Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, 21 October 2020 - COVID-19 caught most international security academics by surprise. Initial articles featured the role of China and Russia in the pandemic. As of April 2020, Marshall Center faculty members and befriended academics of the Partnership for Peace Consortium started to write how Beijing and Moscow were trolling Europe's public with disinformation, propagandistic aid campaigns, and winkingly promoting authoritarian ways as superior to western models in handling a crisis. However, they also added papers on the virus's impact on specific regions, i.e., the European Union, the Balkans, or Central Asia. Some writers discussed the legitimate use of tools to control the pandemic in the national domain; other works revisited pre-coronavirus topics such as terrorism.

This special edition of Connections illustrates what ten acknowledged experts considered important and worth of observation regarding the impact of the virus on international relations.

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