International Relations

This Opinion was originally published by the Hanns Seidel Stiftung on January 19th, 2026. The author of this opinion, Gabriela Keseberg Dávalos, is a 2013 alumna of the Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders Program. The signing of the EU–Mercosur agreement is a small geopolitical miracle. Signed on 17 January 2026 in Paraguay, it arrives at a moment when Europe is unmistakably being cast aside by the United States. Meanwhile Latin America, and with it, the Mer ...

The post-1945 international order, an architecture born of war-weariness and colonial twilight, is now a majestic but empty shell. Its foundational promise—a universal system of rules administered impartially—has been hollowed out by decades of selective enforcement, instrumentalized law, and a chasm between the rhetorical ideals of its custodians and their geopolitical practice. This is not a temporary dysfunction, but a systemic failure of legitimacy. From the invasion of Iraq und ...

In response to developing countries’ dissatisfaction with the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) of $300 billion, which was decided at the Twenty-Ninth Conference Of the Parties (COP29) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan, the COP29 and COP30 presidencies promised to develop a roadmap to achieve $1.3 trillion in external climate finance that developing countries need, and to present it at COP30 in Belém, Brazil[1]. The two pre ...

Global cooperation is under stress. It hardly requires detailed analysis: the international system is in a profound crisis, when seen from many Northern vantage points. What if we see the same turbulence but from a different vantage point? For many in the Global South the current period signals risk, but also opportunity. That the same events could spark a sense of crisis in one group but opportunity in another is nothing new. However, the sheer scale, speed, and scope of recen ...

La création de l’Alliance des États du Sahel (AES) symbolise une rupture politique et géostratégique majeure, appuyée sur un discours souverainiste et anti-occidental. Deux ans après, Mali, Burkina Faso et Niger peinent à assurer leur intégrité territoriale, à stabiliser leur sécurité intérieure et à bâtir une gouvernance solide. L’intégrité territoriale est un problème commun aux trois États, car dans ces pays, la cohésion de l’État et le contrôle du territoire sont directement men ...

The candidate could not have been more controversial—or more celebrated. Born in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, once ruled by Idi Amin, who famously declared himself “Conqueror of the British Empire” and “King of Scotland,” Zohran Kwama Mamdani, 34, is of Indian descent. His father is an academic, a professor of anthropology at Columbia University, his mother, Mira Nair, is an influential filmmaker. Zohran arrived in the USA on a visa at age seven. No doubt the agents of the feared ...

Ce Policy Paper analyse les enjeux politiques, économiques et opérationnels du Fonds pour les pertes et dommages, créé pour répondre aux impacts climatiques irréversibles subis par les pays les plus vulnérables. Il clarifie d’abord la notion de pertes et dommages, qui mêle effets économiques et non économiques, et souligne les défis d’attribution liés à la superposition entre chocs climatiques et fragilités structurelles. L’analyse met ensuite en lumière les tensions d’économie poli ...

Fuel access has become a strategic pressure point across Mali and its neighbors. In 2025, Jama’t Nusrat al Islam wal- Muslimeen (JNIM) shifted from sporadic interdictions to a deliberate fuel-blockade strategy intended to pressure Bamako without holding territory. By selectively constraining movement along the Sikasso–Kayes–Bamako corridor, the group turned fuel scarcity into a tool of coercion, governance, and narrative control—shaping behavior in the capital while remaining largel ...

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 ...