The decline and fall of Davos man
Russia’s war on Ukraine loomed large at Davos, where leaders once gathered to celebrate globalisation. The world has now entered an era dominated by geopolitics.
Mark Leonard
Europe’s soft-power problem
Although Europe has begun to make up for years of neglect in terms of defence spending, it remains woefully ill-equipped to win over other countries through the power of attraction and persuasion. Each side in the European culture war is uniquely unappealing to billions of people around the world.
Welcome to the jungle
As a paranoid dictator, Vladimir Putin has survived by eliminating anyone who could pose a threat to him. But now that he has triggered the survival instinct of Europe and the broader West, the world is entering a dangerous new phase of existential conflict.
The birth of a geopolitical Germany
The only way for Germany to escape its historical inhibitions and be true to its post-war development is to change
Lessons for Europe from the Munich Security Conference
The current US administration might be the last one that sees itself as a European power. As the Munich Security Conference 2022 showed, Europeans will need to do far more to shape the rules of engagement between states.
Will Putin unite Europe?
Across Europe, national attitudes toward the Russian threat against Ukraine reflect a broad array of concerns and historical experiences. Yet underlying Europeans’ differences are key shared interests that they are increasingly willing to defend.
2022: The road to recovery (again)
Mark Leonard and Jeremy Shapiro predict ten bright and bold policy projections for the year 2022
The rule-maker race
In the coming decades, the question of who sets the global rules, standards, and norms guiding technology, trade, and economic development will be paramount. Having lost their exclusive prerogative in this domain, some Western governments have begun to rethink the universality of the rules-based order.
Why COP26 will fail
UN Climate Change Conferences have failed to produce a model of global governance that can tame power politics, let alone forge a sense of shared destiny among countries. And there is little reason to believe this time will be different.
The false promise of AUKUS
In their new security and technology arrangement with Australia, America and Britain have achieved tactical gains at the expense of strategic goals in the Indo-Pacific. In fact, given how deeply the deal has divided the West, the biggest long-term winner may well be China.