Research

Paul Bell reflects on Georgia's faltering democratic aspirations, arguing that the country's long-held hope for a Western, liberal future has become a kind of trap — a seductive but ultimately punishing force that keeps its people straining toward a freedom that autocratic capture continues to deny them.

Paul Bell is a consultant and writer with thirty years of experience of strategic and political communications in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. He lived in Tbilisi, Georgia, for more than five years before returning to London in late 2024.

Maria Golubeva examines Angela Merkel's legacy and Russia's information war on Germany to argue that liberal democracy must evolve from an open, globalist model into a actively self-defending "battlesome democracy" — while warning that in hardening its institutions against foreign manipulation and hybrid threats, Germany risks abandoning the very humanist values it is trying to protect.

Andrew Cheatham explores the convergence of exponential technological advancement, geopolitical fragmentation, and deep cultural exhaustion to argue that the West faces a civilisational crisis that goes far beyond governance failure — one that can only be addressed through a fundamental renewal of shared meaning, epistemic humility, and human connection.

The report was the culmination of a year of in-depth research meetings conducted with many of the world’s leading technology thinkers. It was written by Dr Neville Bolt and Elina Lange Ionatamishvili in an association between NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence and Sympodium Institute for Strategic Communications.