Diplomacy

Armed-group drone use in the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin has scaled from rudimentary commercial-quadcopter Improvised Explosive Device (IED) drops in 2023 to a capability set that now includes First-Person View (FPV) strikes with shapedcharge anti-armor warheads, fiber-optic FPVs that defeat radio-frequency jamming, coordinated drone-and-ground assaults on hardened airfields, and a 25-drone non-state swarm. Four groups—Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), the Azawad Liberation ...

Les relations, très étroites, entre l’énergie et la géopolitique sont bien connues. Cela vaut aussi pour plusieurs conflits armés. Mais, dans la période récente, le conflit le plus lié à l’énergie est la guerre d’Iran de 2026, qui a débuté le 28 février. Un cessez-le-feu est en vigueur depuis le 8 avril et un protocole d’accord a été signé le 17 juin par l’Iran et les États-Unis. Mais, comme le montrent les attaques de l’Iran contre des navires et les frappes américaines de ces dern ...

The close relationship between energy and geopolitics is well established. The same holds true for several armed conflicts. In recent years, however, the conflict most closely intertwined with energy has been the 2026 Iran War, which began on February 28. A ceasefire has been in effect since April 8, and a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed by Iran and the United States on June 17. Nevertheless, as demonstrated by Iran's attacks on commercial vessels and recent U.S. strike ...

Avec la capitale Pékin comme acteur principal de la politique étrangère chinoise, l’engagement de la Chine en Afrique ne peut plus être appréhendé à travers le seul prisme de l’État central. Suite aux réformes de décentralisation engagées en 1978, les gouvernements provinciaux de l’Empire du Milieu jouent un rôle de plus en plus visible et structurant, en s’affirmant en tant qu’acteurs à part entière de la coopération internationale. Ils interviennent, entre autres domaines, dans le ...

For much of the post-war period, the Global South was framed as an object of history, defined by dependency, constrained by structural asymmetries, and confined to the margins of global decision-making. That narrative, once empirically grounded, is now no longer adequate. A profound yet uneven transformation is underway. The Global South is no longer only reacting; it is increasingly shaping rules, institutions, and narratives.This Policy Brief argues that the Global South is thus t ...

Cet essai analyse la guerre Iran–États-Unis–Israël de 2026 comme un révélateur de la transformation profonde de l’ordre international. À travers le prisme du droit de la mer, du détroit d’Ormuz, des alliances fragmentées, des câbles sous-marins et des flux énergétiques, il montre que le pouvoir mondial se déplace progressivement du contrôle des territoires vers la maîtrise des infrastructures de circulation. Loin de disparaître, la mondialisation entre dans une phase de connectivité ...

The Green March is one of those seminal moments that have never ceased to influence the course of political events in Morocco, because of its long-term significance from the outset, the context in which it unfolded, the logic of interactions in which it was embedded through its causes and effects, and as one of the striking figures in the national narrative. ...

For a long time, security in the Sahel relied on Western military deployments, which failed to curb the jihadist threat, thereby demonstrating the limitations of a cooperation model based on logistical and doctrinal dependence on foreign partners. The three Sahelian states have decided to break away from this system and build“integrated security sovereignty.” This approach has taken hold against a backdrop of openness to new partners. Russia has thus established itself as the main m ...

We take the 2026 G7 Summit in Évian-les-Bains as a case study for understanding how a leading existing multilateral organisation adapts to a more fragmented, technologically inflected, and multipolar world. We argue that the significance of Évian lies less in the summit agreements themselves than in what the summit reveals: a qualitative shift in governance away from exclusive summit diplomacy and towards more selective coalition-building, broader engagement with non-state actors, a ...

History devotes considerable attention to the rise and fall of great powers. Scholars have spent centuries analyzing why empires collapse, why nations decline, and why dominant states eventually lose their position. By comparison, relatively little attention has been devoted to a different question: what happens when a country succeeds beyond its own expectations? ...

At the end of May 2026, Israeli airstrikes targeted the surroundings of Beaufort Castle (Qalaat al-Chaqif), near Nabatiyeh, before the Israeli army announced that it had captured the site. This development raises a fundamental question: why does a medieval fortified hilltop retain military value in the age of satellites, drones, and cruise missiles?This Policy Brief argues that Beaufort's significance is geographical before it is ideological or technological. Overlooking the Litani ...

Fin mai 2026, des frappes israéliennes ont visé les abords du château de Beaufort (Qalaat al-Chaqif), près de Nabatiyeh, avant que l'armée israélienne n'en annonce la prise. Ce fait soulève une question centrale : pourquoi une hauteur fortifiée au Moyen Âge conserve-t-elle une valeur militaire à l'ère des satellites, des drones et des missiles de croisière ?Le présent Policy Brief tente de démontrer que la valeur de Beaufort est géographique avant d'être idéologique ou technologique ...

La Marche Verte ne peut être perçue seulement comme un événement daté, historiquement situé, une action accomplie et achevée. L’événement n’a pas fini d’apparaitre comme un processus aux prolongements très variés, aux conséquences multiples, étalés sur le temps et déployant leurs effets jusqu'à aujourd’hui. ...

Driven by its mission to reflect on and analyze the major geopolitical, economic, and societal transformations shaping the contemporary world, and with a view to contributing to knowledge-sharing and disseminating the main outcomes of its research program, the Policy Center for the New South regularly publishes collective volumes addressing issues of particular importance to Morocco, Africa, and the broader Global/New South. In this spirit, the Center has recently released two volum ...

Pendant longtemps, la sécurité du Sahel reposait sur les dispositifs militaires occidentaux qui ne sont pas parvenus à juguler la menace jihadiste, démontrant ainsi les limites d’un modèle de coopération fondé sur la dépendance logistique et doctrinale envers les partenaires étrangers. Les trois États sahéliens ont décidé de rompre avec ce système et de construire « une souveraineté sécuritaire intégrée » Cette orientation s’est affirmée dans un contexte d’ouverture à de nouvea ...

On February 10, 2026, the European Parliament endorsed an asylum reform that expands the use of the ‘safe third country’ concept and introduces a common European Union list of ‘safe countries of origin’. This reform represents more than a technical adjustment of asylum procedures, as it signals a structural reorientation of EU asylum governance toward faster filtering of claims and greater reliance on external actors.The concept of a safe third country already exists in European asy ...

This essay examines the establishment of the Board of Peace as a test case in contemporary peace governance and hegemonic experimentation. While the Board, politically activated in early 2026 and formally anchored in a resolution of the United Nations Security Council, benefits from derivative legality under the UN Charter, its legal foundation remains constitutionally fragile, its mandate ambiguously constrained, and its accountability architecture underdeveloped, notwithstand ...

Sports diplomacy can be defined as a foreign-policy approach that uses sport as a tool to advance national interests, shape international perceptions, and foster cross-border engagement. As a subset of cultural and public diplomacy, it operates where politics, identity, and popular culture intersect. In an increasingly polarised and fragmented global order, sports diplomacy has emerged as one of the ‘softest’ of soft-power instruments, able to reach audiences that traditional diplom ...

The multiplication of systemic crises on a global scale - whether environmental, health-related, energy-related or linked to global security issues - calls for a profound change in diplomatic modes of action. In this context, the structured integration of scientific knowledge into international relations appears to be a decisive condition for the formulation of effective and legitimate collective responses. Science diplomacy is thus a strategic field of intervention, at the interfac ...

La multiplication des crises systémiques à l’échelle mondiale – qu’elles soient environnementales, sanitaires, énergétiques ou liées aux enjeux de sécurité globale – impose une évolution profonde des modes d’action diplomatique. Dans ce contexte, l’intégration structurée des connaissances scientifiques dans les relations internationales apparaît comme une condition déterminante pour la formulation de réponses collectives efficaces et légitimes. La diplomatie scientifique s’inscrit a ...

La Marche Verte fait partie de ces moments féconds qui n’ont pas cessé d’influer sur le cours des événements politiques du Maroc, par la place qu’elle a prise, dès le départ, dans la longue durée, le contexte dans lequel elle s’est déployée, la logique des interactions dans laquelle elle s’est inscrite par ses causes et ses effets, et comme une des figures éclatantes du récit national. ...

This Paper was originally published on orient-online.com  The Western Mediterranean’s exposure to the Sahel is usually framed in terms of security spillovers and crisis management. This paper argues that this framing misreads how Sahelian access conditions now shape Mediterranean integration. Morocco’s Atlantic Initiative is a state-led corridor strategy combining Atlantic port infrastructure, inland transit routes, and energy systems to connect landlocked Sahelian economi ...

This article examines the quiet but profound implications of the erosion of U.S.-led hegemony for small and vulnerable states of the New South. While the post-1945 international order was never egalitarian, it offered predictability: power was organized through law, and sovereignty for weaker states rested less on justice than on procedural stability. Davos 2026 marked a turning point in the public acknowledgment of that system’s unraveling. Statements by leading Western figures rev ...

The U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean—the most significant since the Cuban Missile Crisis—comes at a moment when a new world order is taking shape, its contours still unclear, and in which the U.S. seeks to be more assertive in the Western Hemisphere. This disposition toward South America and the Caribbean was underscored by the recent publication of the new U.S. National Security Strategy, in which the Monroe Doctrine is explicitly invoked. This Policy Brief situates the devel ...

The return of President Donald Trump to the White House at the start of 2025 was expected to signal an American retreat from international engagement, especially in regions of traditional security interest, such as southern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. To the surprise of many observers around the Mediterranean, and perhaps to the dismay of some in the Trump administration’s ideological orbit, this has not happened. If anything, the second half of 2025 has seen a high d ...

I recently participated in a discussion between Israelis and Arabs, some living in the Middle East, some living abroad[1]. The discussion topic was ‘The Two State Solution’. This article presents my personal takeaways from the discussion. It does not try to describe the details, and other participants may have different takeaways.I joined the discussion thinking that the two-state solution was dead. Most of the other participants felt the same way—all very pessimistic. But I left fe ...

Resolution 2797 of the United Nations Security Council does not mark the end of an issue, but the culmination of masterful time management. Morocco has not only won support, it has won the tempo. By combining the Chronos of constancy and the Kairos of opportunity, it has demonstrated that a foreign policy can be based on the philosophy of time as much as on geopolitics.This diplomacy of controlled time can today be seen as an implicit doctrine of the Kingdom: a strategy in which pat ...

La résolution 2797 du Conseil de sécurité des Nations Unies ne marque pas la fin d’un dossier, mais l’aboutissement d’une gestion magistrale du temps. Le Maroc n’a pas seulement gagné des appuis, il a gagné le tempo.
En combinant le Chronos de la constance et le Kairos de l’opportunité, il a démontré qu’une politique étrangère pouvait s’appuyer sur la philosophie du temps autant que sur la géopolitique.Cette diplomatie du temps maîtrisé peut aujourd’hui être considérée comme une doc ...

بعد ثمانية عشر سنة على تقديمها إلى مجلس الأمن كمساهمة من المغرب في حل الخلاف الإقليمي حول الصحراء المغربية، حظيت مبادرة الحكم الذاتي بموجب القرار2797 المؤرخ في 31 أكتوبر2025 بتزكية مجلس الأمن بأغلبية مريحة كأساس وحيد للتفاوض من أجل حل نهائي لهذا الخلاف. وكان رد فعل المغرب على اعتماد هذا القرار سريعا، إذ مباشرة بعد التصويت، وبينما كانت وفود الدول الأعضاء في المجلس تشرح تصويتها على القرار، وجه جلالة الملك خطابا إلى الأمة مرحبا بهذا التغيير التاريخي الذي يشكل "مرحلة مفصلية ونقطة تحول ح ...

The meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea, was more than an exercise in diplomacy. It was an emblematic performance of a world in transformation. Behind the formalities, the cameras, and the studied smiles lay an unspoken recognition: the world is no longer unipolar. The era of American supremacy, sustained for decades through its economic reach, military presence, and ideological projection, is giving way to a more diffuse, multipolar reality. ...

The election of Javier Milei as President of Argentina in 2023 created high expectations: how likely was he to succeed in transforming Argentina as he had promised? Would he be able to enforce his economic policies despite his limited backing in the legislature? Could he maintain the strong popular support that brought him to power in the face of the harsh reforms he was committed to implementing? And ultimately, would he be able to neutralize Peronism in Argentina and launch a new ...

Almost a year after President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the United States displays little of the isolationism many of the country’s international partners anticipated, and many of Trump’s supporters desired. From economic sanctions to military intervention, Trump is proving to be something of a foreign policy president, although with distinctly unilateral instincts. This approach is particularly evident in Washington’s current approach to the ‘South’, including Latin ...

« Désormais, il y aura un avant et un après 31 octobre 2025 ». C’est en ses termes forts que c’est adressé Sa Majesté le Roi à son peuple quelques minutes après l’adoption par le Conseil de sécurité des Nations-Unies de la résolution 2797 qui demande clairement aux parties au différend sur le Sahara de participer aux discussions sans conditions préalables et sur la base exclusive du plan d’autonomie proposé par le Maroc. Ce Momentum stratégique devrait constituer une raison pro ...

"From now on, there will be a before and after October 31, 2025". These were the strong words spoken by His Majesty the King to his people a few minutes after the adoption by the United Nations Security Council of resolution 2797, which clearly calls on the parties to the Sahara dispute to take part in discussions without preconditions and on the exclusive basis of the autonomy plan proposed by Morocco.This strategic Momentum should be a source of deep satisfaction for national dipl ...

This Opinon was originally published in French on telos-eu.com As Morocco celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the Green March, which gave it control of the Western Sahara in November 1975, the UN Security Council has made a spectacular correction to its position on the issue. Its resolution of October 31, 2025 emphasizes the solution of internal autonomy for the Western Sahara within Morocco, relegating the idea of an independence referendum to second place. Autonomy rather ...

La résolution 2797, adoptée le 31 octobre 2025 par une large majorité du Conseil de sécurité, constitue un tournant historique dans le dossier du Sahara. Pour la première fois, l’autonomie sous souveraineté marocaine est considérée comme unique base de négociation pour une solution politique réaliste marquée du sceau du compromis , écartant irrévocablement l’option de référendum et mettant fin aux ambiguïtés entretenues depuis des décennies. En réaction à l’adoption de la résol ...