Democracy & Governance
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Resilient Roots: EU Tech Grants for Farmers
How can the EU accelerate climate tool adoption for smallholders in Africa and SE Asia without increasing financial risk? Loan-based models create debt burdens during crop failures; thus, a grant-based instrument within the NDICI-Global Europe framework is essential to fund both technology and lo…
Why Europe Can’t Go It Alone on Chips: An Interview with Andreas Schumacher
Andreas Schumacher is the head of corporate strategy and M&A at Infineon Technologies in Munich. In 2024, he worked as a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He has a PhD in Physics from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.
Prioritisation Matters: The Case for Grand Strategy
Marina Henke is Professor of International Relations at the Hertie School and Director of the Centre for International Security in Berlin. Her research covers grand strategy and nuclear security. She holds a PhD from Princeton and published Best Practices in Grand Strategy Design (2025).
Limited Statehood
Limited Statehood: How Armed Groups Fill Governance Gaps in Sub-Saharan Africa When state authority is weak or absent, armed groups may seize the opportunity not only to fight national authorities, but also to create rules, tax civilians, regulate behaviour, impose their own concept of justice, a…
What It Takes to Build Peace Today
In this guest contribution, Chris Coulter, Executive Director of the Berghof Foundation, examines how we can move beyond short-term deterrence to build lasting peace through local ownership, impartiality, women’s meaningful participation, societal trust, and adaptive mediation.
Hydro-Hegemony: Türkiye’s Leverage over Syria Iraq
How does Türkiye’s Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) transform upstream water control into geoeconomic leverage over Syria and Iraq? This article argues that expanded hydropower and irrigation infrastructure convert hydrological dominance into domestic economic gains, producing asymmetric inter…
The Baltic Pivot: Poland’s Strategic Reorientation
Facing Russian threats and Transatlantic rifts, Poland should make the Baltic Sea a pillar of its grand strategy: joining NB8 permanently, building a military partnership with Sweden, and reducing US arms reliance via cooperation with Sweden, Turkey and Ukraine, boosting deterrence and autonomy.
What to Buy in Future? Recalibrating European Defence Spending to Decrease Structural Dependencies
Europe has raised defense spending but remains structurally dependent on US manufacturers. As the US shifts focus elsewhere, this dependency risks limiting Europe’s capability during a potential Russian attack. To become a sovereign security actor, the EU must gradually build its own supply chain…
Intelligence as Art of European Grand Strategy: Architecture, Limits, Evolution of EU Intelligence
Evaluating the European Union’s intelligence architecture reveals structural limits imposed by member state sovereignty and legal constraints. To enhance strategic autonomy without creating an unfeasible supranational agency, the EU must optimize intergovernmental structures through an EU Intelli…
Reconfiguring Europe’s Forward Presence on the Eastern Flank
NATO’s Eastern Flank posture shifted from tripwire to forward defence, but a US withdrawal strains credibility. Facing Russian threats, Europe must build autonomous heavy-force deployment and logistics, using coalitions like JEF or MNC-Ukraine to offset reduced US support.
A Doctrine Before a Strategy: Building the Preconditions of European Grand Strategic Reasoning
Evaluating the European Union’s security architecture reveals that strategic documents often perform the grammar of grand strategy without establishing its functional logic. To overcome functional splintering and institutional circularity, the EU should adopt a binding Grand Strategy Doctrine und…
Investing in Security: How EU Fiscal Rules Undermine European Strategic Autonomy
Europe’s rearmament is real, but it rests on a temporary fiscal exemption that expires in 2028. Electoral cycles and EU fiscal rules systematically penalise long-term strategic investment, which is why Europe keeps arriving at each crisis underprepared. This paper proposes a permanent Security In…
Rethinking the EU’s Expansion Dilemmas
Main question: How can the EU pursue geopolitically necessary enlargement without weakening its internal cohesion and governance capacity? Argument: The EU must implement a phased “European Political Sphere” framework alongside extending Qualified Majority Voting to prevent single-state vetoes. C…
Progressive EU Accession Path for Ukraine
Main question: How can the EU offer Ukraine meaningful integration benefits during a long pre-accession period without resorting to a politically accelerated membership that compromises standards? Argument: The EU should establish a “Progressive Accession” status, providing graduated Single Marke…
A Sectoral Roadmap to EU Integration
Main question: How can the EU advance cooperation and prevent loss of influence in Georgia, given structural incompatibility, political ambiguity, and dependence on Russia? Argument: The EU should apply gradual sectoral integration, prioritising energy independence, cultural networking, and regu…
Strategic Association Treaty (SAT)
Main question: How can the EU enhance its strategic autonomy and competitiveness without causing internal deadlock through full membership expansion? Argument: The EU should adopt the Strategic Association Treaty (SAT), a pragmatic, hybrid framework enabling sector-specific integration with key e…
Strait of Hormuz
This essay aims to highlight the impact of the current blockade of the Strait of Hormuz on the EU, how it is managing, relatively, the crisis effectively, and what this entails for its strategic (energy) autonomy plans.
Critical political ecology (CPE)
– The concept of critical political ecology highlights the link between the moral and practical concerns of the environmental movement and contemporary theories about the state, democracy, and justice. – Liberal democratic states are constrained in their ability to implement their green transitio…
Policy Incompatibility in the European Union
Do the monetary costs expected to be saved by businesses through simplification initiatives outweigh the possibly detrimental costs for environmental regulation? The shifting of the Commission’s priorities is reflected in the policy overlap of the omnibus package on sustainability and the compreh…
Water as an Instrument of War
Should the environment be used as an instrument of war ?