likely to increase as his military capabilities modernize, his nuclear program becomes more sophisticated, and his relationship with Russia expands. Policy analysts and decisionmakers should avoid mirror-imaging and evaluate these issues from Pyongyang’s perspective.

North Korea has options. These options provide the regime with coercive leverage and mechanisms to escalate during a crisis or conflict. The evolving relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang, and Moscow’s potential role in a future conflict on the Korean Peninsula, is amplifying the danger. Given the rapidly evolving security situation, the United States should reevaluate its theater nuclear posture in the Pacific. However, to address the growing threat from North Korea’s chemical and biological weapons, Washington must consider a range of options. These include covert action, including cyber operations, against North Korean industry; strengthening preparedness and response infrastructure at home and abroad; and developing deeper insights into the regime’s strategic thinking on these issues through a comprehensive partnership between academia and government. Now is the time for Washington to think about the unthinkable.

Nathan A. Heard is an independent researcher and doctoral student in the Defense and Strategic Studies Program at Missouri State University, focused on deterrence issues and emerging threats. He holds a master’s degree in defense and strategic studies and a graduate certificate in countering weapons of mass destruction from Missouri State. Heard is the author of the graduate thesis “A Novel Deterrence Strategy: Denial Through Space and Cyberspace” (2025) and the article “The Coming Crisis with North Korea” (2026). The views expressed are his own.

North Korea Has Options was originally published on Global Security Review.

For over a century, the primary objective of global diplomacy has been the pursuit of “stability.” From the Concert of Europe through the bipolar rigidity of the Cold War, stability was defined as a predictable baseline; a state of equilibrium characterized by established rules, clearly defined poles, and static “red lines.” Within this framework, the goal of the strategist was to maintain the balance of power and prevent the system from tipping into overt conflict. However, in the contemporary era, the pursuit of stability ceased to be a safeguard; it has become a strategic liability. 

The fundamental error of current strategic thinking is due to Stability Illusion, which is the belief that the world is a linear system where shocks are anomalies and a return to a “normal” baseline is possible. This logic assumes that the international order is a series of walls designed to keep the storm at bay. But the world is no longer operating on such a predictable script. 

In a multipolar system, friction is not accidental; it is a structural feature. Power is no longer distributed along a single axis of competition and instead across a web of overlapping and often contradictory interests. This creates a Friction Engine where a strategic adjustment in one domain (e.g., a trade tariff in the Pacific) produces cascading, non-linear effects in another (e.g., a security realignment in the Arctic). The danger arises when states apply linear solutions to these non-linear frictions. When policymakers treat geopolitical risk as though it was compliance oriented or as a set of isolated events to be mitigated, they ignore the systemic architecture. They are attempting to fix the symptoms of volatility while remaining trapped in a paradigm that denies the volatility itself. 

Australia illustrates the constraints of strategic thinking in a multipolar environment. As a medium power tied to both Western security structures and Asian economic networks, it has long attempted to balance U.S. strategic protection with Chinese economic integration. 

This was the logic of the stable centre concept; the assumption that Australia could maintain equilibrium between two major poles without choosing between them. That assumption depended on a stable international environment in which economic and security domains remained separable. That environment no longer exists. 

China’s rise as both a conventional and nuclear-armed power fundamentally alters the regional structure. Conventional modernization, which includes advanced naval capabilities, long-range precision strike systems, and anti-access architectures, is now integrated with a credible and expanding nuclear deterrent posture. This compresses escalation thresholds and erodes the distinction between peacetime competition and wartime signaling. 

At the same time, Australia’s security posture is anchored in U.S. extended nuclear deterrence. This is not a secondary feature of its defense policy. Instead, it is the core guarantee underpinning deterrence against nuclear-armed adversaries. Australia does not possess an independent nuclear capability. Its strategic confidence rests on the credibility of U.S. nuclear commitments and their willingness to extend them into a contested Indo-Pacific theater. This creates a structurally integrated but fragile position. Economic dependence on China generates exposure to coercion, while security dependence on the U.S. demands alignment in defense planning, intelligence integration, and regional deterrence signaling. The result is not balance, but strategic compression and a narrowing of maneuver space in which hedging increases rather than reduces vulnerability. 

The breaking point is not a single crisis but the erosion of foundational assumptions. Economic and security domains are no longer separable. Military modernization carries nuclear implications. Trade interdependence becomes strategic leverage, and alliance credibility becomes a systemic variable shaping all other domains. Australia’s dilemma, therefore, is not a diplomatic failure. It is a paradigmatic one. It assumed a system capable of equilibrium. It operates within a nonlinear environment where every adjustment produces cascading effects. 

A question emerging from this condition is whether bilateral extended nuclear deterrence is sufficient in a multipolar nuclear environment. The Indo-Pacific is no longer structured around a single guarantor-recipient axis. It is a distributed deterrence environment in which credibility is continuously tested across multiple theaters and domains. From this perspective, a purely bilateral model may be structurally underpowered. The alternative is the emergence of a more explicit Indo-Pacific nuclear alliance architecture that is not necessarily through proliferation, but through formalized integration of deterrence signaling, strategic coordination, and shared escalation management. Such a framework would reinforce extended deterrence by embedding it within a networked structure of allied commitments, increasing credibility through collective signaling rather than bilateral assurance alone. 

Australia’s position thus reveals a broader systemic reality that medium powers are no longer operating in stable equilibrium spaces. They are embedded in integrated pressure systems where deterrence, economics, and information are inseparable. If stability is a mirage, what is the alternative? The answer is Dynamic Resilience. We must move from a model of deterrence that acts as a wall to a model that acts like a shock absorber. While stability seeks to prevent the storm, Dynamic Resilience seeks to navigate it. Dynamic Resilience is not about managing risk in the traditional sense, which is often a defensive, reactive posture. Instead, it is an offensive strategic architecture. It requires three core shifts: from equilibrium to agility, from separation to synthesis, and from bilateralism to networked deterrence. 

The pursuit of strategic stability is a relic of a bygone era. To cling to it is to invite fragility. The global architect must now abandon the illusion of the “stable centre” and embrace the volatility of the multipolar era. By replacing brittle walls with a framework of Dynamic Resilience, organizations, and states can move beyond mere survival. They can transition from a state of vulnerability to a state of strength, turning global friction into a systemic competitive advantage. 

Dr Jean-Claude Meledje is a Founder and Director at Kexscl Consultancy. He is also an independent geopolitics analyst specializing in regional proxy dynamics and cross-border insurgencies. His work focuses on contemporary geopolitical risks across the Middle East, Indo-Pacific, Africa and beyond. Natalie Treloar is the Australian Company Director of Alpha-India Consultancy, a Senior Fellow at the Indo-Pacific Studies Center (IPSC), a Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies (NIDS), and a member of the Open Nuclear Network (ONN). Her work is geopolitics, defense, and deterrence within the Indo-Pacific region. The views of the authors are their own.

The Impossibility of Strategic Stability in a Multipolar Era: From Brittle Walls to Dynamic Resilience was originally published on Global Security Review.

Amid U.S. involvement in a war against Iran, President Donald J. Trump has decided to double down on previous public expressions of disregard and distrust toward NATO. President Trump has threatened to withdraw the United States from NATO several times since his reelection. His repeated jibes at the alliance have raised concern among European defense experts and government officials. Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder recently noted that “It’s hard to see how any European country will now be able and willing to trust the United States to come to its defense.” And French President Macron indicated on April 2nd that, in his view, U.S. President Trump was undermining NATO through his repeated threats to withdraw from the alliance. Raising new fears of American abandonment on the part of European leaders, Trump, in various interviews and social media posts within a few days, said that the United States “will remember” France’s refusal to assist in the war against Iran; that NATO was a “paper tiger”; and that “Putin knows that, too, by the way.”

The most recent Presidential broadsides against NATO reflected Trump’s frustration with European allies who chose not to involve themselves in the war against Iran and/or denied their political and military support for the actions taken under Operation EPIC FURY—an effort that Secretary of War, Hegseth describes as “laser-focused [to] destroy Iranian offensive missiles, destroy Iranian missile production, destroy their navy and other security infrastructure – and they will never have nuclear weapons.” But this hesitancy among European allies should not have surprised U.S. leadership. Neither NATO as an alliance nor individual European governments were consulted before the decision to go to war, nor were they fully informed until the operation was already in progress. Further to the issue of NATO support, Trump’s address to the nation on April 1st simply assumed that the United States would wind up its military operations within several weeks and would turn the problem of unblocking shipping in the Strait of Hormuz over to European countries and others. In addition, Western European governments have strong public support for putting distance between themselves and the war in Iran. Popular majorities in every country oppose the U.S. and Israeli campaign, and European opposition to the war is enhanced by Trump’s personal unpopularity on that side of the Atlantic.

An additional element in the split between Trump and NATO was the Russian interpretation of its implications for the war in Ukraine, and more broadly, for Russia’s national security strategy writ large. Prolonged U.S. commitment to war in the Middle East could deplete the availability of military assets that would otherwise be available to sustain Ukrainian forces in their fight against Russia. The global spike in gas and oil prices was an obvious boon to the Russian economy and, from the standpoint of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, an unwelcome distraction for European leaders from the priority of supporting Ukraine. Russia also took advantage of Epic Fury to reinforce its support for Iran by providing targeting information for Iranian missile attacks against Israel and other regional states. Russia and Iran had already been sharing technology and knowledge with respect to drone warfare even prior to the launch of military operations against Tehran.

To some extent, the volatility in the Trump administration’s approach to NATO reflected the President’s frustration at his inability to broker a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia. Vladimir Putin viewed Russia’s war as existential and refused to acknowledge that there was any distinction between Ukrainian and Russian civilizations, let alone sovereignties. The Ukrainians responded in kind, resisting Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territory with creative use of drone technology and edgy defensive strategizing that put at risk a variety of targets in Russian territory, including bomber bases and critical infrastructure. Worse for Putin, his invasion in 2022, preceded by Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, refocused NATO on its primary mission of deterrence and defense in Europe as opposed to “out of the area” operations such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Even the formerly Cold War neutral states, Sweden and Finland, were added to NATO’s membership because of Russia’s attempted coup de main against Kiev that turned into the longest and most destructive war in Europe since World War II. Caught in a trap of his own making, Putin continued to pour troops and material into the battlefields of Donbas and elsewhere in eastern Ukraine to support a more favorable negotiating position, should productive negotiations ever materialize.

Given Trump’s propensity for rearranging the deck chairs on foreign policy via Truth Social memoranda, it is conceivable that he will tone down the anti–NATO rhetoric once he has decided on a strategy for winding down the U.S. military campaign in Iran. The process of deconflicting the Strait of Hormuz will likely involve participation from European nations and other countries. Almost nobody benefits from continued bottlenecks in global shipping of oil and other vital commodities. Regardless of the outcome in Iran, the United States needs NATO, and NATO needs the United States. Without the U.S. as the indispensable leading partner, NATO Europe has insufficient nuclear or conventional deterrence against further Russian aggression. This assertion implies no disregard for the steps that the U.S. European allies have already taken since 2022 to improve the quality of their armed forces and military–industrial complexes. It is instead a recognition that the unique American nuclear deterrent and conventional war-fighting capabilities, supported by European determination to resist further Russian aggression, create a global as well as a regional deterrent for Russia and its partners (The CRINKs – China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea) that benefits not only NATO but also world peace. On the other hand, a divided and internally fractious NATO invites further aggression within and beyond Europe.

Stephen J. Cimbala is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Penn State Brandywine and the author of numerous works on nuclear deterrence, arms control, and military strategy. He is a senior fellow at NIDS and a recent contributor to the Routledge Handbook of Soviet and Russian Military Studies edited by Dr. Alexander Hill (Routledge: 2025). The views of the author are his own.

Trumping NATO was originally published on Global Security Review.