iceur-school.at
Battlefield Diplomacy
Battlefield Diplomacy. The Global Impact of the Ukraine War
This is not just a course on the Ukraine war.
It’s about the new logic of global politics.
European education — no relocation.
Analysis, forecasting, real experts.
2 months — and you’re inside the international environment.
📍 Starts April 20
👉 https://iceur-school.at/courses/battlefielddiplomacy/en
This is not just a course on the Ukraine war.
It’s about the new logic of global politics.
European education — no relocation.
Analysis, forecasting, real experts.
2 months — and you’re inside the international environment.
📍 Starts April 20
👉 https://iceur-school.at/courses/battlefielddiplomacy/en
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YouTube
Battlefield Diplomacy. Start: April 20
Modern diplomacy no longer happens in meeting rooms and formal receptions — everything has changed dramatically over the past 20 years. Today, the Prime Mini...
Modern diplomacy no longer happens in meeting rooms and formal receptions — everything has changed dramatically over the past 20 years. Today, the Prime Minister of Hungary, a country that is part of both the EU and NATO, can call the President of Russia in the middle of the war in Ukraine and offer cooperation — and such decisions have direct political consequences, including the loss of power.
Understand probable futures as history unfolds. Examine how military activities and carrot-and-stick interaction are merging into a new kind of diplomacy, and learn how artificial intelligence can enhance your own analytical work.
The ICEUR-School Spring Course begins in one week. Secure your place now.
Understand probable futures as history unfolds. Examine how military activities and carrot-and-stick interaction are merging into a new kind of diplomacy, and learn how artificial intelligence can enhance your own analytical work.
The ICEUR-School Spring Course begins in one week. Secure your place now.
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War and Propaganda | Dr. Stephen Norris
A short interview with Stephen Norris, Professor of History, on his research and upcoming lecture at ICEUR.
In this conversation, he explains how propaganda evolves — from the Russian Empire to the Soviet period and modern Russia — and why cinema and cultural narratives play a key role in shaping political thinking and war.
📅 Lecture — April 29 as part of the course
“Battlefield Diplomacy:
The Global Impact of the Ukraine War“
A short interview with Stephen Norris, Professor of History, on his research and upcoming lecture at ICEUR.
In this conversation, he explains how propaganda evolves — from the Russian Empire to the Soviet period and modern Russia — and why cinema and cultural narratives play a key role in shaping political thinking and war.
📅 Lecture — April 29 as part of the course
“Battlefield Diplomacy:
The Global Impact of the Ukraine War“
YouTube
Battlefield Diplomacy. The Global Impact of the Ukraine War. Interview with Stephen Norris
In this interview,
Stephen Norris, Professor of History and Director of the Havighurst Center for East European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (Miami University, Ohio), introduces his research and the topic of his upcoming lecture within the ICEUR summer…
Stephen Norris, Professor of History and Director of the Havighurst Center for East European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (Miami University, Ohio), introduces his research and the topic of his upcoming lecture within the ICEUR summer…
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Could the outcome of the election in Hungary have been anticipated?
From intuition to probabilistic modeling with GeNIe 5.0
- If you look only at polls - no.
- If you look at the system of factors - yes.
Economy, candidate strength, mobilization, turnout, urban shifts -
each of these signals alone explains nothing.
This is the logic of Bayes:
we don’t guess outcomes - we update our estimates.
At some point, “unlikely”
becomes “most likely”.
And that is no longer intuition — it’s a model.
From intuition to probabilistic modeling with GeNIe 5.0
- If you look only at polls - no.
- If you look at the system of factors - yes.
Economy, candidate strength, mobilization, turnout, urban shifts -
each of these signals alone explains nothing.
But together, they change the probability.
This is the logic of Bayes:
we don’t guess outcomes - we update our estimates.
At some point, “unlikely”
becomes “most likely”.
And that is no longer intuition — it’s a model.
iceur-school.at
Teachers of the School
Can Forecasting Be Taught?
Effective forecasting rests on two essential pillars:
human judgment and computational modeling -
what one might call brainware and software,
or more simply, flesh and skeleton.
Neither is sufficient on its own.
It is their interaction that produces robust foresight.
In our programs, the “flesh” is embodied by an international faculty of leading experts.
Their disciplinary diversity fosters rigorous debate, critical reflection, and a form of structured collective intelligence that challenges assumptions and refines insight.
This human expertise is paired with an analytical “skeleton”:
- GeNIe Modeler, developed by BayesFusion.
This technology is used by organizations such as RAND, Google,
and multiple Ministries of Foreign Affairs across the English-speaking world.
It enables participants to construct, test, and refine probabilistic models of complex systems.
We have applied this tool extensively in our own forecasting work and are officially mandated by BayesFusion to integrate it into our training.
What sets our programs apart is their strong practical orientation:
Participants do not merely learn analytical frameworks - they actively build and stress-test models, bridging theory and application.
The result is a distinctive learning experience that transforms analysis into actionable foresight.
Effective forecasting rests on two essential pillars:
human judgment and computational modeling -
what one might call brainware and software,
or more simply, flesh and skeleton.
Neither is sufficient on its own.
It is their interaction that produces robust foresight.
In our programs, the “flesh” is embodied by an international faculty of leading experts.
Their disciplinary diversity fosters rigorous debate, critical reflection, and a form of structured collective intelligence that challenges assumptions and refines insight.
This human expertise is paired with an analytical “skeleton”:
- GeNIe Modeler, developed by BayesFusion.
This technology is used by organizations such as RAND, Google,
and multiple Ministries of Foreign Affairs across the English-speaking world.
It enables participants to construct, test, and refine probabilistic models of complex systems.
We have applied this tool extensively in our own forecasting work and are officially mandated by BayesFusion to integrate it into our training.
What sets our programs apart is their strong practical orientation:
Participants do not merely learn analytical frameworks - they actively build and stress-test models, bridging theory and application.
The result is a distinctive learning experience that transforms analysis into actionable foresight.
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Dealing with a Messy World
We tend to believe that a once orderly and reliable world is now coming apart before our eyes. Planning and forecasting seem increasingly elusive — anything, it appears, can happen at any moment. Even weather and climate feel less predictable than they once did. In such a context, offering training in political forecasting can seem close to a mission impossible.
And yet, while the amount of uncertainty — of “noise” — may well have increased, the fundamentals of practical reasoning have not.
We still act under uncertainty in familiar ways. We assume it will rain later today and, encouraged by the forecast, take an umbrella. We believe that the Fidesz government under Viktor Orbán may be losing its capacity to deliver, and we find support for this belief in opinion polls. In both cases, we act not on certainty, but on what appears most likely.
This is precisely where modelling tools such as GeNIe 5.0 come into play. They do not eliminate uncertainty; rather, they help us structure it. By systematically confronting assumptions with data, they allow us to refine our judgments, update our expectations, and — crucially — learn from past mistakes.
GeNIe 5.0 is neither a magic wand nor a crystal ball — and certainly not a prophecy carved in the stone of Maya temples. But it does offer something more realistic and ultimately more valuable: a way to reintroduce a measure of order into a noisy world — not by denying uncertainty, but by reasoning through it.
We tend to believe that a once orderly and reliable world is now coming apart before our eyes. Planning and forecasting seem increasingly elusive — anything, it appears, can happen at any moment. Even weather and climate feel less predictable than they once did. In such a context, offering training in political forecasting can seem close to a mission impossible.
And yet, while the amount of uncertainty — of “noise” — may well have increased, the fundamentals of practical reasoning have not.
We still act under uncertainty in familiar ways. We assume it will rain later today and, encouraged by the forecast, take an umbrella. We believe that the Fidesz government under Viktor Orbán may be losing its capacity to deliver, and we find support for this belief in opinion polls. In both cases, we act not on certainty, but on what appears most likely.
This is precisely where modelling tools such as GeNIe 5.0 come into play. They do not eliminate uncertainty; rather, they help us structure it. By systematically confronting assumptions with data, they allow us to refine our judgments, update our expectations, and — crucially — learn from past mistakes.
GeNIe 5.0 is neither a magic wand nor a crystal ball — and certainly not a prophecy carved in the stone of Maya temples. But it does offer something more realistic and ultimately more valuable: a way to reintroduce a measure of order into a noisy world — not by denying uncertainty, but by reasoning through it.
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YouTube
Sequence 03
Bayesian Reasoning: How an Obscure Formula Transformed Modern Statistics
Thomas Bayes (1701–1761) was an English cleric and mathematician who formulated a deceptively simple rule: how to update prior beliefs in light of new evidence. This idea - now known as Bayesian inference - remained largely overlooked for more than two centuries.
To see why this idea is so counterintuitive - and so powerful in practice - consider the following example - "What we miss when estimating probabilities?"
Only in the late 20th and early 21st centuries did statisticians and scientists across disciplines fully recognize its analytical power. The recent surge in machine learning and the development of Large Language Models have further accelerated this shift, placing Bayesian thinking at the center of modern data analysis.
Today, Bayesian methods are widely used alongside traditional frequentist approaches, with new applications emerging continuously. Their appeal lies not only in mathematical elegance but also in conceptual clarity: Bayesian models explicitly represent uncertainty and update beliefs as new information becomes available.
For political scientists, this approach is particularly valuable. Large, clean datasets are often unavailable, and researchers must frequently draw inferences from limited or incomplete observations. Bayesian modeling allows even small amounts of data to meaningfully refine prior assumptions.
Moreover, Bayesian frameworks distinguish between different layers of uncertainty. They capture uncertainty about outcomes - such as the states of a discrete or continuous variable - and also deeper uncertainty about the underlying probabilities themselves, for example through the Dirichlet distribution.
The resulting models are both powerful and instructive. They provide a structured way to reason under uncertainty - precisely the kind of challenge that analysts in politics, economics, and global affairs face on a daily basis.
Thomas Bayes (1701–1761) was an English cleric and mathematician who formulated a deceptively simple rule: how to update prior beliefs in light of new evidence. This idea - now known as Bayesian inference - remained largely overlooked for more than two centuries.
To see why this idea is so counterintuitive - and so powerful in practice - consider the following example - "What we miss when estimating probabilities?"
Only in the late 20th and early 21st centuries did statisticians and scientists across disciplines fully recognize its analytical power. The recent surge in machine learning and the development of Large Language Models have further accelerated this shift, placing Bayesian thinking at the center of modern data analysis.
Today, Bayesian methods are widely used alongside traditional frequentist approaches, with new applications emerging continuously. Their appeal lies not only in mathematical elegance but also in conceptual clarity: Bayesian models explicitly represent uncertainty and update beliefs as new information becomes available.
For political scientists, this approach is particularly valuable. Large, clean datasets are often unavailable, and researchers must frequently draw inferences from limited or incomplete observations. Bayesian modeling allows even small amounts of data to meaningfully refine prior assumptions.
Moreover, Bayesian frameworks distinguish between different layers of uncertainty. They capture uncertainty about outcomes - such as the states of a discrete or continuous variable - and also deeper uncertainty about the underlying probabilities themselves, for example through the Dirichlet distribution.
The resulting models are both powerful and instructive. They provide a structured way to reason under uncertainty - precisely the kind of challenge that analysts in politics, economics, and global affairs face on a daily basis.
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King Charles’s Answer to the “New Uncertainty”
At the opening of his recent address to the U.S. Congress, King Charles III framed the present moment as one of “great uncertainty,” posing it as a defining challenge for the international community.
His response, characteristically British in tone, drew on long-standing traditions and constitutional heritage - anchored in documents such as the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights.
Addressing what he termed the “citadel of democracy,” he appealed to shared values while carefully avoiding direct criticism of the incumbent U.S. administration - despite its evident willingness to depart from established democratic norms in pursuit of sweeping domestic and global change.
Viewed through a Bayesian lens, however, the King’s implicit hope for a return to traditional patterns appears contingent on a convergence of unlikely conditions: a U.S. government recommitted to constitutional restraint, a Supreme Court prepared to check radical reforms, and a Congress capable of rediscovering meaningful bipartisan common ground. The joint probability of these developments is, at best, low.
On the international stage, the situation is even more intractable. Structural shifts have already taken place. No U.S. administration has managed to curb Russia’s enduring drive for strategic security, to halt China’s incremental expansion through indirect means, or to produce a lasting resolution to conflicts in the Near East. These are not transient disruptions but entrenched dynamics.
Paradoxically, the near-impossibility of the King’s preferred scenario may itself reduce uncertainty. If a return to the old equilibrium is highly improbable, then analytical focus shifts toward identifying the more plausible trajectories. The real question is no longer whether the past can be restored, but which new configurations of power, norms, and alliances are most likely to emerge - and how they will redefine the global order.
At the opening of his recent address to the U.S. Congress, King Charles III framed the present moment as one of “great uncertainty,” posing it as a defining challenge for the international community.
His response, characteristically British in tone, drew on long-standing traditions and constitutional heritage - anchored in documents such as the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights.
Addressing what he termed the “citadel of democracy,” he appealed to shared values while carefully avoiding direct criticism of the incumbent U.S. administration - despite its evident willingness to depart from established democratic norms in pursuit of sweeping domestic and global change.
Viewed through a Bayesian lens, however, the King’s implicit hope for a return to traditional patterns appears contingent on a convergence of unlikely conditions: a U.S. government recommitted to constitutional restraint, a Supreme Court prepared to check radical reforms, and a Congress capable of rediscovering meaningful bipartisan common ground. The joint probability of these developments is, at best, low.
On the international stage, the situation is even more intractable. Structural shifts have already taken place. No U.S. administration has managed to curb Russia’s enduring drive for strategic security, to halt China’s incremental expansion through indirect means, or to produce a lasting resolution to conflicts in the Near East. These are not transient disruptions but entrenched dynamics.
Paradoxically, the near-impossibility of the King’s preferred scenario may itself reduce uncertainty. If a return to the old equilibrium is highly improbable, then analytical focus shifts toward identifying the more plausible trajectories. The real question is no longer whether the past can be restored, but which new configurations of power, norms, and alliances are most likely to emerge - and how they will redefine the global order.
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YouTube
Hayk Mamijanyan. Why Armenia's "European Future" Leads to Turkey
Hayk Mamijanyan, leader of the "With Honor" parliamentary faction a...
Two days after Armenia's parliamentary elections, ICEUR School conducted an interview with Hayk Mamijanyan, leader of the "I Have Honor" parliamentary faction.
The conversation explores the election results, the OSCE assessment of the vote, the prospects for Armenia's European integration, and one of the most controversial questions in Armenian politics today: Is Armenia genuinely moving toward Europe, or does the rhetoric of a "European future" conceal a very different geopolitical direction?
Mamijanyan also explains why he does not consider Nikol Pashinyan a genuinely pro-European politician and shares his assessment of Armenia's future after the elections.
Watch the interview excerpt on our YouTube channel.
The conversation explores the election results, the OSCE assessment of the vote, the prospects for Armenia's European integration, and one of the most controversial questions in Armenian politics today: Is Armenia genuinely moving toward Europe, or does the rhetoric of a "European future" conceal a very different geopolitical direction?
Mamijanyan also explains why he does not consider Nikol Pashinyan a genuinely pro-European politician and shares his assessment of Armenia's future after the elections.
Watch the interview excerpt on our YouTube channel.
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YouTube
Edmon Marukyan. How Pashinyan Won Over Pro-European Voters
This interview was recorded by ICEUR School in the days following A...
We continue publishing excerpts from interviews with Armenian politicians recorded by ICEUR School in the days following Armenia's parliamentary elections.
In this new excerpt, former Ambassador-at-Large of Armenia Edmon Marukyan explains how, in his view, the ruling party managed to win over the country's pro-European electorate.
Marukyan argues that voters were promised a path toward the European Union, yet after the election the government no longer speaks about leaving the Eurasian Union and has no realistic prospect of joining the EU.
He also explains why he believes comparisons between Armenia and Moldova are misleading and describes pro-European rhetoric as a key instrument of the election campaign.
Watch the interview excerpt on our YouTube channel:
In this new excerpt, former Ambassador-at-Large of Armenia Edmon Marukyan explains how, in his view, the ruling party managed to win over the country's pro-European electorate.
Marukyan argues that voters were promised a path toward the European Union, yet after the election the government no longer speaks about leaving the Eurasian Union and has no realistic prospect of joining the EU.
He also explains why he believes comparisons between Armenia and Moldova are misleading and describes pro-European rhetoric as a key instrument of the election campaign.
Watch the interview excerpt on our YouTube channel:
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