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Geopolitics

2022 Strategic Foresight Report

Date of Editorial Board meeting: 
Publication date: 
Wednesday, June 29, 2022
Abstract in English: 
With a renewed sense of urgency linked to the rapid evolution of the geopolitical situation, the Strategic Foresight Report 2022 on ‘Twinning the green and digital transition in the new geopolitical context’ brings a forward-looking and comprehensive perspective on the interplay between the twin transitions towards 2050.
Both transitions are at the top of the EU’s political agenda and their interaction will have massive consequences for the future. While they are different in nature and each subject to specific dynamics, their twinning – i.e. their capacity to reinforce each other – deserves closer scrutiny. Better understanding these interactions is key to maximising their synergies and minimising their tensions. This is essential in the current geopolitical context where the EU aims at accelerating both green and digital transformation, ultimately strengthening the EU’s resilience and open strategic autonomy. The 2022 Strategic Foresight Report provides a future-oriented analysis of the major role played by digital technologies as well as the influence of geopolitical, economic, social and regulatory factors in the twinning. Based on their analysis, the report identifies ten key areas where action will be needed.
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36
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Munich Security Report 2022: Turning the Tide – Unlearning Helplessness

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Munich Security Report 2022: Turning the Tide – Unlearning Helplessness
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Date of Editorial Board meeting: 
Publication date: 
Monday, February 14, 2022
Abstract in English: 
2021 was clearly not a year for geopolitical optimism. Almost every month, a new crisis dominated the news, contributing to a sense that this mounting tide of crises threatens to overwhelm us. Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that in Europe and beyond, concern about a growing loss of control is prevalent. In fact, findings from the Munich Security Index 2022 not only reflect the high level of risk perceived by respondents in the G7 and BRICS countries; they also suggest the emergence of “collective helplessness” in the face of a plethora of crises that reinforce each other. Just like people can suffer from “learned helplessness” – a psychological term describing the feeling that nothing one does can effect positive change – societies, too, may come to believe that they are unable to get a grip on the challenges they are facing. Whether it is the seemingly endless pandemic, the increasingly tangible threat of climate change, the vexing vulnerabilities of an interconnected world, or increasing geopolitical tensions, all these challenges contribute to a feeling of a loss of control. Liberal democracies appear to feel particularly overwhelmed. This perception is highly dangerous because it can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Societies that have concluded that they cannot solve humankind’s most challenging problems might no longer even try to turn the tide. Will our stressed and overburdened societies end up accepting what they see as their fate, although they have the tools and resources to change it? Unfortunately, 2021 overall did not alleviate these concerns. With the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, for instance, the past year has also reinvigorated a debate about what international interventions are able to realistically accomplish. In light of the limited achievements of the United States and its partners in Afghanistan, hard questions arise about the West’s ability to build capable, legitimate state structures and promote stability elsewhere in the world. As Afghanistan now finds itself on the brink of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with civil liberties being severely restricted under Taliban rule, the investments of two decades of external intervention are at risk. While the West has ended an “endless war,” people in Afghanistan are looking toward an uncertain future.
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182
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Munich Security Report 2022

Date of Editorial Board meeting: 
Publication date: 
Monday, February 14, 2022
Abstract in English: 
2021 was clearly not a year for geopolitical optimism. Almost every month, a new crisis dominated the news, contributing to a sense that this mounting tide of crises
threatens to overwhelm us.
Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that in Europe and beyond, concern about a growing loss of control is prevalent. In fact, findings from the Munich Security Index 2022 not only reflect the high level of risk perceived by respondents in the G7 and BRICS countries; they also suggest the emergence of “collective helplessness” in the face of a plethora of crises that reinforce each other. Just like people can suffer from “learned helplessness” – a psychological term describing the feeling that nothing one does can effect positive change – societies, too, may come to believe that they are unable to get a grip on the challenges they are facing. Whether it is the seemingly endless pandemic, the increasingly tangible threat of climate change, the vexing vulnerabilities of an interconnected world, or increasing geopolitical tensions, all these challenges contribute to a feeling of a loss of control. Liberal democracies appear to feel particularly overwhelmed.
This perception is highly dangerous because it can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Societies that have concluded that they cannot solve humankind’s most challenging problems might no longer even try to turn the tide. Will our stressed and overburdened societies end up accepting what they see as their fate, although they have the tools and resources to change it?
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182
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The EU’s Security and Defence Policy: The Impact of the Coronavirus

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The EU’s Security and Defence Policy: The Impact of the Coronavirus
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Date of Editorial Board meeting: 
Publication date: 
Friday, April 24, 2020
Abstract in English: 
The current COVID-19 pandemic will change the world, like the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 terror attacks. For the foreseeable future, EU governments will be preoccupied with dealing with the pandemic’ immediate socio-economic consequences. However, other policy areas will be affected as well. With regard to the EU’s security and defence policy, COVID-19 is likely to extinguish the unprecedented dynamism that has characterised its development since 2016. Its most immediate impact is likely to be decreased funding for several new initiatives such as the European Defence Fund. The pandemic is also likely to reduce the EU’s readiness to address crises in its neighbourhood and may hasten the Union’s relative decline as a global power if its recovery is slow and wrought by prolonged disputes between the member states over the appropriate economic response to the crisis. Yet, the EU should not completely abandon its pre-COVID-19 security and defence agenda. Both during and after the pandemic, the Union will continue to face familiar challenges such as cyber-attacks, disinformation campaigns and instability in its neighbourhood.
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11
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Shaping a Multiconceptual World - 2020

Title Original Language: 
Shaping a Multiconceptual World
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Date of Editorial Board meeting: 
Publication date: 
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
Abstract in English: 
In the report’s opening chapter, “The Expansion of Geopolitics”, World Economic Forum President Børge Brende argues the number of actors exerting geopolitical influence is growing and domains for geopolitical competition or cooperation are also expanding. Within this context, Brende calls for a cooperative order: “The more powers compete and pursue strategic advantage at the expense of addressing shared technological, environmental and economic challenges, the more likely it will be that a broader sense of friction will develop across the global system. A rivalrous global system will in turn make it more unlikely that shared priorities are fulfilled,” he writes. Brende notes that global coordination in the wake of the 11 September 2001 terror attacks and the 2008 global financial crisis offer a paradigm for a more collaborative response to geopolitical challenges. Cooperation, he argues, will ultimately prove more beneficial to individual states – and to the world at large. “As the world becomes even more interconnected in terms of flows of information, capital and people, states will be more reliant on one another to realize positive outcomes for themselves and the global community,” Brende writes. “At a time when power dynamics are in flux, there is an opportunity for stakeholders to make the decision to shape geopolitics in a cooperative, rather than competitive, manner.”
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78
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A personal readout of the three ESPAS reports (2012, 2015 and 2019)

Date of Editorial Board meeting: 
Publication date: 
Saturday, September 14, 2019
Abstract in English: 
In this summary, Dr Franck Debié outlines his views of the key findings of the three ESPAS reports (2012, 2015, 2019) on long-term trends to 2030 for the Ideas Network 2030.
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8
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Ideas and Perspectives: Priorities 2030

Date of Editorial Board meeting: 
Publication date: 
Friday, September 13, 2019
Abstract in English: 
In this short presentation, Dr Franck Debié, Director of the Library and the Knowledge services in the European Parliament, Associate Professor of Geopolitics at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris (Paris Sciences et Lettres University), Member of the Steering Committee of the European System for Policy Analysis and Strategy (ESPAS) outlines his view of the key findings of the three ESPAS reports (2012, 2015, 2019) on long-term trends to 2030 for the Ideas Network 2030, an Oxford based network regrouping policy-makers, business actors and researchers. The discussion took place on 14 September 2019. In his conclusions he stressed that: 'the successive ESPAS reports help us to progressively narrow our focus on those issues which will force Europeans to engage in a joint conversation on policy options for the future: the rise of China, climate change, aging and migration, digital disruption, and the growth of nationalism.
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36
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The Future of Warfare (ESPAS Ideas Paper)

Title Original Language: 
The Future of Warfare (ESPAS Ideas Paper)
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Date of Editorial Board meeting: 
Publication date: 
Thursday, September 20, 2018
Abstract in English: 
Warfare is shaped by geopolitical, societal, technological, economic and military trends:
Geopolitical: The multipolar relations between ever bigger political entities with overlapping spheres of influences are defined by surpise and uncertainty. Smaller political entities will be weaker and proxy wars more common in the future. Detterence will be reinterpreted, vulnerable states more prone to aquire nuclear weapons and international norms weakened. Megacities will be central battlefields that leave ground forces vulnerable.
Social: Warfare will shift to the internet, it will be uncontrollably ‘open-source’, live and shocking, with ever more spectacular terror. Armies will be more network-centred, waging more personalised wars and will have to find new ways to interact with democratic societies. Women in combat and the disappearance of world war veterans change the way people think about war.
Technological: Mankind becomes more powerful over time, with non-state actors possessing capabilities currently restricted to super-powers. It will struggle to outlaw technological advances and wage war without violence. The West will lose its technological superiority and will have even bigger problems in knowing how and what to research. Both inferior and highly developed armies will develop new ways of engaging the enemy. Artificial intelligence (AI) will mean that democratic armies have to balance the ‘human in the loop’ policy against effectiveness.
Economic: The economy of the opponent will be a bigger target than in the past, with commercial and dual-goods becoming more important, and the environment a more widely used weapon.
Military: Possible future military situations will be more diverse then ever. Western armies will be vulnerable to cheap weaponry. The idea that wars will be easy to win will make the world more dangerous.
Key uncertainties are China, the cyber-dimension, robotics, autonomous systems and artificial intelligence, paradigmatic breakthroughs such as quantum computing, general AI and anti-ballistic systems, nuclear detterence and nuclear bargaining. Ten key questions for policy-makers focus on strategic autonomy, adaptation, balancing reserves, R&D, cooperation and export, interventions, China, weakening norms, anticipation, communication and procurement.
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Our World Transformed: Geopolitical Shocks and Risks

Date of Editorial Board meeting: 
Publication date: 
Monday, April 24, 2017
Abstract in English: 
No one can be complacent about geopolitical risks these days. The shocks and surprises of the past few years show how easily assumptions about liberal markets, international relations, conflict, and democracy can be shaken. Geopolitical volatility has become a key driver of uncertainty, and will remain one over the next few years.
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31
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International Migration Outlook 2016

Date of Editorial Board meeting: 
Publication date: 
Monday, September 19, 2016
Abstract in English: 
The 2016 edition of the International Migration Outlook analyses recent developments in migration movements and policies in OECD countries and selected non-OECD countries, and looks at the evolution of the labour market outcomes of recent immigrants in OECD countries. The report includes two special chapters: “The economic impact of migration: Why the local level matters” and "International migration following environmental and geopolitical shocks: How can OECD countries respond?", as well as country notes and a statistical annex.
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432
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