Mark Leonard

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

The Afghan tragedy and the age of unpeace

The end of the US-led “forever war” in Afghanistan will not bring peace, because the methods that countries use to attack each other have changed. The world has entered a new age of perpetual competition among powerful states

Germany’s patriotism paradox

New polling shows that German citizens have begun to sour on the European project. If German politicians do not revise how they talk about Europe, this change could have disastrous consequences

Germany’s Green Velvet Revolution?

While Germany’s long-ruling centre-right parties continue to offer more of the same, the Greens have recently emerged as a serious contender in the run-up to September’s federal elections

The new China shock

China’s new strategy for achieving economic self-reliance and geopolitical dominance poses an unprecedented challenge to the West