International Relations

The meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in Beijing this week goes far beyond the traditional framework of a bilateral encounter between the world’s two largest economies. In many respects, it is a symbolic moment in the transition toward a new international order—one increasingly shaped not only by great-power competition but also by the Global South’s growing political consciousness and strategic relevance. ...

This Paper was originally published on mitvim.org.il This paper argues that the reconstruction of Gaza will depend not only on the amount of funding mobilized, but on how financing is structured, governed, and anchored within a broader politi`cal context. In a setting shaped by movement restrictions and weak institutions, financial design is not neutral but shapes priorities, distributes power, and determines what can be implemented on the ground. The paper examines the key cha ...

This Blog was originally published on cgdev.org. The OECD Conference on the Future of International Development Co-operation (which is set to take place in Paris on 11-12 May 2026) comes at a moment of acute strain. OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) countries' official development assistance fell by almost a quarter in 2025, and is projected to fall further in 2026. The US has withdrawn from or defunded dozens of multilateral bodies. Development cooperation, long pred ...

Trump’s Strategy of Overriding Constitutional SafeguardsPerhaps bearing in mind that only a minority of voters in the United States support U.S. military action against Iran, President Donald Trump has called the war a “short term excursion” and a “little journey” that may be over “pretty quickly”. The war is thus not a war, although Trump has said the U.S. will take Iran “back to the stone ages, where they belong”, and the U.S. military has admitted to attacks on 14,000 Irania ...

This Opinion was originally published on policyedge.in The weakening of global institutions creates both risk and opportunity, placing India at the center of debates on reform and renewal.The global order is not collapsing outright but is gradually hollowing out, as institutions lose normative coherence and great power contestation reshapes rules from within. This moment of transition creates both risks of fragmentation and opportunities for redesign. For India, rising economic ...

The commercial and geopolitical interdependence between China and Latin America makes any U.S. claim to promote a "decoupling" between them impractical. Digital technologies and critical minerals will be in the crosshairs of the North American National Security Strategy  ...

Cet oped a été publié initialement dans la revue afkar/ideas 77 (IEMed).  La politique étrangère du Maroc traverse une transition structurelle, sous l’effet de la polycrise mondiale, de la diversification de ses partenariats et de l’affirmation de nouveaux choix stratégiques. La centralité accordée aux notions de « hub », de « plateforme »ou de « corridor » traduit un glissement sémantique et fonctionnel dans le narratif national, accordant une priorité majeure aux considé ...

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 ...

« C’est le moment me semble-t-il de sortir de cette dialectique de l’euphorie ou du désespoir pour entreprendre un effort de réflexion sur soi, sur notre situation dans le monde : se penser, se représenter, mener une réflexion critique sur ses propres réalités. Il est de la responsabilité des intellectuels, penseurs, artistes africains de mener à bien cette entreprise afin de dégager des horizons et contribuer à la transformation radicale des sociétés africaines » Felwin Sarr. Écriv ...

The International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) 2025 advisory opinion on climate change marks a significant expansion of international law into the governance of global public goods. By framing climate inaction as a potential violation of international law and human rights, the Court advances a progressive legal agenda that extends beyond existing political consensus and enforcement capacity. This article develops a realist critique of the ruling that avoids both legal romanticism and ni ...

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 ...

Trois ans après l'adoption du premier Plan d'Action National (PAN) sur l'Agenda Femmes, Paix et Sécurité (FPS), le Maroc affiche des avancées institutionnelles réelles mais une mise en œuvre encore insuffisante. L'extension du PAN ouvre une fenêtre d'opportunité pour préparer un second cycle plus ambitieux et opérationnel.Ce Policy Brief identifie quatre obstacles persistants : un taux d'activité féminine de 19,1% en quasi-stagnation, une représentation des femmes inférieure à 3% da ...

PrefaceThis series of policy briefs, Pan-Atlanticism: The Atlantic Basin in a Multipolar-Transnational World, assesses the strategic significance—and potential—of the Atlantic Basin, when viewed and engaged with as a distinct and coherent region for international cooperation or governance, and as a potential arena of strategic competition, within a shifting structure of international power that is now moving from unipolarity to a new multipolar reality.The series began by tracing th ...

We are now in the fifth week since the U.S. airstrike that killed top leaders of the Iranian regime, initiating a war involving the United States and Israel against the country. More than a month of mutual bombardments between Iran and Israel has ensued, extending to other Persian Gulf nations, U.S. military installations—and even Cyprus. From a global perspective, the impact has stemmed primarily from disruptions to regional production of goods and the blockade of the Strait of Hor ...

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 ...

Human rights are central to the legitimacy of legal systems, not only through their recognition but also through the manner in which courts resolve conflicts between rights. Judicial decisions require well-founded reasoning, drawing on interrelated legal sources to ensure coherence, legitimacy, and predictability while minimizing non-legal influences. In EU law, the Court of Justice employs grammatical, contextual, comparative, and teleological methods of interpretation, alongside p ...

Sous Trump II, la conflictualité s’affirme moins comme un simple effet de la polarisation partisane que comme un principe d’organisation de l’exercice du pouvoir. À partir des prises de parole présidentielles, ce Papier montre comment des enjeux distincts, tels que l’immigration, la fraude, la sécurité, les controverses culturelles ou les rivalités internationales, sont intégrés dans une même architecture discursive orientée vers la restauration de l’ordre. La conflictualité y appar ...

Le premier sommet des BRICS, tenu à l’initiative de la Russie en 2009, sera suivi de 16 autres, le dernier étant celui de Rio dont les travaux se sont déroulés les 6 et 7 juillet 2025. Jusqu’en 2022, un seul élargissement est intervenu, celui accueillant l’Afrique du Sud, transformant les BRIC en BRICS. À partir de 2023, en revanche, trois sommets, ceux de 2023, 2024 et 2025, vont se solder par la transformation des BRICS en BRICS+5, accueillant 5 nouveaux pays membres, en ...

While acknowledging the centrality of security tensions and potential conflict in the Gulf, this essay intentionally sets aside a detailed treatment of military and hard-power dynamics, concentrating instead on the geoeconomic logics of capital, infrastructure, energy, and connectivity, through which Gulf states now articulate power in a fragmented world order.It examines the emergence of a new tripartite or three-pillar power configuration in the Gulf, arguing that Saudi Arabi ...

Latin America has had to deal with expansionist agendas of great powers since its independence. To do so, different leaders from the region have adopted different policies. Some have sought to reinforce their relations with the U.S. whereas others mistrusted their big neighbor from the North and tried to multiply their partnerships with other parties in order to keep their autonomy. To this respect, the central role played by U.S.-Latin American relations, epitomized by the1823 Monr ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

This Opinion was originally published in globalpolicyjournal.com ...

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. ...

There is a story told by Václav Havel, the Czech dissident writer who later became president after the fall of communism. In his essay The Power of the Powerless, Havel describes a shopkeeper who, every morning, places a sign in his window reading: “Workers of the world, unite!” He does not believe in it. Nor do the people around him. Yet the sign remains. ...

Le 27 janvier 2026, le gouvernement espagnol a adopté par décret royal une mesure de régularisation extraordinaire visant les personnes en situation administrative irrégulière ou engagées dans une procédure de protection internationale. Le choix du décret royal permet une mise en œuvre rapide de la mesure, sans passage par un débat parlementaire, dans un contexte politique fortement polarisé sur les questions migratoires.La régularisation concerne les personnes pouvant justifier d’u ...

Divergent regulatory regimes for data, driven by different motivations, ranging from privacy protection in the European Union to information control in China, could eventually produce distinctively different, and possibly contradictory, bodies of data. Artificial-intelligence models trained on those datasets could produce differing and possibly even conflicting outputs. To the extent that AI outputs start to shape human perception and to influence decisions, in governments and ...

The U.S.–China technological rivalry has become a central axis of global economic and geopolitical competition. While the United States continues to lead in frontier innovation—most notably in advanced semiconductors and artificial intelligence (AI)—China has consolidated strengths in large-scale implementation, manufacturing capacity, and control over critical segments of global supply chains. These advantages are especially visible in clean energy technologies and in the processin ...

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 ...

From the use of tariffs as a foreign policy instrument, to the weaponization of critical resources, and from targeted sanctions to attacks on critical infrastructure, economic security is at the forefront of international debates. The aggressive use of economic instruments for strategic purposes has become an explicit feature of international affairs, in a way not seen since the interwar period[1]. Beyond the weaponization of resources of all kinds, an increasing ‘monetization’ is u ...

The 2026 World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting took place in an environment of elevated economic uncertainty and structural risk repricing. According to the Global Risks Report (GRR) 2026, geoeconomic confrontation and economic downturn rank among the most severe near-term risks, while inflation-related risks and economic volatility have risen sharply in perceived severity compared with the previous edition. Notably, 50% of respondents to the Global Risks Perception Survey ...

Le Mali, le Burkina Faso et le Niger, réunis au sein de l’Alliance des États du Sahel (AES), affirment l’ambition de bâtir une souveraineté nationale qui leur permettrait de s’émanciper de la domination et des influences extérieures et de se doter d’une liberté d’action dans les choix de développement politique et économique. Cependant, cette ambition se heurte à de nombreuses contraintes économiques et sécuritaires.La souveraineté ne peut se construire sans une base économique soli ...

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 ...