International Relations

Strategic hedging is rational when it preserves a worthwhile choice at a tolerable cost while respecting existing commitments. Drawing on the literature on hedging and Latin American autonomy, this Policy Brief examines contrasting illustrations of that proposition. It distinguishes ambiguity about future alignment from uncertainty about existing obligations and explains how clearly bounded commitments can reconcile autonomy with credibility. The cases reveal different vulnerabiliti ...

In October 2026, Brazil will elect its president. It will also renew the entire lower legislative chamber and two-thirds of the upper chamber, elect governors in all states, and renew state legislatures. What will be the impact of these elections nationally, regionally, and internationally? Who are the main presidential candidates, and what are their agendas? What are the main challenges facing Brazil over the coming years? These are the questions that this Policy Brief seeks to ans ...

The author of this opinion, Chaimae Bourjij, is a 2019 alumna of the Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders Program. An election result tells only part of a country’s political story. The rules that turn votes into seats also shape which voices reach Parliament, how local interests are represented, and whether any party can claim a clear mandate. Morocco’s 2026 vote invites this wider reading: not only who came first, but how the electoral framework distributes political ...

Le rapport du Secrétaire général des Nations Unies du 1er octobre 2026 marque une étape importante dans l’évolution du processus politique relatif au Sahara marocain. Le premier présenté depuis l’adoption de la résolution 2797 (2025), le rapport met en évidence une dynamique diplomatique nouvelle, caractérisée par la reprise de négociations substantielles à quatre sous l’impulsion des États-Unis et avec l’accompagnement des Nations Unies. Cette évolution traduit un déplacement ...

The UN Secretary-General’s report of October 1, 2026 marks an important stage in the evolution of the political process concerning the Moroccan Sahara. As the first report issued since the adoption of Resolution 2797 (2025), it highlights renewed diplomatic momentum, marked by the resumption of substantive four-party negotiations led by the United States with United Nations support.This development reflects a gradual shift in a debate long focused on the territory’s final status tow ...

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”President Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953 This paper examines the economic and human impacts of the first six months of the Iran war—from February to the end of August 2026—on Iran’s Arab neighbors and compares these impacts with those on the three countries directly involved—Iran, Israel and t ...

Cet article soutient que le Chief Geopolitical Officer (CGO) doit être repensé à partir de l’expérience des entreprises africaines. Dans un environnement multipolaire et fragmenté, leur principal défi n’est pas seulement la gestion des risques, mais la préservation de plusieurs options stratégiques simultanément selon une logique de hedging. Trois modèles de CGO sont à distinguer : l’intermédiation (Office chérifien des Phosphates (OCP), Tanger Med), l’intégration régionale (Ethiopi ...

In the first seven Policy Briefs of this ongoing series of analysis on Pan-Atlanticism: The Atlantic Basin in a Multipolar-Transnational World, we developed the argument that the strategic significance of the Atlantic Basin is on the rise for a range of international actors (states, regions and non-state agents) and from distinct political or ideological perspectives. In addition, in the most recently published Policy Brief -- “The U.S. and the Current International Reconfiguration: ...

In the two years since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Russia has restructured its Mediterranean presence. Although Russia’s limited and increasingly conditional access to the Khmeimim and Tartus facilities in Syria has been preserved, its presence in the country has morphed from Assad’s ‘patron-client’ configuration to a more negotiated engagement. Simultaneously, Russia has upgraded its force-projection and logistical infrastructure in eastern Libya, giving it an access path ...

Brazil's election poses a question that extends well beyond Latin America: how much freedom does a country retain to define its international role when external pressure collides with domestic political exhaustion? For the Global South, the answer matters more than any foreign government's preference regarding the next occupant of the presidential palace. Strategic autonomy remains fragile if every change of government puts a country's freedom of action back up for negotiation. ...

The author of this opinion, Marie-Noelle Nwokolo, is a 2024 alumna of the Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders Program.In September 1978, delegations from 138 countries gathered in Buenos Aires, Argentina, around a powerful idea: developing countries had knowledge, experience and capabilities worth sharing with one another. The Buenos Aires Plan of Action gave institutional form to what we now call South-South Cooperation, part of a wider post-colonial effort by developing ...

The incident involving Flydubai Flight FZ1073 between Dubai and Tel Aviv does not yet support any definitive attribution. It does, however, provide a useful warning sign: as aviation security closes off traditional avenues of intrusion, threats may shift towards alternative pathways by exploiting the people, service providers, and systems that the aviation ecosystem must necessarily trust.  ...

L’incident du vol FZ1073 entre Dubaï et Tel-Aviv ne permet encore aucune attribution définitive. Il constitue en revanche un révélateur utile : à mesure que la sûreté aérienne ferme les voies classiques d’intrusion, la menace cherche à emprunter des voies alternatives en exploitant les personnes, les prestataires et les systèmes auxquels l’écosystème aéronautique doit nécessairement accorder sa confiance. ...

On August 7, 2026, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Défense Agreement, a collective-defense pact widely compared to NATO’s Article 5. This essay argues that the comparison is misleading. Mecca borrows NATO’s language of solidarity without yet possessing NATO’s institutional machinery, and the Houthi offensive against Saudi Arabia in September 2026 provided an early and revealing test of what the agreement actually means in practice. Neither Pakistan nor Turk ...

You can imagine how often I've been asked to comment on where the Brazilian economy is headed after the election. With polls pointing to a runoff on October 25 and currently showing a statistical tie between Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro in vote simulations, I'm naturally asked about their economic programs and about the country's relations with the United States. ...

This paper was initially published in French on the website of the Fondation Jean-Jaurès. There was a historic decline in Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 2025. Foreign aid to developing countries from members of the OECD-DAC fell by some 23%, the largest decline on record and the second consecutive annual decline. Aid to Africa fell by more than 25%. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) described this decline in ODA to Africa as “a shock like no other.” It differ ...

The author of this opinion, Marianna Albuquerque, is a 2022 alumna of the Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders Program.As world leaders gather in New York for the 81st United Nations General Assembly, climate change returns to the center of multilateral diplomacy under markedly different circumstances. The debate is no longer confined to whether the world must decarbonize, but increasingly centers on how the transition will happen, who will bear its costs, who will capture ...

Since around 2010, it has been known that the Eastern Mediterranean is a new gas province. Gas resources have indeed been discovered offshore four countries or territories: Egypt, Israel, Cyprus and Gaza. Two of them have become producers and exporters of natural gas, Egypt and Israel. Off the coast of Gaza, the Gaza Marine gas field has never been developed, and it is highly unlikely to be developed anytime soon given the very high tensions between the State of Israel and Hamas. By ...

Depuis 2010, environ, on sait que la Méditerranée orientale est une nouvelle province gazière. Des ressources gazières ont en effet été découvertes au large de quatre pays ou territoires, l’Égypte, Israël, Chypre et Gaza. Deux d’entre eux sont devenus producteurs et exportateurs de gaz naturel, l’Égypte et Israël. Au large de Gaza, le champ gazier de Gaza Marine n’a jamais été développé et il est très peu probable qu’il le soit prochainement en raison des très fortes tensions entre ...

Aircraft carriers are massive and menacing, carrying dozens of aircraft and thousands of naval personnel, supported by an escort of warships and supply vessels. Ships such as the USS Gerald R. Ford are formidable symbols of military power. Yet even these giants can be surpassed in length by the largest cruise ships, including Royal Caribbean’s Legend of the Seas, introduced in 2026. The 365-meter Legend is approximately 32 meters longer than the Gerald R. Ford and can accommoda ...

The African Union Summit of February 2026 instructed the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Council of Ministers to negotiate a Protocol on Industrial Policy and Development. This work, handled without adequate preparation, is likely to reproduce the weaknesses it is meant to remedy. This paper is a conceptual mapping exercise, written to raise the preparatory questions before drafting begins, rather than to prescribe outcomes.It proceeds in five sections:1. It works towar ...

Various competing cross-border payment networks have become vehicles for geopolitical competition. As tensions have risen, many countries want to secure access to cross-border payment systems by joining with like-minded countries to form interoperable networks, either via tokenization or Instant Payment Systems (IPSs). Three major projects are under development, serving the strategic interests of the US, China and the Rest of the World—corresponding to the three trading spheres taki ...

Much of Western debate was revealingly silent on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, which took place on August 31 and September 1 in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. That relative silence reflects how poorly the organization’s growing significance is still understood. The meeting has not gone unreported. Any gathering of Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi, and Vladimir Putin inevitably attracts&nbs ...