Angered by the decision to push NATO eastwards and the prospect of other post-Soviet states soon joining the alliance, Russia has become engaged in a game of high-risk brinkmanship with the US. A swift ‘resetting of the reset' is needed if dangerous rivalries are to be prevented from spiralling out of control, says Hall Gardner.

Stability is a desirable outcome for all parties in the Mediterranean Dialogue. This does not mean returning to the failed policies of the past; our Atlantic Memo is rather a roadmap for maintaining a commitment to the burgeoning democratic institutions of the region.

As attention shifts to the NATO summit in Chicago, a statement by sixteen non nuclear weapons states, including Switzerland and Norway - an ally of the nuclear weapons states, says that nuclear weapons and programmes have catastrophic humanitarian consequences and should be abolished.

Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany have acknowledged publicly that they would like to see the US nuclear weapons all three are hosting removed from their territories. Yet the debate in NATO on this issue lacks transparency and accountability.

While the world turns, nuclear weapons are modernised and revalued in nine nuclear-armed states, causing a growing number of nuclear-weapon-free countries to reassess their options for security. Rebecca Johnson reports from Vienna where diplomats are gathering to review progress on the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons