Experts & Staff

Mark Leonard

Director

Areas of expertise

Geopolitics and Geoeconomics; China; EU-Russia relations; transatlantic relations; EU politics and institutions; public diplomacy and nation branding; UK foreign policy

Languages

English, French, German

Biography

Mark Leonard is co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the first pan-European thinktank. He is also the current Henry A Kissinger chair in foreign policy and international relations at the US Library of Congress, Washington DC. His topics of focus include geopolitics and geoeconomics, China, EU politics and institutions.

Leonard hosts the weekly podcast “Mark Leonards’s World in 30 Minutes” and writes a syndicated column on global affairs for Project Syndicate. Previously he worked as director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform and as director of the Foreign Policy Centre, a think-tank he founded at the age of 24 under the patronage of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In the 1990s, Leonard worked for the think-tank Demos where his Britain™ report was credited with launching Cool Britannia. Mark has spent time in Washington, D.C. as a Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and in Beijing as a visiting scholar at the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences.

He was Chairman of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Geoeconomics until 2016.

Honoured as a “Young Global Leader” of the World Economic Forum, he spends a lot of time helping governments, companies, and international organisations make sense of the big geo-political trends of the twenty-first century. He is a regular speaker and prolific writer and commentator on global issues, the future of Europe, China’s internal politics, and the practice of diplomacy and business in a networked world. His essays have appeared in publications such as Foreign Affairs, the Financial Times, the New York TimesLe MondeSüddeutsche ZeitungEl PaisGazeta WyborczaForeign Policy, the New Statesman, the Daily TelegraphThe EconomistTime, and Newsweek.

As well as writing and commenting frequently in the media on global affairs, Leonard is the author of best-selling books. His first book, Why Europe will run the 21st Century, was published in 2005 and translated into 19 languages. Leonard’s second book, What does China think? was published in 2008 and translated into 15 languages. He has published an edited volume on Connectivity Wars and in September 2021, his latest book on this topic The Age of Unpeace. How Connectivity Causes Conflict was released.

Boycotting the China Olympics

Spielberg was right to step down but governments should look at China’s policies within a historical context, and have a strategy for influencing Beijing beyond the summer of 2008

What does China think?

China is emerging not just as an economic giant, but as a powerhouse of ideas about politics, economics and world order. Its own model of globalisation could re-shape much of the world

A ?Power Audit? of EU 27-Russia relations

Despite its economic strength and military might, the EU has begun to behave as if it were subordinate to an increasingly assertive Russia. Read ECFR's “Power Audit” of EU-Russia relations

Guardian: Russia as the new Donald Rumsfeld

Russia has emerged as the most divisive issue in the European Union since Donald Rumsfeld split the European club into ?new’ and ?old’ member states. Read an opinion piece published through Project Syndicate

The rise of ?herbivorous powers??

A global public opinion survey shows that there is growing public support for a more multi-polar world, and 35% of world citizens would like to see the EU’s influence to grow

Drafting a global player

Unless something goes badly wrong, EU leaders will agree a new treaty at this week’s summit in Lisbon. This opinion piece was published by the Wall Street Journal

Welcome to ECFR.eu

With a policy team in seven capitals — London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Sofia, Madrid and Warsaw — ECFR is the first genuinely pan-European think-tank, bringing together some of our continent?'s most distinguished researchers and analysts

Publications

Articles

The US election will overturn Europe’s strategic status quo

Kamala Harris’s ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket has eliminated Donald Trump’s polling lead and allowed Europeans to contemplate alternatives to what would be their worst-case scenario. Yet, even if Harris wins, it would be foolish to expect complete continuity with the Biden administration

Harris must challenge Trump’s overtures to American workers

While Democrats frame the US presidential election as an existential battle between democracy and authoritarianism, Republicans are trying to position Donald Trump as a champion of the working class. To win in November, Kamala Harris’s campaign must show voters how wrong this narrative is

Europe’s coming paralysis

Given the state of the world today, it is difficult to imagine a worse time for Europe to be left rudderless. But with little room to manoeuvre after the European Parliament election, French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Olaf Scholz are in no position to steer the EU through major challenges

What the Weimar Triangle could do for Europe

While the traditional Franco-German axis has fallen short of providing the kind of unifying leadership that the EU so desperately needs, the addition of Poland could change everything. And should Donald Trump win the US presidential election, this triumvirate would become Europe’s best hope for salvation

The Macron moment

Underlying all the problems that Europe faces in a new age of geopolitical, economic, and climate insecurity is a crisis in leadership. Judging by his recent speech at the Sorbonne, French president Emmanuel Macron could be the politician to supply it, but only if he abandons his standard political playbook

Europe must prepare for a Trump presidency

European countries have been slow to recognise the potential implications of Donald Trump returning to the White House in 2025. Over the next six months, they must figure out how to secure essential ammunition, bolster their defence funding, and sustain support for Ukraine in the absence of US aid

The Trump effect takes Europe

If disaster can be averted in this year’s US presidential election, a second-term Biden administration will be able to count on a much better partner in Europe, owing to the mobilising effect of Donald Trump’s candidacy. European leaders are finally realising that they urgently need to get their act together

Sunset of the economists

Two decades ago, China’s reformist economists walked the halls of power and dictated policy. Now, they have been sidelined in favour of a new priority: national security. What happened?

Has the ‘polycrisis’ overwhelmed us?

Today’s global crises are not only competing for policymakers’ finite attention, they are increasingly feeding one another in unpredictable ways. Add the uncertainty around this year’s high-stakes elections in the US and elsewhere, and you have a recipe for a Davos meeting defined by angst and paralysis

Specials

Podcasts

Events

In the media