This present issue of Connections The Quarterly Journal looks into a number of issues: professional military education and its role in deepening defense capabilities with a special focus on the South Caucasus, the defense cooperation of the South Caucasus nations with both Russia and NATO which, according to some commentators, may result in a new form of a Great Game rivalry between the cooperation partners, the specific military school cultureof the Dr. Franjo Tudjman Defense Academy of Croatia, and the transformation experiences and lessons (to be) drawn from them in the intelligence and state-security services and communities of the Czech and the Slovak Republics and Latvia. The latter three are a first installment of a larger collection of articles dedicated to intelligence and state security services transformation after the end of the Cold War.