ABS News February 2026

Editorial: Welcome to the Polar Night!
Presidential Message: New Year – New Momentum!
Remembering January 2025
February Events
Vice President's Corner: Beyond the Post-Wall Era: Reckoning with Russian Aggression
Europe at the Crossroads by Wolfgang Geissler
The Last Page

Dear Members and Friends of the ABS,

Welcome to the “Polar Night”! Vienna is currently experiencing the coldest period in ten or even twenty years, and we even have real snow in the city!

But even when “the weather outside is frightful”, ABS events are always delightful – and there will be two of them in February (see below).

Speaking of harsh weather: for traditionally minded, upright Britons it must have been a harsh February 55 years ago! Monday, 15 February 1971 was “Decimal Day”, when the British pound, formerly subdivided into 20 shillings, each of 12 (old) pence, was decimalised. From that day on, the pound was divided into 100 (new) pence. Shocking!

Come storm or snow or decimalisation – see you all at the next ABS events

Wolfgang M. Buchta,
ABS Secretary General

PRESIDENTIAL MESSAGE

New Year – New Momentum!

Like all associations and voluntary organisations, we are facing the challenge of an ageing membership – and unfortunately this has recently become clearly noticeable at the ABS as well. It is therefore a declared objective to recruit new members. With our substantial programme of around 30 events each year and our active presence on social media through our website, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, we have much of interest to offer.

As a first step, the Board has already begun a structured brainstorming process, which in a second step has been continued in a working group together with members. Many promising ideas have already emerged and will be developed further in the coming meetings. Our goal is to adopt a prioritised action plan at Board level by the end of February and to implement it immediately thereafter.

Perhaps you know someone among your friends or acquaintances who would enjoy our events and our network. New members are always most welcome! Serious prospective members may also be invited to attend our events, which are normally reserved for members only. However, I kindly ask that you obtain my prior approval (by e-mail to: Kurt.Tiroch@oebrg.at) so that we can keep an overview of attendance.

I would be delighted about every single contact that could lead to a new member for our Society.

REMEMBERING JANUARY 2026

January not only saw – as every year – the beginning of a new year and, in Vienna, rather adverse weather conditions, but nevertheless two ABS events:

Event No. 1: Europe at the Crossroads: A Bifurcating World and the End of Strategic Illusions

Velina Tchakarova gave a lecture on “The European and Austrian Security Situation” at the Diplomatic Academy.

Click here for the event report and photos.

Event No. 2: Zukunftsorientiertes Reisen in der alpinen Region liegt im Trend

KR Dkfm. Elisabeth Gürtler gave a talk on trends in (Austrian) tourism at Café Ministerium.

CLICK HERE for the event report and photos.

ABS Action in February

Even in the midst of winter, there will be two ABS events in February:

13 February – 8:00 p.m.

My Old Lady by Israel Horovitz
Vienna Theatre Project at Theater Drachengasse

26 January – 6 p.m.

Former Federal Chancellor Dr Wolfgang Schüssel will speak on
“Mit Zuversicht: Was wir von gestern für morgen lernen können”
and present his new book.
Austrian Society for Foreign Policy and the United Nations
Stallburggasse
Invitation to follow

VICE PRESIDENT'S CORNER

Beyond the Post-Wall Era: Reckoning with Russian Aggression

Our belief in a cosmopolitan and liberal world order from the turn of the millennium does not fit an era of harsh geostrategic competition. The belief in satisfying “legitimate” Russian interests, the conviction that rule-based order will be respected by others, the unwavering trust in economic interdependence that would render war obsolete even the distinction between war and peace itself-all so well enshrined in post-wall thinking-has become fundamentally at odds with the political, social and legal requirements of our time .The logic of post-wall era is one of the main impediments to our ability to dramatically increase the costs for Vladimir Putin in continuing his “special operations”.

Designed for peacetime governance, our legal and political frameworks remain ill-equipped for sub-threshold aggression .While we have introduced legal measures to prosecute individual cases of hate speech, we fall short of effective legal provisions countering information warfare, offensive cognitive operations, which envision flooding online spaces, introducing cognitive paralysis and triggering emotional reactions.

Deterrence through strength.

Insufficient Western determination invites further provocations. Rather than an escalation trap, it’s the Kremlin’s test of how far they can go with border incursion, acts of sabotage, and malign activities.

We need to dramatically raise the cost for Vladimir Putin of continuing his provocations. We must also address our imagination gap and transcend the limitation s of post-wall thinking. Otherwise, the geopolitical triggers of 1989 and their subsequent effects which enabled the European Union in the first place, could also be its last.

by former Ambassador Alexander Christiani

ABS Vice President

THE TREASURER HAS THE FLOOR.

Europe at the Crossroads by Wolfgang Geissler

The first event of the Austro-British Society in 2026 at the Diplomatic Academy took place against the backdrop of a world whose strategic order is undergoing profound transformation. Velina Tchakarova outlined an international development that is not leading towards a balanced multipolarity, but towards a structural bifurcation: on one side the United States and its system of alliances, on the other an increasingly coordinated power centre formed by China and Russia. The emerging systemic confrontation is less ideological than that of the twentieth century, but all the more driven by technology, economics and geopolitics – a “Cold War 2.0” shaped by the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

From this perspective, the war against Ukraine is not a regional aberration but a key episode in a global reordering that has shattered the European security architecture of the post-1991 era. Hybrid warfare, energy dependencies, cyber and space domains, and the control of critical infrastructure demonstrate that power today extends far beyond traditional military means. In such an environment, neutrality offers no real protection against pressure, interference or vulnerability.

Europe has, in this process, lost strategic agency and at the same time become more dependent than ever on the United States, even as Washington’s primary focus increasingly shifts towards the Indo-Pacific. The oft-invoked notion of “strategic autonomy” thus remains, for the time being, more an aspiration than a reality, constrained by demographic decline, political fragmentation and limited willingness to bear the costs of security.

For Austria, this raises the particularly uncomfortable question of whether a doctrine of neutrality, born of the logic of the first Cold War, can still be sustained under conditions of systemic rivalry and hybrid threat. The central message of the evening was clear: the era of comfortable ambiguity is drawing to a close. In a bifurcating world, strategic maturity becomes a necessity – and the refusal to decide becomes a decision in itself.

Yours sincerely,
Wolfgang Geissler

Click here to read Wolfgang Geissler's full report.