There have been numerous significant developments for TPQ since 2022. Our recent rebranding as Transatlantic Policy Quarterly not only reflects our expanded focus on international issues with broad implications for European and American politics, but also incorporates a new vision for the future. Our most recent issues focused on various aspects of the broader challenges and possibilities presented by this new vision, and we gratefully received numerous contributions from our eminent authors. Although we have published some of these articles in previous issues, it was necessary to give the floor to other authors whose Opinion articles also made an outstanding contribution. Keeping this in mind, we have prepared this special issue, the primary objective of which is to give a collection of such remarkable works, including those that have been previously published digitally.

Uncertainty is a foundational aspect of politics and diplomacy. Critical elections, armed conflicts, ally/adversary behavior, explicit/implicit threats are fundamentally uncertain, yet core processes of statecraft, diplomacy and politics. That's why over centuries, diplomacy has grown into an art form of managing high-risk uncertainties between nations and institutions. Uncertainty isn't trivial, or secondary, since it has direct impact on policy and fortunes of nations through costly miscalculations. Cognitive processes, misperception and elite psychology have thus grown into central themes of inquiry in international relations research through the Cold War and continued to define foreign policy research after the fall of the Berlin Wall. War onset, results of diplomatic negotiations or how people behave during emergencies or crises, are all variables in a three-dimensional equation, determining power relations at the global level.