International Cooperation

This policy paper explores how China’s economic development model—rooted in pragmatism, long-term planning, and civilizational renewal—has become its most compelling soft power asset, particularly in the eyes of the Global South. While critically engaging with Joseph Nye’s original conception of soft power as a primarily cultural and normative force, the paper argues that China’s ability to transform itself from an impoverished postimperial state into the world’s largest trading nat ...

En un siècle, le cours de l’once d’or est passé de 20 dollars à 5 300 dollars au premier trimestre 2026. Cette étude, consacrée à l’analyse de cette envolée, comporte deux parties.La première privilégie une approche historique. Elle retrace tout d’abord le changement de statut du précieux métal jaune, monétisable jusqu’en 1971 puis démonétisé par la suite. Elle rappelle ensuite que cette évolution, loin d’être linéaire, est ponctuée de phases de forte hausse, de stagnation et d ...

The term “K-shaped recovery” was introduced to describe the economic recovery from the recession triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. It refers to the uneven and divergent growth pattern between leading industries or sectors (the upper arm of the letter K—mainly the high-technology sector) and laggards, or the rest of the economy (the lower arm—the traditional industries). Since then the term has become popular in portraying divergent growth patterns within and between countries, esp ...

Is Europe Prepared for War?European public opinion is moving from treating a major conflict as unthinkable to regarding it as a possibility for which governments must prepare. Attention is increasingly focused on Russian hybrid operations, vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure and the risk of fragmentation within NATO. European defence policy is consequently undergoing a rapid transition from post-Cold War complacency towards preparations for high-intensity warfare. Recent ...

Cet article évalue la pertinence du paradigme de la réconciliation pour analyser la rivalité maroco-algérienne. À partir d’une démarche qualitative, historico-interprétative et interdisciplinaire fondée sur un corpus raisonné de travaux académiques et de sources institutionnelles, il montre que cette conflictualité ne se réduit ni au différend du Sahara ni à un simple antagonisme bilatéral. Elle se construit à l’intersection de mémoires concurrentes, de mécanismes de sécuritisation, ...

As El Niño intensifies it generates apprehension among us all. The slow pace of the energy transition and continued carbon emissions have already put us on a trajectory toward an average air temperature rise of 2.8°C above pre-industrial levels (1850)—far exceeding the 1.5°C limit set by the 2015 Paris Agreement. ...

Thanks to the AI investment boom, the U.S. economy has performed well at the macroeconomic level. However, it is on an unsustainable fiscal and debt path. Mr. Trump’s fiscal policy in his second term has aggravated this trajectory. In turn, Mr. Trump’s tariff-based trade policy has failed to address what he sees as U.S. economic problems associated with the trade balance. Besides explaining why this has been the case, and what its implications are for the U.S. economy and the r ...

We Are Watching You In April 2026, the UK Ministry of Defence revealed that it had tracked a covert Russian submarine operation apparently intended to map critical undersea cables and pipelines in the North Atlantic and the North Sea. A Russian attack submarine and two specialised intelligence vessels operated by the Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research, commonly known as GUGI, were reportedly monitored for four weeks by the Royal Navy, including HMS St Albans and P-8 Poseidon ...

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 ...

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 ...

This Policy Paper has also been published in French and Spanish by Le Grand Continent Morocco offers a compelling example of how a middle-income economy can navigate a more fragmented global environment, characterized by weak growth and slower convergence. Since 2022, economic activity has remained relatively strong, with growth exceeding that of many comparable economies. Non-agricultural growth has averaged 4.4% since 2022, around 1.3 percentage points above its historical av ...

L’Afrique atlantique émerge aujourd’hui comme un espace de réflexion stratégique majeur. Longtemps envisagée sous l’angle de sa fragmentation ou de sa marginalité relative dans les grands récits géopolitiques, cette façade maritime tend désormais à être appréhendée comme un ensemble en devenir, structuré par des dynamiques géopolitiques, économiques et sécuritaires de plus en plus intenses. C’est dans cette perspective qu’a été initié le Africa Maritime Symposium (AMS), dont la ...

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? ...