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601. Make stuff here…or else: A framework for deciding what Australia must produce, repair or regenerate domestically

Author:
Steven Camilleri
Publication Date:
06-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
Australia’s prosperity rests on systems that appear permanent but depend on continuous, often unseen, inputs that arrive from beyond its borders. That model worked in an era of stable global trade, but recent shocks, from the Covid-19 pandemic to geopolitical disruption, have exposed a structural weakness. Australia must now shift from optimising for cost to securing continuity, and it must do so with urgency and discipline. This paper draws on public policy documents, industry case examples and published data to frame resilience as a practical national problem. This work is a follow-up to the 2025 ‘Make Stuff Here’—a blueprint to reinvigorate Australia’s economy. This report argues that national resilience is not an abstract policy ambition but a measurable engineering problem. At its core is the concept of the Sovereignty Countdown: the time a critical system can continue operating if external supply is disrupted. Every essential function—water, energy, fuel, food logistics, communications—operates within this constraint. When the countdown expires, continuity depends on external actors, and sovereignty narrows in practical terms. Australia currently operates within a dangerous lag. Policy has pivoted towards resilience, but physical capability hasn’t yet caught up. Decades of rational, efficiency-driven decisions have hollowed out the domestic production layer—the industrial ecosystem that repairs, replenishes and sustains national systems. In its place, Australia relies heavily on storage and logistics. Those extend time but don’t regenerate supply. When supply chains falter, the nation shift s from steady-state operation to drawing down finite reserves. The report introduces a clear framework: Production sustains systems. Systems deliver essentials. Weakness in the production layer creates cascading risk across the entire system. Case studies in water-treatment chemicals, liquid fuels and fertiliser demonstrate that vulnerabilities operate on different timelines, but all converge on the same strategic reality. Some failures emerge in days, others in months, but each reflects a countdown that can be measured, managed and extended. The central policy recommendation is the establishment of a National Resilience Test. Governments and critical-infrastructure operators must identify key inputs, quantify consumption rates and calculate how long systems can endure without external supply. These countdowns should be benchmarked against a defined National Survival Threshold, and gaps should be treated as formal strategic vulnerabilities requiring remediation. Closing those gaps requires a structured mix of interventions: targeted stockpiling, system redesign for substitution, and, critically, rebuilding domestic production capability where resupply timelines exceed available buffers. This doesn’t require autarky, as trusted, reliable and secure partnerships will continue to be a mandatory feature of Australia’s national resilience. As set out in the 2026 National Defence Strategy, strengthening self-reliance and sovereignty requires the combination of identifying which inputs must be sustained locally to preserve national continuity and the identification of key reliable international partnerships. Those must be free from coercion and available even in times of crisis. For policymakers and the private sector, the implication is clear. Resilience carries a cost, but so does unpriced exposure. Australia can either invest deliberately in sovereign capability now or accept constrained choices later. The task ahead is practical and achievable: measure endurance, define acceptable risk, and build the industrial depth needed to ensure that continuity rests on capability, not assumptions
Topic:
Manufacturing, Resilience, Supply Chains, and Research and Development
Political Geography:
Australia

602. Markets as the new front line: fusing Australia’s economic statecraft

Author:
James Tennant, James Corera, Alice Hudson, and John Coyne
Publication Date:
03-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
Episodes over the past decade—including China’s trade measures against Australia and Japan, Russia’s manipulation of European gas supplies, and the tightening of global controls over critical minerals—demonstrate how economic levers are being used to impose costs and reshape incentives without crossing traditional thresholds of conflict. This has included for the purposes of coercing nations into tolerating military aggression, cyber-attacks and foreign interference, or particularly in the case of China also creating monopolitistic dependencies. More recently, the US has employed overt economic instruments, such as tariffs, as tools of strategic leverage and industrial policy—underscoring not an equivalence of intent or method, but the extent to which the use of markets for geopolitical ends is becoming embedded across the international system. Australia isn’t starting from scratch in responding to these market realities, with substantial foundations already in place. Australia’s challenge isn’t necessarily creating new instruments, nor simply coordinating disparate capabilities across government departments, agencies or sectors of the economy. Rather, the task is to embed deeper integration and fusion of the tools and capabilities that already exist. This report argues that doing so requires strengthening the connective tissue between policy, intelligence, economic and security functions so that information flows more freely, preparedness is built collectively, and joint capabilities can be brought to bear under pressure. In practice, this means a system better able to anticipate pressure, absorb shocks and align economic and security decision-making in more ways that reinforce Australia’s long-term resilience—while operating at speed and across multiple fronts concurrently. Ultimately, in a system as complex and contested as today’s global economy, this report suggests that success depends on clear strategy, disciplined escalation thresholds and integrated decision-making. When nations fail to align intent, tools and execution, they do more than miss opportunities—they risk ceding ground by default. The recommendations set out in this report offer Australia a way to integrate the strengths it already has—its institutions, regulations, alliances and industrial strengths—into a genuinely national capability for economic statecraft, better allowing Australia to act in time, with purpose, and on its own terms.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, National Security, European Union, Cybersecurity, and Economy
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Australia, Asia-Pacific, and United States of America

603. Hedging our bets: A potential Japanese option for managing risk in the AUKUS Optimal Pathway

Author:
Richard Gray
Publication Date:
05-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
Australia’s ‘Optimal Pathway’ to acquiring and maintaining a nuclear-propelled, conventionally armed submarine capability from the 2030s and beyond has been agreed by all three AUKUS nations and is a matter of public record.1 This paper is supportive of pursuing that path. To be clear: AUKUS represents the best opportunity for Australia to acquire an essential strategic capability underpinning its future defence. However, the Optimal Pathway has significant cumulative risk involved. There are three major complex enterprises that must all align if Australia is not to experience a serious gap in its sovereign submarine capability in following this path. Those are the Collins-class life-of-type extension (LOTE), the transfer of three or more Virginia-class nuclear attack submarines (SSNs) from the US, and Australia’s construction—with UK and US assistance—of the SSN-AUKUS, which is to be a new class of SSN submarines for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). Australia’s defence plans require a sovereign submarine capability to be effective. ‘Sovereign’ in this sense means under Australia’s national control. The potential capability gap that we’re describing as a risk is—in terms of submarine acquisition—an awkward one. It could emerge suddenly. It’s probably too long a period for Australia to run the risk of being without an essential capability, but it isn’t a long time to acquire and operate a new class of submarine. To assist in managing these three areas of separate but compounding significant risk, Australia should explore the backup option of leasing or otherwise rapidly acquiring small numbers of an advanced conventional submarine capability from Japan. Japan has a comparatively large, ‘young’, highly capable conventional submarine fleet. It has two active production lines that together turn out an advanced submarine each year and have the potential to ramp up production even further. It’s also one of Australia’s few international partners with the depth of trust and a similar view of the international security situation necessary to make this option a viable one. Given the depth of the request that Australia would be making of Japan, engagement needs to begin now for this option to be a realistic possibility. The only type of submarine that can meet all of Australia’s requirements is an SSN; but, in its absence and to bridge any gap that emerges as best we can until one becomes available, it’s necessary to investigate alternatives to cover a major known contingency. A capable sovereign submarine capability is a core requirement for Australia’s defence over the next two decades, and there are known risks that could prevent that happening. Exploring a relatively modest alternative such as leasing from Japan seems prudent—and it needs to begin now if it’s to be useful in time.
Topic:
Risk, Defense Industry, Research and Development, and AUKUS
Political Geography:
Japan, Australia, and Asia-Pacific

604. The Sino-Russian partnership: why it matters for Australian security and defence

Author:
Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan
Publication Date:
03-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
The Sino-Russian ‘no limits’ partnership has become central to an emerging anti-Western axis that aims to weaken the West and counter the liberal international order that has buttressed Australia’s post-1945 peace, prosperity and security. Even though it is not a formal alliance, the depth and breadth of strategic cooperations between China and Russia—across military, economic, defence, diplomatic and technological domains—makes the partnership the most important bilateral one for both, and one that has severe strategic consequences for Australia. The partnership between these two totalitarian states is not new, but Beijing and Moscow have intensified their cooperation since the announcement of a ‘no limits’ partnership in February 2022. Their collaboration encompasses joint military exercises including naval, air and combined arms, technology transfers, coordinated propaganda affecting social cohesion and stability, efforts at building alternative parochial technological and economic coalitions. Russia’s combat experience and defence technology transfers have been particularly helpful in accelerating China’s military modernisation, which in turn have exacerbated regional insecurities in the Indo-Pacific. The Sino-Russian partnership is also a critical subset of a wider authoritarian grouping that includes Iran and North Korea, whose combined military power, including nuclear capabilities, have the potential to further destabilise regional and global security. Within this, China has emerged as the decisive enabler of Russia’s and now Iran’s military operations. Overall, the Sino-Russian partnership is durable, gaining more strategic and military muscle power and thus directly threatens Australia’s strategic environment, prompting sustained investment in national defence and foreign alliances. This ASPI report examines the contemporary trajectory and drivers of China-Russia partnership. This will be followed by a detailed analysis of China-Russia defence and security cooperation, which has seen qualitative and quantitative enhancement in the last decade. The final section charts the current trendlines into the future, drawing out the implications for Australia, the liberal international order and strategic stability, while identifying possible pragmatic choices for Canberra to boost its security and defence.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, National Security, United Nations, and ASEAN
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Asia, and Australia

605. Darwin Dialogue 2026 – From exposure to endurance: competitive architecture for high-ESG mineral-specific supply chains

Author:
John Coyne, Francesca Ciuffetelli, and Iris Reinhold
Publication Date:
06-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
The Darwin Dialogue has become one of the Indo-Pacific’s leading forums for critical minerals, bringing together senior leaders from government, industry, finance, defence and strategic policy to address one of the defining economic and security challenges of our time: how democratic nations build trusted, resilient and competitive mineral supply chains. The 2026 Darwin Dialogue brought together participants from Australia, the United States, Japan, India, the Republic of Korea, Canada and partners across Europe and the Indo-Pacific to examine a hard reality. Governments increasingly recognise the risks created by concentrated critical-mineral supply chains, but recognition alone does not reduce dependence. The challenge now is translating strategic ambition into industrial capability. Drawing on discussions held under the Chatham House Rule, this report argues that the era of generic critical-minerals policy is ending. Rare earths, lithium, nickel, graphite, gallium, antimony and copper each present different vulnerabilities, market dynamics and strategic challenges. Effective resilience requires mineral-specific approaches that align finance, infrastructure, processing capability, workforce development, demand signals and allied coordination. The report introduces the concept of competitive endurance architecture—the deliberate design of industrial systems capable of sustaining trusted, high-ESG supply chains under prolonged geopolitical and market pressure. It examines the growing gap between political announcements and industrial execution, the importance of midstream processing capability, the role of demand and offtake, strategic market distortion, trusted supply chains, allied cooperation and Northern Australia’s role as a strategic industrial platform. For policymakers, industry leaders, investors and strategic practitioners, the report provides practical recommendations for moving beyond vulnerability analysis and towards the industrial systems needed to secure long-term economic resilience and national security. Read the report to understand how Australia and its partners can move from exposure to endurance.
Topic:
Strategic Competition, Emerging Technology, Rare earth elements (REEs), and Critical Minerals
Political Geography:
Australia, Indo-Pacific, and Northern Australia

606. Reading the room: Redesigning intelligence product for the AI age

Author:
Chris Taylor
Publication Date:
06-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
Reading the room argues that Australia’s National Intelligence Community faces a growing mismatch between how intelligence is produced and how it is now consumed in an AI-shaped information environment. While intelligence collection and analysis have advanced significantly, the formats, delivery methods and user experience of intelligence products have changed far less. As ministers, policymakers and operational leaders increasingly expect information that is faster, more interactive, more tailored and easier to use, the report warns that intelligence risks losing relevance unless it adapts deliberately. Three plausible scenarios are explored: secure conversational AI interfaces that allow users to query intelligence holdings directly; hyper-personalised intelligence products tailored to different decision-makers; and automated sanitisation and dissemination that expands the reach of intelligence across government and to partners. These opportunities promise greater timeliness, relevance and utility, but also carry major risks, including bias, hallucination, reduced explainability, weakened accountability, politicisation and the erosion of shared understanding. The report concludes that inaction is not a viable option. Instead, the NIC should redesign intelligence products around consumer needs, learn from allies and other knowledge sectors, strengthen workforce and governance arrangements, and integrate AI in ways that preserve human judgement, trust and national security advantage.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Intelligence, National Security, Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence, and Research and Development
Political Geography:
Global Focus

607. The EU-Australia security and defence agreement: not a pact but a partnership

Author:
Bart Hogeveen
Publication Date:
03-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
On 24 March 2026, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and Australian Prime Minister Albanese signed the EU-Australia Security and Defence Partnership. The partnership represents a significant step in EU–Australia relations, elevating cooperation beyond its traditional focus on trade and investment. However, as with previous EU-Australia initiatives, its value will ultimately depend on whether it delivers concrete outcomes rather than remaining a largely declaratory framework. This Explainer describes what the partnership entails and highlights what it needs to become successful and impactful.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Bilateral Relations, European Union, Partnerships, Cybersecurity, and Defense Industry
Political Geography:
Europe, Australia, and Asia-Pacific

608. Disruption and opportunity: Australia and critical minerals in a changing global order

Author:
Ian Satchwell
Publication Date:
02-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
In a world defined by accelerating geo‑economic competition aimed at reducing China’s control of critical‑minerals markets and supply chains, Australia’s critical‑minerals ambitions hinge on a powerful but tenuous assumption: that the nation will evolve into a major supplier to the US—its largest investment partner and most consequential strategic ally. Yet today’s market dynamics, policy fragmentation among partners and the US’s own inward‑looking minerals strategy mean that outcome is far from guaranteed. What is clear, however, is that Australia enters this contest with world‑leading geological endowments, a global footprint of successful mining operations, and hard‑won capabilities built over more than 60 years of modern mining and processing. Australian companies aren’t just domestic producers—they’re global investors, operators and technology leaders. Demand for their products is only rising as the energy transition, digitisation, automation and defence modernisation accelerate. But market opportunity alone is no longer enough. Australia’s ability to convert its mineral strength into strategic advantage is being tested by volatile global prices—often shaped by market manipulation—contradictory policies among like‑minded nations and rising competition from other mineral‑rich nations. Domestically, high construction and energy costs, an uncompetitive company tax system, acute skills shortages, regulatory uncertainty and long approval timelines threaten to blunt Australia’s competitive edge. At the same time, commercial and security partners across Europe, Asia and North America increasingly look to Australia not only for resources but also for leadership—technical, environmental, commercial and strategic. Many countries, along with the EU, have signed agreements with Australia to build more secure, sustainable and diversified critical‑minerals supply chains. This report argues that Australia must now pivot from signing partnerships to fully activating them. That means prioritising the like-minded partners and markets where real supply‑chain integration and volume markets are achievable. China, however, will remain an indispensable market for Australian minerals. Crucially, Australia must recalibrate its approach to onshoring. Policies built solely around domestic downstream ambitions risk underestimating the reality of global supply chains and overestimating Australia’s cost competitiveness. The more strategic path is to position Australia as a dominant force across multi‑node critical‑minerals supply chains—linking Australian concentrates and intermediate products, production of Australian companies operating abroad, trusted partners’ processing, manufacturing and technology ecosystems, and of course end users. To seize this moment, Australia should also restore the predictability and competitiveness of its own investment environment. Ultimately, the choice before Australia isn’t whether to be a critical‑minerals superpower—it’s whether to be an indispensable node in the world’s most important supply chains. That requires ambition, disciplined policymaking, deeper strategic partnerships and a relentless focus on execution.
Topic:
European Union, Artificial Intelligence, Research and Development, and Critical Minerals
Political Geography:
China, Europe, Australia, Asia-Pacific, and United States of America

609. Enlargement as security policy: The Western Balkans between geopolitical competition, internal volatility, and European responsibility.

Author:
Vedran Džihić
Publication Date:
07-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Austrian Institute for International Affairs (OIIP)
Abstract:
European enlargement policy towards the Western Balkans is at a strategic turning point. While for over two decades enlargement was primarily understood as an instrument of democratic transformation, since Russia's attack on Ukraine in 2022 it has increasingly been seen as an integral part of European security and geopolitics. At the same time, the regional environment has fundamentally changed: the Western Balkans are now the stage for growing geopolitical competition between the EU, Russia, and China, while the role of the US is also changing under a more transactional foreign policy. In parallel, autocratization, institutional gridlock, and political polarization in several states of the region are exacerbating domestic political volatility. This policy brief argues that precisely this convergence of external geopolitical competition and internal instability makes EU enlargement a central instrument of European security policy, but only if it consistently links democratic transformation and security interests. The analysis shows that the greatest security policy risks today arise less from classic interstate conflicts than from the erosion of democratic institutions, societal polarization, and increasing vulnerability to external influence. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Kosovo illustrate in different ways how domestic crises are further exacerbated by a more volatile international order. At the same time, there is a growing danger that the EU, in the name of geopolitical stability, will once again tolerate authoritarian or illiberal political actors, thereby undermining precisely those democratic foundations upon which sustainable European and regional security and transformation depend. Enlargement as a security policy can therefore only be successful if democratic resilience, the rule of law, and societal transformation are understood as prerequisites for security policy, and not as secondary objectives.
Topic:
European Union, Geopolitics, Regional Politics, and Enlargement
Political Geography:
Europe and Western Balkans

610. The War in Ukraine: The Moment of Truth in 2026?

Author:
Loïc Simonet
Publication Date:
01-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Austrian Institute for International Affairs (OIIP)
Abstract:
The prospect of a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine in 2026 appears highly uncertain, due to the incompatibility of the territorial claims of both parties, as well as Russia's “no go” regarding security guarantees that Europe plans to offer Ukraine. However, a rising acceptance of territorial concessions by the war-weary Ukrainians, as well as the growing “Iranization” of the Russian economy, are two factors pushing for the end of hostilities. The possibility that the grinding war of attrition in Ukraine will spill over into a broader war between Europe and Russia remains a daunting prospect. The strike of an Oreshnik intermediate-range missile close to the borders of the EU and NATO was described as an unacceptable escalation and evokes the threat of nuclear war. Caught between a revisionist Kremlin and an indifferent—if not openly contemptuous—White House, Europeans are constantly outmaneuvered and often marginalized. They strive to convince the Americans that the conflict cannot be resolved by simple territorial and financial concessions, and to ensure that the US remains on the side of Ukraine's allies. 2026 might see the conflict entering a 'limbo' between 'war' and 'peace'; a situation which Russia might exploit to continue destabilizing Ukraine.
Topic:
European Union, Negotiation, Armed Conflict, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Ukraine

611. Declining US Support for Israel: From Bipartisan Consensus to Generational Fracture

Author:
Johannes Späth
Publication Date:
01-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Austrian Institute for International Affairs (OIIP)
Abstract:
In 2026, US–Israeli relations will remain strategically close, but a key long-term shift is underway: broad US public legitimacy for Israel is eroding, especially among Democrats and younger cohorts. Polling data indicates a sharp decline in Israel favorability and growing opposition to additional military and economic aid, with signs that skepticism is spreading beyond Democratic voters. In the short term, policy change will likely remain limited due to entrenched elite consensus and institutional ties, but extraordinary or escalatory support is becoming increasingly politically costly. Over time, declining public legitimacy and shifting strategic priorities may contribute to a gradual erosion of US diplomatic and military backing, with wider implications for regional security.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Bilateral Relations, Public Opinion, and Legitimacy
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Palestine, and United States of America

612. Emerging Regional Architecture of Cooperation in Central Asia

Author:
Kristin Höltge
Publication Date:
01-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Austrian Institute for International Affairs (OIIP)
Abstract:
Central Asia has defied early conflict predictions by moving towards peaceful regional integration through treaties, hydro-diplomacy, and institutional cooperation. The C5 framework (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), now expanding to include Azerbaijan, reflects growing regional unity and subjectivity. This self-driven shift from hotspot to hub offers valuable lessons for conflict-prone regions on how local diplomacy can replace external intervention. However, internal imbalances or external shocks still pose risks to this nascent regionalization.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Regional Cooperation, Natural Resources, and Regional Politics
Political Geography:
Central Asia

613. The Great AI Game: The Race That Isn't One.

Author:
Johannes Späth
Publication Date:
07-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Austrian Institute for International Affairs (OIIP)
Abstract:
This policy analysis maps the infrastructure underpinning Artificial Intelligence and the geopolitical competition forming around it. Its central argument is that this competition is not a single race in which all states are climbing the same ladder at different speeds. Rather, it is two distinct contests, with different rules, different stakes, and therefore different strategies for winning.
Topic:
Infrastructure, Geopolitics, Artificial Intelligence, and Strategic Competition
Political Geography:
Global Focus

614. Governing Without Consequence: Israel as a High-Visibility Indicator in 2026

Author:
Osnat Lubrani
Publication Date:
01-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Austrian Institute for International Affairs (OIIP)
Abstract:
This report identifies a global shift toward impunity-based governance, in which political leaders increasingly neutralize legal, political, and reputational accountability while preserving formal democratic and legal frameworks. Impunity is treated not as an aberration, but as a governing instrument, enabled by legal restructuring, institutional capture, and external political shielding. Israel in 2026 constitutes a particularly revealing diagnostic case, not because it is unique, but because it concentrates multiple drivers of impunity-based governance at a critical juncture: acute leadership legal jeopardy, deep domestic polarization, accelerating institutional restructuring, and reliance on external political shielding, all in the context of consequential elections in both Israel and the United States. Current evidence points toward partial consolidation of impunity under fragmented legitimacy, rather than decisive correction or full authoritarian consolidation in 2026. Legislative acceleration, coalition dynamics, and sustained external protection suggest a narrowing window for institutional reversal absent major political or external shocks. The most decisive signals to monitor concern the irreversibility of, rather than intent behind impunity-based governance, including enacted legal constraints on judicial and media independence, coalition durability, elite sidelining, and the continuation of external political shielding despite visible democratic erosion.
Topic:
Governance, Impunity, Accountability, Legitimacy, and Justice
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, and Palestine

615. The Personal Is Still Political: Why the Rise of Misogyny Threatens Democracy

Author:
Annika Scharnagl
Publication Date:
01-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Austrian Institute for International Affairs (OIIP)
Abstract:
Misogyny is becoming structurally normalized, shaping political discourse, digital environments, and institutional practices despite formal progress on gender equality, as democratic backsliding creates permissive conditions that render this dynamic bidirectional and mutually reinforcing. Digital platforms and emerging technologies amplify backlash dynamics, accelerating the spread and social acceptance of anti-gender narratives. Rising polarization and economic insecurity are translating personal grievances into political backlash, weakening social cohesion and democratic participation. The future of democratic resilience depends on containment measures achieved through coordinated governance, education, and norm-setting that affirm gender equality as a core democratic value.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Democracy, Misogyny, and Digital Platforms
Political Geography:
Global Focus

616. The Degradation of Iran’s Proxy Model

Author:
Lina Khatib
Publication Date:
04-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
For decades, Iran pursued a strategy of “exporting the revolution” through the sponsorship of armed non-state actors across the Middle East. Framed as an “axis of resistance” against Israel and the United States, this network enabled Tehran to project influence across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Gaza while limiting the risk of direct Iranian confrontation. This paper argues that the model has entered a phase of structural degradation. The October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, together with the regional fallout that followed, accelerated the military, financial, and political weakening of Iran’s proxy architecture, contributing to a broader shift in the regional balance of power. Although Iran’s proxy system was already under pressure before October 2023 from sanctions, military attrition, and mounting isolation, these factors had not produced a decisive strategic shift. Iran sustained its influence through coercive networks. After October 7, however, these vulnerabilities deepened. Military pressure, intelligence penetration, leadership losses, financial constriction, and declining legitimacy exposed the limits of proxy-based power projection. Rather than serving as a coherent deterrent architecture, Iran’s regional network increasingly became a source of strategic exposure and fragility. The paper traces this erosion across Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq, with Syria serving as an important logistical backdrop. In Lebanon, Hezbollah suffered military attrition, leadership losses, declining domestic legitimacy, and the collapse of the Syrian corridor that had underpinned its strategic depth. In Yemen, the Houthis’ effort to raise their regional profile through attacks linked to the Gaza war exposed the limits of their capacity and increased their diplomatic and financial vulnerability. In Iraq, Iran-backed militias became more fragmented, with factions diverging in their responses to escalation and with many increasingly prioritizing local political and economic survival over coordinated service to Tehran’s agenda. Across these arenas, the paper finds not adaptation but erosion: Iran’s proxies have become less effective and harder for Tehran to instrumentalize coherently. Proxy warfare once offered Tehran a means of deterrence and influence. Over time, however, it generated familiar problems of overextension: weakened cohesion, divergent local interests, coordination failures, reputational damage, and growing vulnerability to disruption. Expansion produced scale, but not resilience. The paper concludes that the Middle East is moving away from a hybrid order shaped by Iranian-backed militias toward a more state-centered, though still fragile, security landscape. This shift may create openings for states to reclaim authority and rebuild institutions less constrained by Iranian coercive influence, but it also carries serious risks, including militia fragmentation, local instability, and new security vacuums. Whether this transition produces greater stability will depend on stronger state capacity, better governance, and sustained political and economic recovery.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Deterrence, Proxy Groups, Regional Politics, and Axis of Resistance
Political Geography:
Iraq, Iran, Middle East, Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria

617. When Unarmed Women Hold the Frontline: Implications for Policy

Author:
Shalaka Thakur
Publication Date:
08-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
The tropes around women in conflict are familiar: victims to be protected, peacebuilders to be empowered or, exceptionally, armed perpetrators. The women of Manipur fit none of them. Unarmed and organised at neighbourhood level, they operate the checkpoints, hold night vigils, stage blockades and run fundraising networks that, in their eyes, defend their community. These are the same repertoires that have in the past made the Meitei Meira Paibi ('women torch-bearers') internationally celebrated anti-militarisation activists. However, in the context of the current conflict the same repertoires have been sustaining an ethnic war. Kuki women, on the other side of this conflict also use similar strategies. This brief is based on field research in Manipur, northeast India, near the country’s border with Myanmar. It draws on group discussions with around 180 Meitei women at checkpoints and night vigils, and interviews with security forces, non-state armed groups and civil society on both sides of the ongoing ethnic conflict between Meitei and Kuki communities. The brief shows that women’s agency in conflict is malleable: the same mobilisation that builds peace can be redirected to wage war. Policy on women, peace and security has barely begun to grapple with what this means.
Topic:
Civil Society, Women, Armed Conflict, Protection, and Agency
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Myanmar

618. Move Fast and Scale: A Brief Insiders' History of the Replicator Initiative

Author:
Kathleen Hicks and Aaron Sherman
Publication Date:
06-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks and former Speechwriter to the Deputy Secretary of Defense Aaron Sherman provide an insider account of the Replicator Initiative, tracing its origins, purpose, early implementation, and preliminary outcomes. This initiative to rapidly scale needed military capabilities offers important lessons for reform, from goal-setting and aligning incentives to implementation, feedback, and iteration.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Government, Military Affairs, and Defense Spending
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

619. Military Sahel regimes challenged by EU-based diaspora

Author:
Lotte Pelckmans
Publication Date:
08-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
As military governments in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger tighten their grip on power, political opposition is increasingly moving beyond the Sahel’s borders. This DIIS Working Paper examines how West African diasporas in France and Belgium challenge the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) and how movements such as the Alliance des Démocrates du Sahel (ADS) are taking high political risks from exile. The paper analyses what this means for sovereignty, authoritarianism and Europe’s relationship with the changing Sahel.
Topic:
Sovereignty, Diaspora, European Union, and Legitimacy
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Mali, Sahel, Niger, and Burkina Faso

620. Selling the Risks: Lessons on Security Modernization from Canada’s Contract Security Program

Author:
Oliver Jones, Karena Kyne, and Alexandre Picard
Publication Date:
06-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Modernization, a watchword in governance and public administration, is an imperative for security organizations that need to adapt their outlooks and processes to an increasingly unsettled world. Yet rigid processes obstruct modernization.
Topic:
Security, Governance, Modernization, and Public Administration
Political Geography:
Canada and North America

621. LGBTQ+ soldiers and the democratic future of Ukraine

Author:
Di Yehorova and Karmen Tornius
Publication Date:
08-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
Thousands of LGBTQ+ Ukrainians serve on the frontlines yet remain legally unprotected. Amid financial and legislative uncertainty, queer organisations build vital wartime and veteran infrastructures to provide psychological, legal and safety support.
Topic:
Armed Forces, Democracy, LGBT+, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Europe and Ukraine

622. The impossibility of African Union conflict prevention

Author:
Corine van Emmerik
Publication Date:
08-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
The African Union (AU) has built the most sophisticated conflict prevention architecture of any regional organisation, yet prevention remains structurally sidelined. Even though the AU has a mandate for conflict prevention it has no power to enforce it.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Africa Union, and Regional Organizations
Political Geography:
Africa

623. Intra-urban waterscapes and household welfare in Kumasi, Ghana

Author:
Abel Gwaindepi and Samuel Baidoo
Publication Date:
07-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
Across Kumasi, Ghana, households rarely rely on a single water source. Whether or not a home has a formal utility connection, most residents also use sachet water, boreholes, and private vendors - a hybrid system built out of necessity. This is the picture that emerges from an original household survey of 1,791 homes across three neighbourhoods in metropolitan Kumasi, Asawase, Ejisu, and Ayuom, conducted as part of the Multiple Waterscapes in Urban Ghana (MUWUG) project. The survey reveals a striking pattern: the one community with a formal utility connection to the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), Asawase, reports lower satisfaction, more water related conflict, and measurable income losses than the two unconnected neighbourhoods, which get by largely on self organised alternatives. The policy implications are significant. Formal and informal water systems both matter, and connection status alone is a poor proxy for welfare. What ultimately matters is whether the water reaching households is reliable, affordable and safe. Universal access remains a legitimate goal, and citizens are right to demand formal connections. However, the evidence suggests that in rapidly growing cities, where government and NGO resources are often constrained, policy should be grounded in urban realities. This means recognising and building on the hybrid water systems that households already rely on, rather than treating them as fragmentation to be engineered away.
Topic:
Natural Resources, Water, Cities, and Household
Political Geography:
Africa and Ghana

624. From wartime solidarity to deeper economic partnership between Denmark and Ukraine

Author:
Maria Repko
Publication Date:
05-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
Denmark’s military leadership in support for Ukraine has not yet translated into economic cooperation in the shape of expanded trade or investments. Targeted trade and investment paired with strategic labour market measures could convert wartime solidarity into a deeper economic partnership. Since the outbreak of the war, Denmark has been one of the most vocal supporters of Ukraine in the EU. According to Kiel Institute data,1 globally it is the fourth-largest supplier of military aid, the fifth-largest in terms of total bilateral allocations and relative to GDP it ranks first. Examining developments across the EU’s four freedoms – goods, services, capital and people – this brief shows that despite the strong military support, economic cooperation and trade depth remain limited. According to 2024 data,2 the total trading turnover between Denmark and Ukraine is very low. Denmark is only the 34th supplying market and 44th export market for Ukraine. For Denmark, Ukraine is the 47th largest market both as a supplier and as an export destination. Foreign direct investments boost trade, as can be seen in practice, but it is very selective and focused on a few sectors, not central to the Danish industrial core (except for food and agricultural processing). Moreover, labour market integration of refugees is under-strategised.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Economics, Partnerships, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Europe, Ukraine, and Denmark

625. Denmark’s efforts to fight torture and corruption abroad

Author:
Ole Therkildsen and David Lyndorff Paris
Publication Date:
08-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
This DIIS Working Paper investigates Denmark's efforts to combat torture and corruption in a dozen partner countries between 2000 and 2023. The analytical framework used distinguishes different types of torture and corruption and their often hidden features and interlinkages. However, both abuses are rooted in their political economies and governance failures. Drawing mainly on official documents, evaluations and international research, the main findings are that both scourges remain persistent and widespread across partner countries; that Denmark has been especially active in UN norm-setting against torture; that links between international norm-work and implementation on the ground are weak in both the bilateral and international activities that are supported; and that impacts are hard to assess because few independent evaluations of impact exist, including in relevant NGO work. Local ownership is essential in fighting the two abuses, as aid achieves little on its own. This is where improvements to Danish approaches to fighting torture and corruption can reduce the current gap between Danish self-perceptions and realities on the ground.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Corruption, Development, and Torture
Political Geography:
Europe and Denmark

626. Strategic autonomy and Europe's new logic of intervention

Author:
Maria-Louise Clausen and Peter Albrecht
Publication Date:
06-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
The war in Ukraine and renewed transatlantic uncertainty are reshaping what European intervention means. Where the EU once exported crisis management and statebuilding, it is now increasingly financing arms production and embedding itself in a wartime economy. At the same time the EU is moving beyond traditional forms of external support. It is financing production directly within Ukraine's defence industry, training more than 87,000 Ukrainian soldiers on European soil, embedding defence innovation offices in Kyiv, and incorporating Ukrainian battlefield innovation into Europe’s emerging defence architecture. Ukraine’s particular combination of scale, geographic proximity, and existential stakes makes it a special case. Yet the adaptations it has generated may be opening the door to a broader reorientation in how the EU conceives of and conducts external intervention, one centred less on crisis management and statebuilding than on industrial integration, operational adaptation and strategic coordination.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, European Union, Strategic Autonomy, and Defense Spending
Political Geography:
Europe and Ukraine

627. Checkpoints, not territory: rethinking conflict

Author:
Peer Schouten
Publication Date:
06-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
The Taliban took over Afghanistan one border post at a time. The Congolese rebel group M23 built its financial base by sitting on a single crossing point between eastern DRC and Uganda, extracting tens of thousands of dollars a month without controlling significant territory. Yemen’s Houthis outperform the Yemeni Government by offering a more predictable experience at precisely the checkpoints that matter most to traders. This brief draws on a multi-country comparative research project — covering Yemen, Afghanistan, DR Congo, South Sudan, Myanmar, and countries in the Sahel and West Africa — to argue that checkpoints shine a light on conflict dynamics in ways that policymakers have barely begun to explore.
Topic:
Governance, Armed Conflict, Global Economy, and Checkpoints
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, South Asia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, and Myanmar

628. Repairing under fire - recovery chain constraints on Ukraine’s energy resilience

Author:
Izabela Surwillo
Publication Date:
07-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
The 2025–2026 winter points to growing structural constraints on Ukraine’s energy system resilience. The key question is whether damaged infrastructure can be restored faster than Russia can disable it. This depends on the full recovery chain – from procurement to installation, commissioning and protection. Air defence and operational adaptation remain central, but delays across this chain increasingly constrain recovery under sustained attack.
Topic:
Infrastructure, Resilience, Energy, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Europe and Ukraine

629. Sweden’s vaccine diplomacy, procurement and distribution

Author:
Rachel Irwin
Publication Date:
07-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
This paper analyses how Sweden worked to procure Covid-19 vaccines to cover the needs of Swedish residents, as well as how Sweden engaged in the global pandemic response and efforts to ensure global vaccine distribution. The paper also examines how tensions between national health security and international solidarity were navigated in public discourse during the pandemic.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Development, Public Health, Vaccine, COVID-19, and Vaccine Diplomacy
Political Geography:
Europe and Sweden

630. Hawks remain hawks, and doves remain doves

Author:
Hans Mouritzen
Publication Date:
06-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
This DIIS Working Paper analyses convergences and divergences in Nordic countries’ relations with Russia since the Cold War. It then reflects on the main determinants behind European states’ Russia policies: their location in relation to Russia and their historical experiences with Russia Since these determinants are ultrastable, the hawks remain hawks and the doves remain doves, and some stay in-between.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, and History
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Eurasia

631. How USAID's exit could reshape northern Kenya's conservancies

Author:
Caleb Braham, Ceciliah Njagi, Emma Bostrup, Eric Kioko, and Jane Mutune
Publication Date:
04-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
USAID’s withdrawal is reshaping green transition initiatives across Africa. In northern Kenya, the Northern Rangelands Trust was hit immediately – highlighting dynamics likely to emerge wherever donor‑dependent environmental institutions operate. The Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) is a nonprofit umbrella organisation supporting 47 community conservancies in northern and coastal Kenya, as well as parts of Uganda. Since its founding in 2004, the organisation has operated under the motto ‘Transforming lives, conserving nature.’ Today, it employs more than 1,300 people and claims to benefit over 700,000 individuals. Over the past decade USAID has been one of the NRT’s key donors. Internal financial summaries indicate cooperative agreements totalling approximately USD 34 million, of which around USD 13 million had been disbursed prior to the 2025 suspension. The funding freeze occurs at a time when the NRT is already under intense scrutiny. The organisation has faced repeated allegations of human rights abuses and violations of community land rights linked to its conservation and security activities. These controversies reflect broader tensions surrounding international conservation and development partnerships in northern Kenya, where land disputes have generated legal challenges and local opposition. In 2025, the Environment and Land Court of Kenya ruled that the NRT’s establishment of the Biliqo Bulesa and Cherab conservancies violated community land rights, highlighting the legal and procedural risks associated with such interventions. Despite these criticisms, the NRT leadership and its remaining donors continue to support the conservancy model as an appropriate mechanism for conservation and local development. As noted by a senior NRT officer: ‘You won’t get 100 percent of people supporting the conservancy model. Ten to fifteen percent may oppose it due to different interests, and competitors focus on that ten percent.’ This underscores the diversity of community interests and the contested character of conservancy governance. The NRT and its member conservancies oversee more than 10% of Kenya’s land area and perform functions typically associated with the state, including education and security provision. The withdrawal of USAID funding may therefore trigger substantial programmatic cuts and operational downsizing, with immediate repercussions for local communities and rangeland governance, especially in newer conservancies that lack financial self-sufficiency and are not integrated into carbon credit projects.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Environment, Natural Resources, USAID, Development Policy, and Global Economy
Political Geography:
Kenya and Africa

632. Green investments and local tensions in northern Kenya's drylands

Author:
Caleb Braham, Ceciliah Njagi, Emma Bostrup, Eric Kioko, and Jane Mutune
Publication Date:
04-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
Large green investments in northern Kenya are reshaping how local communities use and manage their land. This is creating new legal and political tensions that risk undermining the country’s green transition. Northern Kenya plays a central role in the country’s green transition. Its drylands and rangelands have attracted large-scale investments in renewable energy, conservation and climate finance, including carbon credit projects. This is positioning the region as a strategic site for national and international green development. However, the rapid expansion of green projects in this historically marginalised region has generated significant legal and social concerns. Communities are increasingly challenging land acquisitions, with several disputes ending up in court. There are also reports that community land rights have been overlooked, opportunities for meaningful participation limited, and project benefits unevenly distributed. These conflicts are not simply symptoms of failed project implementation but reflect unresolved tensions over land governance, authority and participation that are now becoming embedded in Kenya’s green transition. They are rooted in a history of colonial land alienation, structural inequalities and centralised governance models that have long characterised the relationship between Nairobi and northern Kenya. Left unresolved, these issues have perpetuated a more concentrated authority over land and investment decisions in practice than Kenya’s 2010 constitutional reforms suggest. As green investments accelerate, these historical patterns resurface, making projects more politically sensitive and legally vulnerable. Projects that rely on perfunctory or non-transparent community involvement are more likely to encounter court action, stalled implementation and collective resistance. This, in turn, creates regulatory and political uncertainty that can undermine their long‑term stability. While this tension reflects broader global challenges of inclusive green development, it is amplified in northern Kenya by the sheer scale of land investments, the contested legal status of community land, uneven implementation of the Community Land Act and the longstanding political and economic marginalisation of pastoral regions by central state institutions. The region’s development trajectory points towards either an exclusionary green transition or one grounded in meaningful community involvement and partnership; the outcome will depend on how state institutions, donors and private investors choose to structure and govern green investments in response to the issues raised.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Environment, Natural Resources, Investment, Development Policy, and Global Economy
Political Geography:
Kenya and Africa

633. Climate change makes Arctic operations ever more complex

Author:
Lin Alexandra Mortensgaard
Publication Date:
05-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
It is a truth widely acknowledged that the Arctic region is warming several times faster than the rest of the globe and, as a consequence, Arctic military operations are already being fundamentally reshaped. But this is not simply a question of the Arctic becoming more accessible. As a Canadian vice-admiral recently noted, ‘it’s harder to operate up there because of climate change. Because the ice is even less predictable than it has been in the past. (...) Everything in the North is much more complex as a result of climate change’.1 Security actors such as military forces, coastguards, intelligence agencies, diplomats and private contractors operating in the Arctic – but also in headquarters far from northern latitudes – increasingly have to acknowledge and plan for these transformations. The dramatic changes to the ice, snow and frost that still characterise the Arctic region have tangible consequences on a daily basis for all those living and operating in this complex geography. It is, however, not only the ice and frost of the Arctic that is changing, but also weather patterns, ocean currents, coastlines and the topography of landmasses. Security actors require an understanding of the changing Arctic climate – an understanding which is at once systematic and comprehensive, but also not so inflexible that it insists on providing exhaustive foresight for all possible trajectories. While climate scientists provide scenarios and theorise tipping points for the global climate, even their projections involve many unknowns. These existing uncertainties are exacerbated by disrupted data flows and knowledge exchange with scientific communities in both Russia and the United States. In light of this, it is very difficult for security actors operating in the Arctic region to project concretely the future challenges presented to their activities by climate change. We can, however, outline different types of change that are relevant at present, and use this typology to consider the implications for Arctic operations. I outline three different types of change here: changes to the size of the operational area and area of interest; changes to the physical state of the area; and changes to the topography of the area. These types overlap but have different degrees of relevance on for example land and sea. I use ‘change’ here because these transformations are not simply a matter of an ‘increasing’ temperature or a ‘decreasing’ amount of ice. To assume that climate change is linear and unidirectional is to misunderstand what it entails as a localised, current and future phenomenon.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Climate Change, and Natural Resources
Political Geography:
Arctic

634. Gone with the West: How the transatlantic split helps China and forces Europe to rethink its Indo-Pacific strategy

Author:
Andreas Bøje Forsby
Publication Date:
02-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
The erosion of transatlantic unity under a renewed America First strategy has weakened collective Western responses to China and left Europe vulnerable to coercive diplomacy from both Beijing and Washington. Caught between an unreliable America and an assertive China, Europe must strengthen its strategic autonomy by building deeper relationships with like-minded countries in the Indo-Pacific region. Like-mindedness, previously the linchpin of Western unity, no longer appears to play much of a role in building geostrategic coalitions in the Indo-Pacific region.1 Instead, as the Trump administration jettisons the liberal rules-based international order, Europe is fundamentally reconsidering its partnership with America and consequently its approach to the Indo-Pacific. Even the prevailing transatlantic consensus on China – viewed as a “systemic challenger” that should be tackled together – is now unravelling.2 Against the wider backdrop of a return to an era of great power prerogatives and spheres of influence, Europe therefore finds itself in a tight spot in the Indo-Pacific region – unwelcome to both Washington and Beijing. However, given its economic dynamism and critical manufacturing industries, the Indo-Pacific is far too important to be left to Washington and Beijing’s devices. Indeed, many Indo-Pacific countries share not only Europe’s advocacy of free trade, multilateralism, liberal institutions and a rules-based order, but also its unease about relying too much on either China or the US, which together may foster a renewed sense of like-mindedness with Europe. For its part, Europe urgently needs to extend and deepen its own set of strategic relationships with countries in the Indo-Pacific region in the face of growing Chinese and American assertiveness. The proposed new EU security strategy will hopefully address this as a geostrategic priority.3
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Transatlantic Relations, and Global Economy
Political Geography:
China, Europe, Asia, and Indo-Pacific

635. Community finance and agroecology build climate resilience in East and Central Africa

Author:
Esbern Friis-Hanse, Kristine Kaaber Pors, and Donald Kasongi
Publication Date:
05-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
Climate change has become a defining feature of rural life across Africa. Rural households face increasingly erratic rainfall, shifting seasons, prolonged droughts and destructive floods. These are no longer exceptional shocks but recurring stresses that undermine food security, livelihoods and social Agriculture remains central to African economies, employing more than half of the labour force in sub-Saharan Africa and absorbing most new entrants in contexts marked by a large youth population. Yet agriculture is also highly climate-exposed. Smallholder farmers depend on rainfall, soil fertility and seasonal predictability, conditions that climate change is steadily eroding. Public responses have often been insufficient. Agricultural extension systems have weakened in many countries, and climate finance rarely reaches smallholders effectively. Support frequently comes in the form of standardised input packages or short-term projects that fail to address structural vulnerability. In some cases, such interventions increase risk, for example when farmers take loans for inputs poorly suited to local ecological conditions. Against this backdrop, community-based institutions offer an alternative pathway. This brief draws on a multi-country learning process examining how Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) contribute to resilience-building among smallholder households in Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. It argues that VSLAs should be seen not merely as informal financial tools but as resilience-building institutions with broader policy implications.
Topic:
Agriculture, Climate Change, Rural, Resilience, and Agroecology
Political Geography:
Africa

636. Women's organisations are cracking the glass ceiling in war-time Ukraine

Author:
Karmen Tornius
Publication Date:
05-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
It is well known that armed conflict affects women’s lives negatively through violence, destruction, displacement and militarisation. War also often reinforces traditional gender norms whereby men are considered the defenders and women primarily as the civilian victims of the conflict. Ukraine is no exception. War brought new gender concerns to the fore (e.g., female veterans or gender in recovery and reconstruction), driving new policy approaches. Millions of women have been displaced, many have suffered personal and material losses and some have experienced violence first‑hand. At the same time, research from other conflict‑affected contexts shows that the societal and political ruptures caused by war can, over the medium term, open new spaces for advancing gender equality. In Ukraine, women’s organisations have sought to seize such openings, even as they respond to the immediate harms of war. This policy brief examines how Ukrainian women’s organisations navigate these constraints and opportunities in their efforts to strengthen women’s rights.
Topic:
Civil Society, Women, Armed Conflict, Russia-Ukraine War, and Gender Equality
Political Geography:
Europe and Ukraine

637. Forced displacement from Ukraine

Author:
Ninna Nyberg Sørensen
Publication Date:
02-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has triggered one of the most significant population movements in recent European history. The loss of national population is not just a demographic challenge; it is a human capital problem that challenges the reconstruction and future development of Ukraine. The situation in Ukraine is characterised by a protracted war and significant uncertainty about its outcome and long-term consequences. In European countries hosting Ukrainian refugees, the legal status and the integration prospects for those under temporary protection remain unsettled. Drawing on a desk study of recent academic analyses and policy reports, as well as 18 semi-structured interviews with Ukrainian refugees and diaspora representatives in Denmark, this policy brief considers how various outcomes of the war in Ukraine might shape mobility, and what policy responses could be conducive to reconstruction.
Topic:
Refugees, Russia-Ukraine War, and Forced Displacement
Political Geography:
Europe and Ukraine

638. The EU in a changing threat landscape at sea

Author:
Jessica Larsen
Publication Date:
03-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
The European Union is strengthening its strategic autonomy at a time when geopolitics, hybrid threats and actual war are accelerating insecurity at sea. The situation calls for a review of the EU’s role as a maritime security provider. With 90% of trade moving by sea, the European Union (EU) has economic and security interests in the peaceful and sustainable use of the world’s oceans. Yet the EU’s ability to protect its supply chains, and its energy and food security is compromised by changing threat patterns at sea and the decline of multilateralism with which to address them. This policy brief presents six priority areas that the EU and member states may address to strengthen the EU’s strategic autonomy and consolidate its role as a maritime security provider.
Topic:
Security, European Union, Geopolitics, Maritime, Hybrid Threats, and Strategic Autonomy
Political Geography:
Europe

639. Rethinking Europe's approach to a defiant Sahel

Author:
Signe Marie Cold-Ravnkilde, Eva Stambøl, and Almamy Sylla
Publication Date:
02-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
For Europe, disengaging from the Sahel means ceding influence in a region where geopolitical competition is intensifying and where European security is increasingly interconnected with local conflicts and threats. Continued cooperation enables Europe to support stability, protect its interests and those of Sahelian countries, and maintain credible global partnerships. But as observed by a Malian economist, ‘Western policies no longer have credibility in Africa.’ (Interview, Bamako, March 2023). Across Africa, anti-colonial and neo‑pan-African discourses have gained strength since the early 2020s, influencing domestic politics and shaping alliance shifts. Their core aims are renewed sovereignty and a more equal global order, less dominated by Eurocentrism and Western hegemony. These ideas inform political ideology not only in countries such as Senegal, Benin, the Central African Republic and Chad, but have also become central to the military regimes in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger following the coups of 2020–2023. Yet European policy debates often reductively view these ideological movements as effects of Russian propaganda or Chinese strategic expansion.1 For example, in January 2024 EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell described the Sahel’s distancing from France and ECOWAS as occurring ‘at the same time that we see the Russian influence increase’, framing these changes as driven by Russia’s expanding military and political presence.2 Such interpretations deny African agency and reproduce the paternalistic, Eurocentric assumptions that anticolonial actors explicitly contest. They also ignore that contemporary anticolonialism and Pan-Africanism are not new phenomena but draw on longstanding histories of political resistance rooted in the struggles for decolonisation. These misreadings risk skewing European policy responses to regional security and development at a moment when the Sahel’s geopolitical alignments are undergoing fundamental change.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Post Colonialism, Geopolitics, and Anti-Colonialism
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Mali, and Sahel

640. Climate, Peace and Security in the UN Security Council

Author:
Helene Maria Kyed and Justine Chambers
Publication Date:
01-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
Climate, peace and security (CPS) is a recurring topic of debate within the UN Security Council (UNSC) that, despite never achieving a formal thematic mandate, has advanced with the support of a majority of council members since 2011 and is now reflected in 11 missions. CPS engagement in the UNSC rests on an understanding that the impacts of climate change deepen vulnerabilities that can aggravate existing threats to international peace and security, placing the issue within the UNSC’s charter-given mandate. CPS-supportive council members also acknowledge that climate impacts challenge UN peacekeeping operations and that addressing climate change is important to both peacebuilding efforts and the conflict prevention mandate of the UNSC. The existential threat that sea-level rise poses to low-lying coastal states is another recurring topic. As an elected member of the UNSC (2025-2026), Denmark has positioned itself as a champion of CPS, aligned with one of its three thematic priorities. In 2025, Denmark co-chaired with Sierra Leone the Joint Pledges on CPS – an initiative launched in 2023 to put a spotlight on CPS in the UNSC’s thematic and geographic meetings, resolutions, mission mandates and analyses. Denmark also stressed climate-related risks in the context of Yemen during its March 2025 presidency and later played a role in retaining CPS-language in the mandate renewal of the UN mission in South Sudan. It has collaborated on events, linking CPS to the protection of civilians, peace operations and the ‘Women, Peace and Security’ agenda. These efforts unfold in a challenging political environment, marked by funding cuts to UN missions and a renewed focus on rearmament and hard-security priorities that risk underprioritizing climate change. While Russia and China have consistently opposed placing climate-related issues under the UNSC’s remit, the US’s recent withdrawal from CPS-supporting groups in the Council and its exit from the Paris Agreement have heightened the risk of eroding progress on CPS.
Topic:
Security, Climate Change, Geopolitics, Peace, and UN Security Council
Political Geography:
Global Focus and United States of America

641. Diaspora engagement by Ukrainians in Denmark

Author:
Nauja Kleist and Ida Marie Savio Vammen
Publication Date:
02-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
Regardless of how the war ends, Ukraine’s diaspora will be an important actor in the country’s future. Sustained and long-term support to diaspora engagement is therefore critical for reconstruction, development, and cultural survival. On 24 February 2022, when news of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine broke, Ukrainian communities across Denmark quickly mobilised. Established diaspora organisations, Ukrainian churches and a diverse group of migrants already residing in Denmark joined forces to help and to coordinate the immediate response to the new reality of war. ‘Everything was on fire’, said a female activist recalling the first critical months when volunteers worked around the clock. From engineers and managers to agricultural workers, Ukrainians mobilised across sectors, organising support to Ukraine, assistance to newly-arrived refugees and coordination with Danish civil society and private companies. As the war continued, these initial emergency networks evolved into more institutionalised frameworks. Based on 18 interviews conducted in 2025 with experts and Ukrainian activists in Denmark, this policy brief discusses the extensive and sustained Ukrainian diaspora engagement in response to the war, arguing that the diaspora plays a significant role and will continue to do so in the future.
Topic:
Development, Migration, Diaspora, Refugees, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Europe, Ukraine, and Denmark

642. Russia targeting African migrants in digital recruitment campaigns

Author:
Signe Marie Cold-Ravnkilde and Karen Philippa Larsen
Publication Date:
01-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
As the war in Ukraine approaches its fourth year, Russia faces a rising demand for labour across the army, defence industry and civilian sectors. Heavy battlefield losses make the recruitment of Russian nationals difficult, and the military’s continuous need for drones requires a large workforce for production. To fill these gaps, Russia is increasingly looking beyond its borders. Prominent cases of people from North Korea and China serving as frontline soldiers have drawn international attention. Since 2024, media reports have also indicated that Russian actors are luring migrants to the frontline with misleading promises of civilian work and citizenship through simplified procedures in exchange for military service.1 Recruitment is also increasingly targeting young African women—particularly Nigerian students to work in drone factories supporting Russia’s military war machine.2
Topic:
Labor Issues, Recruitment, Migrants, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Africa, Russia, and Ukraine

643. American ambitions in Greenland pose key dilemmas for the Kingdom of Denmark in NATO

Author:
Lise Wiederholt Christensen
Publication Date:
01-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
The conflict between the United States and the Kingdom of Denmark concerning the ownership of Greenland has placed the Kingdom under immense pressure. This conflict will have long-lasting consequences for the NATO Alliance and for the Kingdom of Denmark.1 The Greenland–Denmark–US conflict is a strategic shock for the Kingdom of Denmark and its Arctic security policy. The Kingdom of Denmark has been confronted with a potential recalibration of its relationship with its most important Ally, the US, while simultaneously having to establish new relations with the European Allies in the Arctic region. The Kingdom is navigating exceptionally difficult strategic balances that have been accelerated by this crisis, but which will not necessarily disappear in the near future.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, NATO, and Alliance
Political Geography:
Europe, Denmark, Greenland, Arctic, and United States of America

644. Military minerals: Europe's new defense industrial capacities demand reliable supply chains

Author:
Luke Patey
Publication Date:
02-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
The geopolitical upheaval of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine coupled with the return of US President Donald Trump to the White House have kick-started massive new defence spending commitments across the European Union. Yet even where EU member states overcome longstanding policy gridlock and red tape to advance rearmament plans, new industrial defence capacities require reliable supply chains for critical minerals and defence materials to ensure future production. The reopening of a mothballed ammunition factory in Denmark offers a window into understanding the political, bureaucratic and supply chain single points of failure that could upend new industrial defence capacities in Europe.
Topic:
European Union, Defense Industry, Supply Chains, and Critical Minerals
Political Geography:
China and Europe

645. The Teesta River Project: Bangladesh Faces a New Phase in Managing the Critical Balance Between New Delhi and Beijing

Author:
FARAS
Publication Date:
07-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS)
Abstract:
In his first foreign tour since taking office last February, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Tarique Rahman visited Malaysia on June 21 and 22, 2026, before traveling immediately to China for a four-day visit that included the Summer Davos Forum and official bilateral talks. The visit to Malaysia, the tour's first stop, carried clear economic implications. Discussions covered migrant labor issues and ways to strengthen cooperation in trade, investment, energy, and technology, reflecting Dhaka's “Look East” policy and its effort to deepen engagement with the economies of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Rahman's visit to China, however, carried far greater political and strategic significance. Three factors explain that weight: the visit came as part of his first foreign tour; it sent signals about how Dhaka intends to balance relations between China and India, particularly regarding the comprehensive management project for the Teesta River; and it stood out because Rahman had not yet made an early visit to India, Bangladesh's closest neighbor. It underscores that strengthening ties with China remains one of the constants of Bangladesh's foreign policy despite recent changes in government. The two countries signed the Comprehensive Strategic Cooperative Partnership agreement in July 2024 under Sheikh Hasina, an agreement reaffirmed during interim government chief Muhammad Yunus's visit to China in March 2025. Rahman's visit continues these constants while also reflecting his aspiration to expand cooperation and accelerate the implementation of Belt and Road Initiative provisions, such as Mongla Port and the Chinese Economic and Industrial Zone in Chittagong. It further aims to complete trade negotiations, boost investment, and deepen cooperation on water management, especially the comprehensive management and rehabilitation project for the Teesta River.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Development, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Regional Economy, and Rivers
Political Geography:
Bangladesh and South Asia

646. An Institutional Test: How Did the U.S. Congress Handle the Case of the Anti-Politicization Fund?

Author:
FARAS
Publication Date:
08-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS)
Abstract:
The Anti-Politicization Fund, valued at about 1.8 billion dollars, sparked a political and legal crisis within the United States, after facing objections from within the Republican Party itself, alongside criticism related to the mechanism of its creation and the uses of its funds. The dispute reached its peak when Republican Senators Thom Tillis and John Cornyn threatened to obstruct the nomination of Todd Blanche for the position of Attorney General, unless he provided written guarantees to permanently abolish the fund and narrow the scope of the protection preventing the IRS from reviewing some of President Trump’s, his family’s, and his companies’ previous tax filings. Under the weight of this pressure, Blanche issued a decision rescinding the order issued in May 2026 under which the fund had been established, ending the impasse with the two senators and prompting them to announce their readiness to support his nomination. However, the abolition of the fund did not fully end the surrounding controversy: questions remained regarding the legal basis for its creation, the weakness of oversight over its funds, the ambiguity of the categories benefiting from it, the legality of the protection granted to Trump and his family, and the possibility of re-establishing the fund in the future.
Topic:
Government, Politics, Domestic Politics, and Republican Party
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

647. Washington’s Influence: The Significance of Taiwan’s Annual Han Kuang 2026 Military Exercises

Author:
FARAS
Publication Date:
08-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS)
Abstract:
On August 5, 2026, Taiwan launched its annual Han Kuang military exercises, a ten-day event continuing through August 14, with the aim of simulating the country’s response should China resort to force to reclaim the self-governing island, which Beijing considers a territory under its jurisdiction. The drills included combat scenarios for troops and reservists to test how they would respond to a potential attack on the island. Taiwanese military circles described the exercises as “exceptional and the first of their kind,” given their comprehensiveness and the scale of the realistic threats they simulate, in addition to coming at a time of escalating military tensions between Beijing and Taipei, as well as continued disagreements between Washington and Beijing over the Taiwan issue.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Military Affairs, and Regional Security
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, Asia, and United States of America

648. Strengthening Cooperation: The Goals and Outcomes of the Iraqi Prime Minister's Visit to Turkey

Author:
FARAS
Publication Date:
08-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS)
Abstract:
On July 28, 2026, Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi paid his first visit to Ankara since taking office in April 2026, in response to an invitation from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The visit comes amid a full agenda that reflects Baghdad's priority on development and the economy in the period ahead. It also comes against the backdrop of both countries' pursuit of stronger strategic relations, at a time when bilateral ties face complex files, including water, energy, and security. Turkey also hopes that relations between the two countries, which rose to the level of a strategic partnership during the tenure of former Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani, will witness further development and a deepening of cooperation during al-Zaidi's tenure as head of government.
Topic:
Development, Diplomacy, International Cooperation, and Economy
Political Geography:
Iraq, Turkey, and Middle East

649. Diversifying Partnerships: What Are the Motives Behind the South Korean President’s Tour of Latin America?

Author:
FARAS
Publication Date:
08-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS)
Abstract:
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung visited three Latin American countries — Brazil, Chile, and Argentina — his first such visit since assuming office in June 2025. The trip formed part of a broader 11-day foreign tour, held from July 24 to August 3, 2026, that also took him to San Francisco and Frankfurt. During his stops in Latin America, Lee held summit talks with his counterparts from the three countries, focused on expanding trade and investment, opening new markets, resuming negotiations on a free trade agreement between Korea and the “Mercosur” bloc, updating the free trade agreement with Chile, and expanding the horizons of Korean diplomacy toward the Global South.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Global South, and Trade
Political Geography:
Asia, South Korea, Brazil, Argentina, Latin America, and Chile

650. Crossroads: Do Growing Divisions Within Merz’s Party Threaten His Chancellorship?

Author:
FARAS
Publication Date:
08-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS)
Abstract:
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is facing growing criticism within his own party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), following the sweeping cabinet reshuffle he carried out at the end of July 2026. Many party officials expressed their displeasure with the changes, a notably unusual shift for a party long known for its discipline. The episode represents one of the most complex political crises Merz has faced since coming to power in May 2025.
Topic:
Domestic Politics, Political Crisis, and Friedrich Merz
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

651. Navigating Disagreement: Why Did the Brazilian President Visit the United States?

Author:
FARAS
Publication Date:
05-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS)
Abstract:
On May 6, 2026, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva traveled to Washington at the invitation of U.S. President Donald Trump, seeking to strengthen bilateral relations. The visit coincided with mounting domestic pressures on the Brazilian president, following a series of successive setbacks—most notably a vote by more than two-thirds of Congress members in favor of legislation proposing to reduce sentences handed down against former President Bolsonaro, despite the presidential veto, and the Senate’s rejection of da Silva’s nominee for the Supreme Court—the first time in decades that a president’s choice for the Court had been turned down. Those reverses gave fresh momentum to Bolsonaro’s son as a leading presidential contender in the 2026 elections, even as da Silva’s capacity to advance his domestic agenda showed signs of strain. Complicating the picture further were a number of unresolved Brazilian-American tensions, set against a turbulent international and regional backdrop marked by escalating U.S.–Chinese competition in Latin America, a dynamic that rendered the visit a practical test of Brazil’s ability to balance its rapprochement with Washington against its commitments to Beijing within the BRICS framework. Against that backdrop, the analysis that follows traces the most significant points of friction in Brazilian-American relations in recent times, examines the motives behind the visit and its anticipated outcomes, and assesses the potential repercussions for the wider region.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Bilateral Relations, Geopolitics, Donald Trump, and Lula da Silva
Political Geography:
Brazil, South America, and United States of America

652. Technical Alliance: The Turkestan Summit and the Digital Integration Drive Within the Organization of Turkic States

Author:
FARAS
Publication Date:
06-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS)
Abstract:
The informal summit of the Organization of Turkic States convened in Turkestan, Kazakhstan, on May 15, 2026, reaffirming the Organization’s standing as the foundational pillar of Turkic influence in Central Asia. Far from a ceremonial gathering, the summit appeared to be a concerted attempt to forge a new vision for the future of the Turkic world, one that moves beyond traditional cultural frameworks toward more substantive economic and technological partnerships. Founded on October 3, 2009, under the name the Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking States (the Turkic Council), the Organization came into being following the signing of the Nakhchivan Agreement between Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. At the Baku Summit in 2019, Uzbekistan announced its accession, bringing the total membership to five states, alongside Turkmenistan, Hungary, and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus as observers. At the Istanbul Summit in 2021, the body was formally renamed the “Organization of Turkic States.”
Topic:
Diplomacy, Geopolitics, Economy, Regional Organizations, and Organization of Turkic States
Political Geography:
Central Asia and Turkic States

653. A Rightward Turn: Domestic and Foreign Policy Implications of De la Espriella’s Rise in Colombia

Author:
FARAS
Publication Date:
07-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS)
Abstract:
Colombia’s presidential runoff, held on June 21, 2026, resulted in a victory for right-wing candidate Abelardo De la Espriella, who won 49.66% of the vote against 48.70% for left-wing Senator Iván Cepeda, the candidate of the ruling “Historic Pact” coalition. The result came amid an unprecedented degree of political and security polarization and marks a shift to the right after four years of rule under Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing president. Barred by the constitution from seeking re-election, Petro had thrown his support behind Cepeda as his successor. De la Espriella had also led the first round of the elections, taking 43.7% of the vote against Cepeda’s 40.9%, a result that set the stage for a direct contest between two political projects with sharply divergent visions on security and the economy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Elections, Domestic Policy, Right-Wing Politics, and Abelardo de la Espriella
Political Geography:
Colombia and South America

654. Escalating Threats: Africa in the Global Terrorism Index 2026

Author:
FARAS
Publication Date:
04-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS)
Abstract:
The Institute for Economics and Peace has released the thirteenth edition of the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) for 2026 — the annual report widely regarded as the most comprehensive reference for monitoring and analyzing global terrorism patterns. The Index draws on Dragonfly’s Terrorism Tracker database, which meticulously documents terrorist incidents across approximately 163 countries, offering a detailed picture of the scale and trajectory of the phenomenon worldwide. A defining feature of this edition is its focus on Sub-Saharan Africa, where Sahel countries topped the list of nations most affected by terrorism during 2025. Against that backdrop, the report examines the scale of attacks and casualties while analyzing the most active organizations and the political and social conditions that have fueled the escalation of armed violence across the continent.
Topic:
Security, Terrorism, Violence, and Transnational Threats
Political Geography:
Africa and Sahel

655. Escalating Pressure: Where Is Washington’s Cuba Strategy Heading?

Author:
FARAS
Publication Date:
06-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS)
Abstract:
May 2026 did not pass without the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump adding a new layer to its policy of maximum pressure on Cuba. American measures unfolded as a graduated campaign aimed at simultaneously choking the island’s political, economic, and security structures. Cuba is gaining increasing importance in American strategic calculations due to its sensitive geographic location and close relations with both Russia and China. Washington now treats the island as a security and geopolitical challenge extending well beyond its borders. Recent developments accordingly raise questions about the motives behind American escalation, its strategic dimensions, and the possible scenarios for the future of the crisis between Washington and Havana.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Politics, and Economy
Political Geography:
Cuba and United States of America

656. Conflict and Its Reverberations: The Iran War and Its Implications for the Balance of Power in Asia and the Indo-Pacific

Author:
FARAS
Publication Date:
04-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS)
Abstract:
Now entering its fourth consecutive week, the American-Israeli operation against Iran continues to generate mounting regional and international repercussions — not least of which are growing concerns over its implications for Asia and the broader Indo-Pacific (the Indian and Pacific Oceans). A number of observers have raised the prospect that a prolonged Middle East campaign could prompt a “temporary” American strategic redeployment away from the Indo-Pacific and toward the region of active conflict.
Topic:
Geopolitics, Economy, Armed Conflict, and 2026 Iran War
Political Geography:
Asia, United States of America, and Indo-Pacific

657. Arena of Rivals: China, Taiwan, and the Contest for Africa

Author:
FARAS
Publication Date:
05-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS)
Abstract:
The China-Taiwan file has undergone a notable transformation at the African level. Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te concluded his visit to Eswatini on May 5, 2026 — a trip that had originally been scheduled for April 22 to 26 before being postponed, after Seychelles, Mauritius, and Madagascar revoked overflight permits for the Taiwanese presidential aircraft. Beijing, meanwhile, received the President of Mozambique from April 18 to 22, who met Chinese President Xi Jinping at the latter’s invitation, as well as Namibia’s Minister of International Relations and Trade from April 11 to 18.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Geopolitics, and Trade
Political Geography:
Africa, China, Taiwan, Asia, and Eswatini

658. Balancing Act: Why China Chose “Pragmatic Neutrality” in the War on Iran

Author:
FARAS
Publication Date:
03-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS)
Abstract:
Since the outbreak of the American-Israeli war on Iran on February 28, 2026, China has maintained what can best be described as a flexible, carefully calibrated stance. Foreign Ministry statements issued on February 28, March 2, and March 11 condemned the American-Israeli strikes, called for a halt to the escalation, and emphasized that the war serves no party’s interests. Complementing its public statements, Beijing reinforced its diplomatic engagement by dispatching its special envoy for Middle Eastern affairs, Zhai Jun, to the region.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Neutrality, and 2026 Iran War
Political Geography:
China, Iran, and Asia

659. Strategic Hedging in Motion: Japan’s Trajectory to Counter Growing Chinese Influence

Author:
FARAS
Publication Date:
02-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS)
Abstract:
Japan has recently intensified diplomatic and security efforts to reinforce regional alliances and mitigate the potential repercussions of Beijing’s rising power amid China’s significant expansion of influence across Southeast and East Asia. Expanded security coordination and military cooperation with the United States, South Korea, and the Philippines now characterize these initiatives, raising important questions about their impact on the regional balance in East Asia.
Topic:
Security, Diplomacy, Hedging, Foreign Influence, and Military Cooperation
Political Geography:
Japan, China, and Asia

660. A Turbulent Scene: Myanmar’s Political Landscape After the Legislative Elections

Author:
FARAS
Publication Date:
02-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS)
Abstract:
The Union Solidarity and Development Party, backed by Myanmar’s military, emerged as the dominant force in the legislative elections held across the country. Conducted in three phases from late December 2025 to January 2026, these elections marked the first polls in Naypyidaw since the military seized power in 2021. Western nations widely criticized the process, viewing it as an attempt to cement military control over Myanmar’s political arena.
Topic:
Elections, Domestic Politics, Political Parties, and Legislature
Political Geography:
Southeast Asia and Myanmar

661. Building Citizens: Social and Behavior Change for Stronger Democratic Cultures

Author:
Fernanda Buril and Nicolas Kaczorowski
Publication Date:
08-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES)
Abstract:
Given the critical connection between citizen engagement and democratic health, it is no surprise that democracy assistance programs often focus on increasing civic and voter engagement, particularly among groups that face persistent barriers to participation. However well-intended, these efforts are often based on blanket assumptions implementers make about what is needed to change undesirable patterns, without a full examination of behaviors, social norms, and structural conditions that shape whether people feel able, motivated, and supported to engage. This is where social and behavior change (SBC) approaches play a crucial role. SBC refers to systematic, evidence-based efforts to influence individuals’ actions, as well as the social norms, attitudes, and environments that shape them, to achieve sustained positive outcomes. These conscious efforts to address problems at their roots and in holistic and sustainable ways are more important than ever in the current environment, where foreign aid resources are scarce and the need for more impactful programs is only growing. This report helps fill this gap by applying SBC lenses to civic and voter engagement programming, offering a practical way to diagnose barriers, design more responsive interventions, and assess whether these interventions contribute to more durable democratic participation. It also illustrates these applications through flagship IFES programs implemented in Tunisia, Ukraine, and Nepal, and provides guidance to implementers to maximize program effectiveness.
Topic:
Culture, Elections, Democracy, Citizenship, and Political Engagement
Political Geography:
Global Focus

662. Solving the Puzzle: Making Political Finance Data Work

Author:
Chelsea Dreher
Publication Date:
07-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES)
Abstract:
Political party and campaign finance transparency are essential to maintaining a level electoral playing field and preventing undue influence in politics. The effectiveness of accountability mechanisms, however, depends in large part on the quality and usability of underlying data. As legal and regulatory frameworks evolve to address new forms of campaigning and illicit interference, the volume and complexity of financial data continue to grow, making effective tracking and analysis increasingly challenging. Robust digital recordkeeping, coupled with targeted and timely interagency data sharing, can reduce reporting burdens, strengthen compliance and verification processes, and improve accountability for all actors involved in political finance oversight and government integrity. Drawing on desk research and interviews with state and non-state political finance experts across diverse legal contexts, this guide provides a flexible and practical framework for improving the quality and interoperability of political finance data. It is designed to meet oversight institutions at different stages of digitalization and data management. The guide introduces key terminology to support engagement with data specialists and engineers; outlines steps to strengthen and clean internal datasets; identifies entry points for advancing interoperability; and offers recommendations for navigating inter-agency data-sharing arrangements – helping institutions to establish effective collaboration frameworks from the outset.
Topic:
Elections, Transparency, Political Parties, and Campaign Finance
Political Geography:
Global Focus

663. Violence Against Women in Elections Framework

Author:
Regina Waugh
Publication Date:
05-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES)
Abstract:
The International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) is proud to release an update to the 2016 publication, Violence Against Women in Elections: A Framework for Assessment, Monitoring, and Response. With the 2016 publication, IFES established a robust and comprehensive definition for the types of harm women face in the context of the electoral process. The framework helped guide assessments of violence against women in elections (VAWE) in countries around the world, documenting and classifying the range of harms and challenges that women experience when seeking to exercise their political and electoral rights. Now, in 2026, this new release builds on knowledge gained from 10 years of implementing the original VAWE framework. It streamlines the data collection process for the VAWE assessment, and adds a focus on the increased role that online violence and gendered disinformation – including violence and gendered disinformation facilitated and exacerbated by artificial intelligence (AI) – play in the electoral context. The original 2016 publication remains available for reference; continue scrolling to "From the Archive" to download the 2016 Framework.
Topic:
Elections, Women, Gender Based Violence, and Violence
Political Geography:
Global Focus

664. From Reform to Credibility: Rethinking How Policy Shapes Investment in Africa

Author:
Chukwuka Onyekwena and Adedeji Adeniran
Publication Date:
05-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for the Study of the Economies of Africa (CSEA)
Abstract:
This paper examines how policy reforms influence investment, emphasising the role of policy credibility. Using panel data for African economies, the results confirm that improvements in the policy environment are associated with higher investment. However, these effects are gradual and shaped by persistence in investment behaviour, reflecting the forward-looking nature of capital decisions. The key finding is that the effectiveness of reforms depends on their credibility. Sustained reforms over time generate stronger investment responses, while those subject to reversal or volatility have weaker effects. Policy stability does not independently drive investment; rather, it shapes how reforms are interpreted by investors. These findings suggest that attracting investment requires more than implementing reforms. It requires sustaining them in a consistent and predictable manner. Policy credibility, therefore, emerges as a critical determinant of investment outcomes
Topic:
Reform, Economy, Investment, and Credibility
Political Geography:
Africa

665. A Common Denominator in Conflict Studies: Introducing Political Non-State Organisations

Author:
Tom Konzack
Publication Date:
06-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA)
Abstract:
This Working Paper advances the conceptualisation of non-state actors by introducing political non-state organisations (PNSOs) as a distinct analytical category. Drawing on insights from terrorism, civil war, and social movement studies, it argues that prevailing definitions suffer from conceptual ambiguity and empirical inconsistencies, hampering comparative research. PNSOs are defined by their formal organisational structures, political objectives, and their engagement in physical, publicly observable actions taking place outside institutional political channels. This framework integrates elements of both actors commonly denoted non-state and social movement organisations, while delineating PNSOs clearly from state and apolitical entities. The approach also captures hybrid actors who combine protest and electoral politics. By introducing PNSOs, a more consistent cross-case comparison of entities involved in political contention is made possible – using violent or non-violent tactics. The conceptual refinement addresses methodological fragmentation in existing datasets, offering a coherent foundation for empirical studies of contentious politics across diverse political and geographical contexts.
Topic:
Political Violence, Civil War, Terrorism, Non State Actors, Social Movement, and Tactics
Political Geography:
Global Focus

666. Paths to Openness: Immigrant Background and Attitudes toward Immigrants

Author:
Daniel Tuki
Publication Date:
05-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA)
Abstract:
Using data from the World Values Survey (WVS) and European Values Survey (EVS) covering 92 countries (n ≈ 157,000), this study examines whether individuals with an immigrant background exhibit more accommodating attitudes toward immigrants than those without such roots. “Immigrant background” is measured by whether at least one parent was born outside the respondent’s country of residence. “Accommodating of immigrants” is captured using three indicators: willingness to have immigrants / foreign workers as neighbors; assessment of immigrants’ contribution to economic development; and trust in people of a different nationality. While the first two measures focus on “immigrants,” the third homes in on “non-nationals,” allowing for an assessment of whether attitudes toward immigrants—a highly politicized group—extend to the more neutral category of “non-nationals.” Regression analyses indicate that individuals with an immigrant background are significantly more likely to express willingness to have immigrants as neighbors, to evaluate immigrants’ economic contributions positively, and to trust non-nationals. These patterns are consistent with theories of social identity and intergroup contact, suggesting that shared backgrounds and transnational ties may foster in-group extension and greater openness toward immigrants.
Topic:
Migration, Immigration, Tolerance, Society, Trust, and Prejudice
Political Geography:
Global Focus

667. This Sand Is Mine! Why Sand Mining Has Led to Violent Conflict in Makueni County, Kenya

Author:
Levke Aduda and Annette Adhiambo Aduda
Publication Date:
08-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA)
Abstract:
Sand is the second-most exploited natural resource after water, with global demand for it steadily increasing. Yet the societal and conflict-related impacts of sand mining remain understudied. This Working Paper examines the conditions under which sand mining generates violent conflict. We argue that violence is most likely to occur where local authorities and law enforcement are corrupt or embedded in the sand economy, and where communities strongly depend on related incomes. Under these conditions, competition between mining groups, conflicts with local communities over environmental damage, and stricter enforcement measures can escalate into violence. An in-depth case study of Makueni County, Kenya, based on fieldwork and media reports supports these expectations. Our findings highlight the need to systematically integrate sand extraction into resource-governance frameworks to protect both the environment and peace.
Topic:
Natural Resources, Governance, Conflict, Mining, and Sand
Political Geography:
Kenya and Africa

668. The Roots of Capitalism: Slavery and the Sugar Trade

Author:
Vijay Prashad
Publication Date:
08-2026
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Abstract:
There is a certain comfort in the stories that empires tell about themselves. These are stories of ingenuity, of discovery, of the steady march of reason and science. In these stories, capitalism appears almost as an inevitability, the natural flowering of human progress in Western Europe, propelled by technological innovation and the so-called Enlightenment. What these narratives leave out is not incidental but foundational: the violence that made the modern world. Prabir Purkayastha’s The Roots of Capitalism: Slavery and the Sugar Trade is an intervention into this cultivated amnesia. It insists that we look directly at the historical record and recognise that capitalism did not emerge from the gentle unfolding of markets and machines but from the brutal reorganisation of the world through conquest, enslavement, and extraction. Much of this study was written during Prabir Purkayastha’s 225-day incarceration in Rohini Central Jail in Delhi, India, on scraps of paper passed back and forth and discussed with those of us who visited him. It compels us to reconsider what we mean when we speak of the origins of capitalism and to ask: whose history is being told, whose suffering is being obscured, and what was the cost? At the heart of this study is sugar, not just as a commodity but as a social relation. Sugar was among the first truly global commodities, binding together continents in circuits of production, exchange, and finance. Its cultivation required vast tracts of land – seized through genocide in the Americas – and immense quantities of labour, supplied through the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans. Sugar, in this sense, was not simply produced; it was made possible through a system that treated human beings themselves as commodities. What Purkayastha demonstrates with clarity is that the plantation was not an archaic or pre-capitalist institution. On the contrary, it was one of the earliest sites of modern capitalist organisation. Here we see the integration of agriculture and industry, the careful accounting of costs and returns, the calculation of labour productivity, and the ruthless logic of replacement. Enslaved people were reduced to units of capital, their lives measured against their market price. The plantation, as Sidney Mintz observed, was both field and factory. The immense profits generated by slavery and plantation agriculture were not peripheral to European development; they were central to it. Sugar production, the trade in enslaved people, and the associated industries (shipping, insurance, refining, and finance) formed an interconnected system that fuelled capital accumulation on a global scale. The wealth generated in the Caribbean and the Americas flowed into European cities, underwriting the growth of industries and financial institutions. The sugar refineries of London, Bristol, and Liverpool were among the earliest industrial workplaces. They processed the raw sugar produced by enslaved labour, transforming it into commodities for mass consumption and for re-export across the globe. To speak of capitalism without speaking of slavery is therefore to tell only half the story. It is to accept a narrative that sanitises the past and obscures the structural violence upon which the modern world was built. Purkayastha’s work aligns with a long tradition of radical scholarship, from Eric Williams to Walter Rodney, that has sought to restore this missing history. But it also advances the discussion by focusing closely on sugar as a lens through which to understand the broader dynamics of capitalist development. What emerges is a picture of capitalism not merely as an economic system but as a global project of domination that involved the reorganisation of land, labour, and resources across continents; the destruction of existing societies; and the creation of new hierarchies of race and power. The interdependence of sugar and enslaved people as commodities illustrates this vividly: one cannot be understood without the other. This history is not merely of academic interest. The legacies of this system persist in the inequalities that structure our world today. The wealth accumulated through slavery and colonialism did not disappear; it was institutionalised in the financial systems, property relations, and global divisions of labour that continue to shape our present. To understand capitalism’s origins is therefore to better understand its contemporary forms and its enduring injustices. There is also, in this work, an implicit challenge to how we think about resistance. The system described here was sustained by violence, but it was also contested at every stage by the enslaved people1 who resisted their bondage, by those who exposed the brutality of the trade, and by movements that sought to dismantle it. To recover this history is not only to confront the crimes of the past, but also to recognise the struggles that sought to overcome them.
Topic:
Imperialism, Capitalism, Slavery, Commodities, and Sugar
Political Geography:
Global Focus

669. Walking on Two Legs: The Socialism of Chinese Modernisation

Author:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Publication Date:
09-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Abstract:
The Chinese experience shows that true national independence demands both technological advancement and the constant realignment of economic power, proving that market mechanisms can be directed toward human need rather than profit.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, Science and Technology, Modernization, and Socialism
Political Geography:
China and Asia

670. The Turbulence of the Indian Economy

Author:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Publication Date:
01-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Abstract:
The global economic order is in flux and globalisation is in a prolonged crisis. In the 1990s, Western capital under US hegemony promoted trade liberalisation and the spread of global supply chains that exploited labour cost differentials between the Global South and the North. Now, these very same processes are being undermined by the same hegemon under US President Donald Trump’s leadership to reverse globalisation’s unintended consequence: the erosion of US economic and technological dominance by a rising power in the Global South. Even as the global economic order is being reshaped, the Indian economy remains weighed down by the inertia of thirty-five years of liberalisation. Its structural problems, rooted in entrenched inequalities and aggravated by neoliberal policies, have stifled the development of a broad-based, technologically advanced domestic industrial base. Owing to the dismal state of Indian industry, most of the workforce remains excluded from it, confined to insecure, low-wage, low-productivity employment sustained by sheer desperation for livelihood. As a result, much of the population is trapped in various shades of poverty, even as official claims of a steep decline in deprivation are conjured through methodological sleights of hand.1 The persistent underdevelopment of industry, particularly manufacturing, lies at the core of India’s tryst with globalisation. The promises of liberalisation – to unlock India’s supposed potential – have produced a central tendency toward deindustrialisation, hollowing out formal employment while weakening productive capacity and deepening social inequalities. Despite the current government’s bombastic appraisal of India’s importance on the world stage as Vishwaguru – literally ‘teacher to the world’, a term popular in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindutva rhetoric – and claims of high growth rates that are often mired in statistical controversies, it has been forced to confront these failures, which it does with obfuscations and accusations. Since Modi came to power as India’s prime minister in 2014, his go-to political strategy has been to blame all unpalatable facts on the opposition and previous governments, even as his tenure now stretches beyond a decade. There is no doubt that the neoliberal policies initiated by the Indian National Congress in the 1990s and subsequently pursued by every government since – including Modi’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People’s Party, BJP), its most zealous adherent – have brought the Indian economy to this unfortunate state. Modi’s long tenure as chief minister of the western Indian state of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 burnished his neoliberal credentials in the eyes of Indian and foreign capital. But Modi’s response has been to double down on the same policies – worse, now on steroids – thereby exacerbating underlying problems, deepening inequalities, and entrenching the crisis further. Since becoming prime minister he has announced a series of grand policy initiatives such as Make in India, Startup India, Skill India, Design in India, and Design for the World. These initiatives were supposed to attract foreign capital into design and manufacturing in India for global markets, encourage Indian start-ups to enter new technology sectors, and upgrade the skill levels of the Indian workforce to align with world-class standards – all ostensibly aimed at revitalising Indian manufacturing while catering to Western markets. In practice, these initiatives have failed to strengthen manufacturing or reverse the trend of deindustrialisation. Most simply offered subsidies and tax rebates to corporations in the hope that industrial expansion would follow automatically, with predictably meagre results. A much-publicised initiative along these lines was the Production Linked Incentive scheme for fourteen industries, foremost among them electronics, with the government handing out large subsidies to firms – both foreign and domestic – for manufacturing. But this scheme has largely amounted to subsidising the assembly of imported components, with negligible impact on India’s overall import bill or technological capability. The bulk of value addition for goods made in India, such as smartphones, is still done overseas while the burden of these subsidies ultimately falls on the people through cuts in public investment and social spending of the government. The structural constraints that hamper the development of India’s economy and industry cannot be addressed simply through subsidies to corporations or indiscriminate foreign investment flows; if anything, such policies only reinforce the structural malaise India inherited at independence, which was compounded after liberalisation.
Topic:
Development, Economy, Neoliberalism, International Order, and Deindustrialization
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

671. Class Struggle and Climate Catastrophe in the Sahel

Author:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Publication Date:
04-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Abstract:
Since the colonial era, conflicts in Africa have been explained by every imaginable category – tribal antagonism, ethnic hatred, religious extremism, governance failures, population pressures, and resource scarcity, to name a few – except the one that underlies them all: class. While these categories undoubtedly shape Africa’s contradictions, they cannot be explained without an assessment of the relations of production. Each period of Africa’s postcolonial history has produced new explanations that share one feature, namely the systematic erasure of how imperial extraction and class exploitation organise violence and reproduce instability. Many, including sections within the anti-colonial struggles, have insisted that the categories of class analysis and class struggle do not apply to Africa because a class-based society has not formed on the continent. Fifty years ago, Issa Shivji’s Class Struggles in Tanzania advanced two key arguments that countered this thesis: Capitalist relations of production on the African continent have divided populations into classes, reshaping other social relations – ethnic, kinship, communal – through the pressures of class formation. Therefore, class as a category is analytically necessary to understand the African reality.2 In Saviors and Survivors, Mahmood Mamdani argued that the war in Darfur cannot be understood without considering the colonial reorganisation of land and political identity, particularly the divide between tribes with recognised homelands (dars) and those without. He showed how these divisions, combined with desertification and the intensifying competition over resources, exacerbated class tensions and violence, particularly as the Sahel region grew increasingly arid.3 While climate change is playing an undeniable role in shifts in the region, the dominant ‘climate conflict’ framework routinely – and falsely – frames climate-driven resource scarcity as the root of violence and instability in the Sahel. The institutional architecture of the ‘climate conflict’ framework was consolidated in the 2010s. The UN Environment Programme’s Livelihood Security: Climate Change, Migration and Conflict in the Sahel identified climate change as a ‘threat multiplier’ driving farmer-herder conflict, while the UN Security Council’s 2018 debate on climate-related security risks positioned climate as a threat requiring military response.4 This ‘climate-security nexus’ discourse emerged during a period shaped by the 2008 global financial crisis, the NATO destruction of Libya in 2011, and the subsequent militarisation of the Sahel through expanded US and French military presence – context that the framework itself systematically omits. Class Struggle and Climate Catastrophe in the Sahel argues that the escalating conflicts in the Sahel can only be understood if they are analysed as being grounded in the class struggle, given that they operate within the political economy of imperialist extraction: the climate catastrophe is an accelerant that intensifies pre-existing contradictions – not its root cause. The second part of the dossier looks closely at Mali and Sudan as examples of these changes in the Sahel.
Topic:
Climate Change, Imperialism, Conflict, Extractivism, and Class Struggle
Political Geography:
Africa, Sudan, Mali, and Sahel

672. The Anti-Feminist Agenda of the Latin American Far Right

Author:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Publication Date:
03-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Abstract:
Since 2016, marches against sexual and gender diversity1 have swept across Latin America. They feature women dressed in pink and men in blue to underscore traditional gender roles. The marches have been accompanied by a strong social media presence, with hashtags such as #NoALaIdeologíaDeGénero (‘No to gender ideology’), #ConMisHijosNoTeMetas (‘Don’t mess with my children’), #AMisHijosLosEducoYo (‘I will educate my children’), and #ConLosNiñosNo (‘Not with children’). These campaigns, which have their roots in the United States in the 1970s and reemerged in the twenty-first century, are part of an anti-gender, anti-feminist wave driven by Christian fundamentalism. This wave has swept across Catholic-majority countries in Western Europe such as Spain and Italy; across Eastern Europe, from Croatia and Hungary to Poland and Slovenia; and beyond Europe, from Australia to Sub-Saharan Africa. In many countries, efforts to sabotage comprehensive sex education and restrict access to contraceptives and safe abortion are widespread (for instance, more than half of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa criminalise sexual and gender diversity).2 Alongside this conservative wave, Latin America experienced an intense transnational cycle of feminist mobilisation (2015–2019). This cycle of feminist mobilisation also strained the limits of state institutions and often outpaced the agendas of the region’s progressive governments, pressing demands that went further than those governments were willing or able to pursue. Today’s far right is international and ascendant, from the Philippines and Hungary to India and Argentina. In this dossier, we examine how, in Latin America, its tentacles intertwine with those of global, regional, and local ultraconservative organisations – both religious and secular – to promote an agenda against the rights of women and sexually and gender-diverse people. Our main lens for analysing how this agenda operates in different countries is The Con Mis Hijos No Te Metas (‘Don’t Mess with My Children’) campaign, which is active across most of the region. We look at six Latin American countries to show how this campaign operated between 2016 and 2025: Peru, where it originated; Ecuador, where it was first exported and took hold under an economically and politically progressive government; Argentina, home to the strongest feminist movements in the region, where major legal and institutional advances have been achieved for the rights of women and sexually and gender-diverse people; Chile, where the massive popular uprising of 2019 failed to consolidate broad gains even as the feminist movement managed to achieve some; and El Salvador, among the most conservative countries on sexual and reproductive rights. El Salvador shares with Brazil – also analysed here – a strong presence of evangelical fundamentalist movements and the fact that, although the Con Mis Hijos No Te Metas campaign has played a limited role, other mechanisms and closely related campaigns have.
Topic:
Religion, Women, Neoliberalism, Transnational Actors, Far Right, Gender, Democratic Transitions, and Moral Panic
Political Geography:
Latin America

673. The War on the Poor: Narcotics, Campesinos, and Capitalism

Author:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Publication Date:
02-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Abstract:
Hundreds of years ago, the bandits of early capitalism claimed that they had come to the ‘savage’ lands to bring ‘civilisation’. But what they came to do was plunder: to take land, exploit labour, and extract bullion from across Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Over the generations this banditry became structural, built into plantations, mines, and trading companies that drained that wealth into Europe’s ‘eternal glory’. In time, the bandits’ descendants put on dry-cleaned suits and suggested that the ugliness of the past was not their inheritance, that their fortunes were the product of their diligent entrepreneurship. But beneath them, in the sewers of commercial activity, were the other organised branches of business – the mafia, narcos, arms dealers, smugglers, human traffickers, cyber criminals, loan sharks, animal poachers, organ traffickers, and those who run the scam farms and cybercrime compounds.2 The capitalists above ground and those below are bound together by the circulation of vast, liquid, dirty cash. These illicit funds flow up from below to be cleansed by those above, the smell washed from the money, the notes ironed and creased, then set in motion – for a small discount – as the necessary volume of money that becomes clean capital for licit use. This dossier seeks to undermine the dominant narrative that presents the ‘War on Drugs’ as a genuine moral crusade by the capitalist states to prohibit the circulation of illicit narcotics. This narrative rests on the claim that the drug trade is somehow separate from ‘legitimate’ capitalism. We argue instead that the War on Drugs is merely an attempt by capitalist states to ensure that these narcotics circuits remain underground so that the money siphoned from illegal trade can continue to liquefy a banking system that would not function without it. Furthermore, beyond laundering criminal profits and waging class war on peasants, the War on Drugs has become a flexible imperial tool for disciplining defiant governments, advancing counterrevolutionary agendas, and opening up territories to capital. While the war is a global regime, this dossier focuses on Colombia’s coca-cocaine economy as a lens through which to examine its political economy. Our text draws on historical research on the past decades of the War on Drugs, key United Nations (UN) documents, and our own work with campesino (peasant) organisations in Colombia. From their position at the bottom of the commodity chain, campesinos have a clear understanding of the structures that sustain illicit trade. Their organisations have mapped the parallel capitalism that exploits rural producers and their families as well as working-class communities in the wealthier nations, where structural unemployment pushes many into this economy as low-level sellers or consumers.
Topic:
War on Drugs, Socialism/Marxism, Capitalism, Class, Commodities, Drug Trafficking, Poverty, and Peasants
Political Geography:
Latin America and Colombia

674. The Future

Author:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Publication Date:
05-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Abstract:
Each month, for the past hundred months, our team at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research has researched, written, and designed a dossier. These dossiers – which range from histories of imperialism and national liberation to analyses of economic policy, sovereignty, war, and the changing world order – have circulated around the world in many languages, from English, Hindi, and Portuguese to Arabic, Thai, and Spanish.1 This is our 100th dossier, which is why we decided to pause and produce a historical-materialist account of a key concept at our institute: the future. When our institute was conceptualised in 2015, we had three main lines of inquiry before us: To better understand contemporary capitalism and the nature of the class struggle that shapes it. To better understand the rise of what we call the far right of a special type.2 To better understand the future – or what comes next. This third line of inquiry emerged from a materialist understanding of the historical process, which sees the present not as an eternal reality but as open to transformation. In other words, the present can be shaped into a future of a different character. The capitalist system that we inhabit is not permanent: it can be transformed into a socialist system through the class struggle and the development of the productive forces. Here, for the first time, we present a philosophical and political assessment of the future. Drawing on the tradition of national liberation Marxism, we argue that this future should be called not only socialism, the objective, but also hope, the sensibility for such a future.3 We trust that you will read this dossier as you have read the previous ninety-nine and that you will share, debate, and discuss it collectively in reading circles and other spaces of political study. We are always open to your feedback.
Topic:
Socialism/Marxism, Capitalism, Future, and Internationalism
Political Geography:
Global Focus

675. The Architecture of Power: The Dollar, Financialisation, and the Struggle for Sovereignty

Author:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Publication Date:
07-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Abstract:
The role of the dollar as the principal currency of exchange in world trade grants the United States exorbitant power. This dossier examines the rise of this currency, the mechanisms of its domination, and the structural limits to building an alternative to the dollar.
Topic:
Sovereignty, Socialism/Marxism, Capitalism, Currency, Financialisation, and Dollar
Political Geography:
Global Focus and United States of America

676. A Vietnam in the Field of Culture: The Cultural Congress of Havana, 1968

Author:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Publication Date:
08-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Abstract:
In 1968, delegates from seventy countries gathered in Havana to confront cultural imperialism and imagine culture as a decisive front of anti-imperialist struggle.
Topic:
Imperialism, History, Socialism/Marxism, and Culture
Political Geography:
Cuba, Global Focus, and Global South

677. Labour mobility for skilled refugees: Improving outcomes for regional Australia

Author:
Louise Olliff and David Higgins
Publication Date:
05-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at UNSW Sydney
Abstract:
Many people who cross borders fleeing war, violence and persecution are highly skilled and educated, of working age and are either not permitted or severely constrained to engage in local labour markets. At the same time, regional Australia is experiencing significant skills shortages, particularly among small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Since 2021 employers have been able to sponsor skilled refugees and their families to migrate to Australia under the Australian government’s Skilled Refugee Labour Agreement Pilot (SRLAP). The SRLAP was designed as a labour mobility scheme to remove the insurmountable barriers facing refugees in accessing Australia’s existing Skilled Migration Program. The SRLAP shows that ‘complementary pathways’ – that is, migration pathways that are protectionsensitive, separate and additional to refugee resettlement programs – can provide durable solutions to displacement. The SRLAP was also designed to support Australian businesses to tap into a new pool of talent to address chronic labour and skills shortages. This objective has been particularly important in regional Australia, where SMEs dominate regional economies but are facing skills shortages that are constraining productivity. Yet SMEs experience distinct challenges when recruiting skilled workers within existing migration settings. Paperwork and lengthy wait times can make international hiring difficult. Without incentives such as fee waivers and support for regional SMEs to navigate systems, the costs and perceived risks of hiring through the SRLAP risk undermining its potential. Persistent skills shortages have a direct flow-on effect to the health of regional communities. Community stakeholders see the SRLAP as ‘a real opportunity’ for their towns to flourish. Yet employer-sponsored refugees and their dependents arrive on skilled visas that afford them little formal support on arrival.
Topic:
Migration, Refugees, Business, and Labor Market
Political Geography:
Australia

678. Land Protection, Credit Access, and the Insurance Gap: The De Soto Trap

Author:
Werner Hernani-Limarino
Publication Date:
05-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Advanced Development Studies (INESAD)
Abstract:
Bolivia’s Ley 1720 (April2026) allows small holders to voluntarily convert constitutionally protected pequeña propiedad—land that cannot be seized by creditors— into pledgeable mediana propriedad, explicitly targeting the credit-access channel that Hernando de Soto popularized. This paper develops a dynamic model showing that such convrersion creates a De Soto trap: the households most likely to convert are those most desperate for liquidity, not those best positioned to benefit from credit, and these households face the highest default probability. Without complementary insurance, land flows irreversibly from vulnerable smallholders to those with capital to purchase foreclosed properties. The model yields three results: (i) adverse selection into conversion emerges endogenously from the threshold conditions; (ii) aggregate smallholder land decays exponentially toward zero--a ratchet that cannot reverse without policy intervention; (iii) mandatory insurance as a conversion requirement filters out non-viable applicants, bounds land loss, and raises net welfare by a factor of four. Calibrated to Bolivian agricultural census data, the model predicts that under current policy, 120,000 households will lose their land within 25 years. The law addresses the channel (credit) for which the empirical evidence is weakest while removing a protection (implicit insurance through inalienability) whose value the risk literature suggests is large. Bolivia's reform inverts the optimal policy sequence.
Topic:
Insurance, Land Reform, Credit Constraints, Land Tenure, and Adverse Selection
Political Geography:
South America and Bolivia

679. Smog, not lights. Tracking Bolivia’s 2024–2026 recession from space

Author:
Werner Hernani-Limarino and Ahmed Eid
Publication Date:
05-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Advanced Development Studies (INESAD)
Abstract:
Nighttime lights are the standard satellite proxy for economic activity, but they fail to detect recessions. On a 2020–2024 panel of nine Bolivian departments, VIIRS lights match the sign of PIB growth 78 percent of the time during expansions but only 39 percent during contractions —worse than coin-flip. The reason is structural: lit infrastructure is a stock that does not contract when activity falls, while fossil-fuel combustion is a flow that does. Tropospheric NO2, a neardirect measure of combustion retrieved daily by ESA’s Sentinel-5P satellite, maintains 72 percent sign concordance during contractions. We exploit this asymmetry to build a monthly recession indicator from TROPOMI NO2 over eleven Bolivian metropolitan areas, July 2018 through April 2026. The indicator peaked in June 2023; INE quarterly PIB first registered negative year-on-year growth five quarters later, in 2024Q4. Through November 2025 the satellite and INE agree to within one log point. A pre-break SARIMA trained through November 2025 projects a 2026 PIB contraction of approximately 2 percent, consistent with the IMF (−3.3 percent), World Bank (−3.2), and IIF (−4) forecasts, though the confidence interval is wide. The centered-12-month March 2026 endpoint becomes fully observable from actual data in October 2026, and we commit to a revisit at that date. The indicator is reproducible from free Copernicus data with a two-month publication lag..
Topic:
Infrastructure, Recession, Early Warning, Lighting, and Nitrogen Dioxide
Political Geography:
South America and Bolivia

680. Coercive Extractivism: The mechanics of Trump’s transactional approach to Europe

Author:
Rem Korteweg and Diederick van Wijk
Publication Date:
04-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
US foreign policy towards Europe is increasingly transactional and there is growing European awareness that the continent is too dependent on the United States. This report introduces the concept of ‘coercive extractivism’ to describe the current US administration’s transactional approach to Europe. In coercive extractivism, the United States leverages Europe’s economic and security dependencies to extract economic, regulatory or geopolitical benefits and concessions. Resource-poor, regulation-heavy, politically divided and marked by years of underinvestment in its own military capabilities, Europe is particularly vulnerable to this dynamic. The US administration’s recent threat to apply economic leverage in pursuit of its ambitions to annex Greenland was a clear example, but the same dynamic applies elsewhere. The US has leverage over Europe in a number of policy areas, and a wide range of demands of Europe, suggesting that coercive extractivism will continue, if not increase. The approach is shaped by several dynamics: • US foreign policy is driven by presidential impulse instead of institutional process, making unpredictability a feature. • Tariffs are a key policy tool to extract concessions. • US policy towards Europe has become a set of repeat bargaining processes, where nothing is permanently settled. • Policy domains and issues are connected, adding multiple layers of unpredictability. • The US seeks the creation of a deals-based order, instead of a rules-based order, however other countries are unlikely to follow suit. • Coercive extractivism generates countervailing forces. The more it is used, the more countries will seek to balance against it. • A transactional US administration is to be preferred over an ideological one. But ideological disagreements are increasingly at the root of US policy towards Europe. If Europe seeks to make itself immune to coercive extractivism, it must take a number of steps. Flattery may yield short-term results, but it is not a durable strategy. Instead, the European Commission and European governments must develop a common approach, articulate red lines, build coalitions of like-minded countries and execute strategies to reduce their lop-sided dependencies on the US. This includes diversifying trade relations, strengthening the European defense industrial base, reducing energy dependence and identifying ways through which to deter US coercion. In the US, European governments should reach out more intensively to state-level administrations and members of Congress to clarify what is at stake as the eighty-year transatlantic partnership erodes under the pressure of US coercive extractivism. Whether Europe is successful remains unclear, and four options for the future of the transatlantic relationship are laid out. In the near-term, coercive extractivism is likely to intensify as Europe enters a period of increased vulnerability as it seeks to reduce its unwanted dependencies on Washington.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Tariffs, Donald Trump, Decision-Making, and Extractivism
Political Geography:
Europe, North America, and United States of America

681. Making Sense of Trump’s Trade Policy

Author:
Peter E. . Harrell
Publication Date:
01-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
This policy brief examines the logic, objectives, and implications of U.S. trade policy under the second Trump administration. It argues that, despite its apparent volatility, Trump’s trade policy reflects a coherent set of economic and geopolitical goals that mark a sharp break from the post-war rules-based trading order. Tariffs are central to this approach and are used simultaneously as a source of government revenue, a tool to promote reindustrialisation and onshoring, and an instrument of geopolitical competition, particularly vis-à-vis China. Rather than seeking to reform or uphold multilateral trade rules, the administration favours a system of bilateral, transactional agreements focused on concrete outcomes such as investment commitments, production location, and supply chain control. The brief also highlights Trump’s growing use of tariffs as a substitute for sanctions in pursuit of non-trade geopolitical objectives. While the durability of this model remains uncertain, the analysis suggests that a return to the pre-Trump global trade regime is unlikely. Instead, U.S. trade policy is moving toward a more fragmented, outcome-driven, and politicised trading order with lasting implications for allies and the global economy.
Topic:
Economics, Geopolitics, Trade Policy, and Donald Trump
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

682. Managing Crises, Sharing Power: The EU’s Inter-Institutional Cooperation in Action

Author:
Saskia Hollander and Karen van Loon
Publication Date:
01-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
This report delves into the question of whether the various EU institutions and member States cooperate and share competences effectively in times of crisis, and whether they do so without compromising the EU’s institutional balance. To do so, the report compares three intentionally caused crises: the increasing cases of (suspected) sabotage of critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, the Belarus-EU border/migration crisis and the energy crisis following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While the first entails a policy area within the security field where the EU has limited powers and where, in principle, Member States take decisions unanimously, the latter two cases entail policy areas where the EU institutions share competences with the Member States. In this way, it is possible to compare different institutional interplays and their impact on the effectiveness of EU actions. Conclusions are based on an analysis of official policy documents, secondary literature, and a series of interviews.
Topic:
Political Power Sharing, European Union, Crisis Management, and Energy Crisis
Political Geography:
Europe and Belarus

683. From Economic Giant to Geopolitical Powerhouse? A roadmap towards enhancing the EU’s global clout

Author:
Stephan Hollander and Wouter Zweers
Publication Date:
03-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
They belong to us, they are one of us, and we want them in.” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen did not mince her words when discussing potential Ukrainian EU Membership on 27 February 2022, just days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Sharply contrasting were the remarks of then Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte two weeks later at the ad-hoc Paris summit: “EU accession of Ukraine is something for the long term, if at all.” While seemingly a mere political divergence, it in fact conceals fundamental questions of who is in charge of the EU’s external engagement and whether the EU can play a significant geopolitical role despite its fragmented distribution of power. Such questions are not new. Already in 2009, the Treaty of Lisbon sought to strengthen the EU’s foreign policy capacity. First with the formalisation of the European Council (EUCO) as an official EU institution, including a permanent President. Lisbon also paved the way for the establishment of the European External Action Service (EEAS) in 2010. Yet the addition of two institutions did not solve the question of who to call to “talk to Europe” but rather made it more pressing. Informally, both the EUCO – and thus the Member States – and the Commission increasingly steer the EU’s geopolitical actions. Formally, however, the governance of these actions is scattered across multiple institutions. When it comes to the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), Member States are at the helm. At the same time, the Union’s ‘foreign and security policy’ no longer encompasses only the CFSP and CSDP, as more and more Union policies include a geopolitical dimension. Policies and instruments in the area of economic security, such as the recently spotlighted anti-coercion instrument, provide an example. In other words, the demarcation line between the intergovernmental CFSP and CSDP on the one hand, and other supranational policies with a geopolitical dimension becomes increasingly blurred. This also obscures the division of competences between EU institutions. These developments take place against the backdrop of a significantly changed world order to which the Union struggles to adapt. Nevertheless, the day-to-day governance in the Union is moving along and on occasions, it manages to take unprecedented steps. Examples are the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) (which was set up to help the EU recover stronger and more strategically independent from the COVID-19 pandemic), Ukraine’s and Moldova’s EU membership bids, and the recent steps towards enhanced defence cooperation. The 90-billion-euro joint loan to Ukraine could be another example, if Hungary ultimately decides not to block the proposal. Such groundbreaking steps are indeed often only possible by means of shortcuts to prevent vetoes, for example by using emergency legislation or by moving around unwilling Member States. Such shortcuts have been both inevitable and necessary, but at the same time they disrupt the inter-institutional balance as envisaged in the Treaties. To restore this balance in a way that fits the Union’s geopolitical aspirations would, arguably, require a treaty reform that transfers powers to the EU institutions with associated checks and balances. However, such a treaty reform is unlikely to take place in the short term. Moreover, there are important differences in geopolitical interests between Member States. For example, France, due to its position in the UN Security Council, its significant defence industry and its possession of nuclear weapons, occupies a fundamentally different position than, for example, the Netherlands or Spain. As long as these differences exist, it may be undesirable for countries to be outvoted by (qualified) majorities. This report therefore addresses the question of what the EU can do in the short term to enhance its geopolitically clout. What could be changed in the EU’s institutional architecture? And which less far-reaching interventions in daily institutional relations would ensure that decision-making in the EU evolves with the new geopolitical reality?
Topic:
Foreign Policy, European Union, Geopolitics, and UN Security Council
Political Geography:
Europe

684. Serbia on a Sharpening Geopolitical Edge Between Russia and the European Union

Author:
Wouter Zweers
Publication Date:
02-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
This policy brief examines the changing nature of Serbia’s relationship with Russia and assesses its implications for the European Union. By analysing four domains – political relations, the economy and energy, security, and societal ties – it argues that the traditionally close Russian-Serbian partnership has seen growing friction and reduced intensity in recent years. While neither side has fundamentally reversed course politically, growing tensions over energy – notably around Serbia’s national oil company NIS – and security have exposed a shift from a narrative of unconditional “Slavic brotherhood” towards a more transactional relationship. These developments place Serbia’s leadership on an increasingly narrow geopolitical edge between Russia, the EU, and other major powers, at a time of sustained domestic pro-democracy protests. The paper assesses that the EU has been partially responsive to both geopolitical and democratic developments in Serbia, but that it can take a more proactive role in the discussed domains based on strict democratic conditionality in support of its enlargement agenda. This recent remark by Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, referred to Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić’s comments suggesting that he is indifferent as to whether Serbian-made weapons are reaching Ukraine. Her statement closely resembles the type of criticism EU diplomats frequently direct at Vučić – accusing him of a lack of commitment to Serbia’s EU accession requirements. Yet coming from Moscow, such a rebuke is remarkable. For decades, Russia and Serbia have cultivated close political cooperation, rooted in a self-proclaimed “brotherly” relationship and a shared Slavic identity. However, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has reverberated well beyond the conflict itself. As we analyse in this ongoing series of Clingendael policy briefs, “one such consequence is […] a modification in Russia’s bilateral relations, including with countries it traditionally considered as allies”. Increasingly, Serbia may now be one such example. Almost four years into Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, the Russian-Serbian relationship appears to be increasingly strained. Under pressure from U.S. sanctions, Serbia has sought to find a third-party buyer or even regain control over its national oil company NIS at the expense of the current majority owners Gazprom and Gazprom Neft. Moscow has expressed frustration over evidence of Serbian-produced weapons being used by Ukraine. This takes place against a backdrop of strong pressure on the Serbian government from domestic democratic protests and, increasingly, also from other powers like the US and the EU. This paper examines the evolving relationship between Russia and Serbia and explores its meaning for the European Union. It considers four dimensions of the relationship: political, the economy and energy, security and defence and societal linkages. The paper then discusses implications for EU diplomacy towards Serbia and concludes with recommendations for European and Dutch policy makers. The analysis is based on desk research and a limited number of research interviews with experts and public officials.
Topic:
Security, Sanctions, European Union, Geopolitics, Trade, and Energy
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Serbia

685. Behind the Ballots and the Bluster: Decoding Votes on Ukraine Resolutions at the UN

Author:
Nienke Wessel and Bob Deen
Publication Date:
02-2026
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
Four years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an end to the war remains elusive. Ukraine is not only fighting Russia on the battlefield, but also in the diplomatic arena to secure international support. This report analyses the way this diplomatic war has unfolded by looking at two dimensions: votes in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and attendance of the peace conference in Bürgenstock. A closer look at voting patterns in the UNGA reveals a gradual decrease in support over the past few years. Immediately after the invasion, 141 states voted in favour of pro-Ukrainian resolutions; in December 2025, this number had dwindled to 79. Ukraine and its supporters in its diplomatic struggle against Russia could benefit from a careful analysis of the various reasons behind these shifting levels of support. This report therefore presents a clustering of voting patterns, which can help identify both the nations that hold fixed positions and those who vary in their voting behaviour and stated positions. A better understanding of the motivations behind these positions is crucial for a diplomatic strategy that aims to convince them to support Ukraine. The approach in this study is two-fold: it first discusses the narratives that have been promoted by both Russia and Ukraine and then analyses why these may or may not appeal to different states across the world. While Ukraine rightfully claims that the invasion is a violation of international law and posits itself as a democracy that has fallen victim to a brutal act of aggression, Russia instead promotes a narrative of defence against supposed threats by the West. While most countries around the world generally and rhetorically support international law, the narrative of the ‘threatening West’ also finds support across the world and particularly in the grouping of countries sometimes referred to as the ‘Global South’. However, the appeal of the Russian narrative is only part of the puzzle. Practical reasons are perhaps much more important to determine the level of support; many countries may have their own reasons to either support Russia or at least not jeopardize their relationship with Moscow. These include food security, maintaining trade relations with Russia, strategic voting considerations, or a preference for a multipolar world order. For any diplomatic strategy to be effective in convincing countries to support Ukraine, it requires listening to their individual concerns and addressing those to the extent possible. Understanding does not imply agreement as not all arguments have moral equivalence and some may not be put forward in good faith, but the West should also be wary of its own biases. A convincing argument should address both the narrative as well as the practical interests driving state positions. It should furthermore realise that there is no one-size-fits-all solution: while there are common patterns across the world, the different elements present themselves in different combinations for each individual nation. A convincing diplomatic strategy begins with listening.
Topic:
Diplomacy, United Nations, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Ukraine

686. From Common Worries to Digital Commons: How Europe Can Stop Renting Clouds and Build Its Own

Author:
Alexandre Ferreira Gomes, Maaike Heijmans, and Jelle van den Wijngaard
Publication Date:
02-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
Europe’s reliance on a handful of foreign cloud and software providers is increasingly seen as a geopolitical vulnerability and a constraint on its digital sovereignty, particularly regarding data confidentiality and service continuity. In response, American hyperscalers are investing time and resources in products marketed as ‘sovereign clouds’. This report argues that such offerings fail to resolve Europe’s digital sovereignty challenge. Rather, they adapt existing business and marketing models to European sensitivities without altering the fundamental risks of data confidentiality and service continuity. As such, they are better understood as digital sovereignty washing. The report contends that Europe’s response must focus on fostering its own tech ecosystem, with particular emphasis on open-source and/or locally governed infrastructure. By doing so, Europe could ensure jurisdictional control, transparency and interoperability in its cloud services; all while making Europe less vulnerable to coercion from the US government. The report outlines three alternative models that meet these criteria, with varying degrees of sovereignty. Maximum sovereignty is guaranteed with open source, on-premise solutions. The second most sovereignty-maximising approach, sovereignty with an exit option, is achieved with European providers that offer managed open-source cloud services for data storage and software or are (partially) under government control. Third, sovereignty for now comes through European, closed source options offered by privately-owned companies. After identifying six major barriers to wider open-source adoption – spanning institutional, economic and cultural dimensions –, the report proposes two strategic shifts to overcome them: 1) moving from treating digital infrastructure as a market commodity to recognising it as a strategic asset; and 2) moving from treating open source as a niche IT choice to recognising it as public infrastructure and a suitable policy instrument towards greater digital sovereignty. Finally, the report highlights European organisations that are already leading by example and pioneering practical models of sovereign digital infrastructure — opening up brave new worlds of European digital autonomy. Dutch ATKM and UNL/SURF, along with several European municipalities, are moving ahead and adopting open-source cloud and software solutions to strengthen their own digital sovereignty. Sustaining this momentum will require Europe to maintain political ambition and will, modernise procurement, enhance cross-border coordination and consistently fund efforts to develop European digital commons.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Geopolitics, Cloud Computing, and Digital Sovereignty
Political Geography:
Europe

687. Old and new narratives on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in times of political turmoil

Author:
Pieter Zwaan and Louise Van Schaik
Publication Date:
02-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
The European Union is entering a decisive phase in the reform of its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for 2027-2034. This takes place amid geopolitical instability, climate pressures, and growing expectations and demands for more sustainable food systems and stable farm incomes. The European Commission has tabled reforms that substantially reconfigure both the budgetary architecture and direction of EU agricultural support. This report a) analyses the unfolding debate and negotiations on the CAP; b) compares stakeholders and European Parliament groups positions on several proposed CAP interventions; and c) examines the possible implications of the proposals and possible changes to it, in particularly for the Netherlands. Core themes in the CAP debate The analyses shows that three general themes dominate discussions on the future CAP: 1. Food security and strategic autonomy, increasingly framed through a productionist and neo-mercantilist discourse, linked to geopolitical shocks, market volatility, and input dependencies. 2. Competitiveness versus sustainability, with diverging views on whether competitiveness is a prerequisite for, or in tension with, environmental ambitions; and the 3. Targeting of support, where broad consensus exists on the need for a bettertargeting and fairer distribution of income support, but disagreements exist on how far to move away from area-based payments with mandatory conditions. The Commission’s narrative marks a return to a more productionist discourse (where income support to farmers is justified by their contribution to food production and security) compared to the Farm to Fork Strategy, which reflected a more multi-functionalist discourse (where income support to farmers is largely justified by or conditional on the their contribution to public good that are not rewarded by the market). The Commission’s vision and policy proposals on the CAP still reference climate and biodiversity goals but prioritise food security, competitiveness, simplification and flexibility, and a shift from environmental obligations to incentives.
Topic:
European Union, Food Security, Geopolitics, Sustainability, Strategic Autonomy, and Agricultural Policy
Political Geography:
Europe

688. All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace? How techno-libertarian ideas shape US power and challenge Europe

Author:
Diederick van Wijk and Alexandre Ferreira Gomes
Publication Date:
02-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
A small network of US tech leaders has shifted from lobbying government to embedding within it, aligning with the Trump administration on deregulation, rapid AI development, and deeper tech integration into core state functions. The report introduces the GOALS framework — Growth, Optimisation, Automation, Liberty and Salvation — to explain their worldview, which promotes rapid technological expansion and cast democratic oversight as an obstacle. As these ideas shape US foreign policy and global tech infrastructures, the EU faces growing pressure on its digital regulation and autonomy, risking regulatory erosion, tech dependence, and weaker democratic control. The report outlines three strategic priorities for Europe: anchoring technological development in democratic governance, building strategic capacity in critical infrastructures, and developing a distinct techno-political narrative to counter the techno-libertarian model.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Development, Science and Technology, European Union, Regulation, Digital Autonomy, and Techno-Libertarianism
Political Geography:
Europe, North America, and United States of America

689. Kuwait after May 2024: The end of (semi-)democratic exceptionalism in the Gulf?

Author:
Máté Szalai
Publication Date:
02-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
Kuwait has long featured a more representative governance structure than its fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members. However, in his “re-imagining” of the country’s political system, the country’s emir took an authoritarian turn in May 2024 by suspending the National Assembly and parts of the constitution. The paper argues that this largely put an end to Kuwait’s exceptionalism as a semi-democratic system, bringing it more in line with the rest of the GCC. However, Kuwait remains unique in many perspectives and has so far not copied wholesale the Saudi, Emirati and Qatari authoritarian development models. Besides maintaining the purest form of rentierism and the prominence of older generations of the political elite, Kuwait’s particular path of development relies on a harsh nativist-populist rhetoric that has led to a wide citizenship revocation campaign, mostly targeting women and other vulnerable segments of society. Kuwait’s authoritarian turn represents a particular challenge to the European Union’s rush to build relations with the GCC states and offers a litmus test of the EU’s ability to pursue its own political interests while staying true to its values.
Topic:
Governance, European Union, Democracy, and Gulf Cooperation Council
Political Geography:
Middle East and Kuwait

690. No Longer Ironclad: America and the Transatlantic alliance

Author:
Max Bergmann
Publication Date:
01-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
This policy brief analyses the implications of the second Trump administration for the transatlantic alliance and European security. It argues that US foreign policy under Trump represents a fundamental departure from the post-war tradition of sustaining a US-led rulesbased order. Instead, the administration embraces a transactional, interest-driven approach that rejects liberal values, questions alliances as assets, and seeks to extract economic and political concessions from partners. While Europe is simultaneously expected to assume greater responsibility for its own security, US security guarantees are no longer perceived as ironclad. The analysis identifies key characteristics of Trump’s foreign policy, including scepticism toward NATO, the decoupling of security and economic cooperation, a deprioritisation of Europe in favour of China and the Western Hemisphere, and reduced US engagement in Ukraine. It concludes that these dynamics increase strategic uncertainty for Europe, weaken deterrence, and heighten the risk of miscalculation. While transatlantic cooperation may persist, the alliance is increasingly strained and may endure more in form than in substance.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, NATO, and Transatlantic Relations
Political Geography:
Europe, North America, and United States of America

691. Closing the Gap: Europe’s Challenge to Rebuild Land Forces

Author:
Bart van den Berg and Youri Verschoor
Publication Date:
03-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
The international security environment in Europe has deteriorated significantly since the Russian Federation’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. This invasion marked a fundamental rupture with the post-Cold War security order and demonstrated that large-scale, high-intensity conventional warfare has returned to the European continent. Russia’s sustained use of long-range fires, missile strikes, manoeuvre formations, and unmanned aerial systems (UAS) has underscored the renewed relevance of land forces and exposed critical capability gaps across European armed forces. Challenges for the Netherlands For the Netherlands, this deteriorated security environment has direct and tangible consequences. While various European intelligence agencies are warning that Russia could be fully prepared for a large-scale, conventional war against NATO by around 2030, the Netherlands is currently increasingly being exposed to hybrid threats and grey-zone activities as well. The Netherlands’ geographic position as a logistical hub for NATO reinforcement and host-nation support makes it a highly likely target in the event of a wider conflict. These developments place renewed demands on the Dutch armed forces, including its land forces. A European response? In response to these challenges, Europe faces the strategic imperative to rapidly scale up military capabilities. Years of underinvestment, force reductions, and expeditionary-focused force structures and training have left many European armies insufficiently prepared for high-intensity conflict. Since 2022, European governments have announced substantial increases in defence spending, force expansion initiatives, and ambitious modernisation programmes. The most prominent effort in this regard has been the 2025 The Hague NATO summit conclusion of setting a renewed annual alliance member state spending target of a total of 5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However, scaling the military is not merely a question of budgetary growth – it also requires informed prioritisation, doctrinal adaptation, and the efficient development of capabilities that address the most pressing operational shortfalls. For smaller and medium-sized armed forces, such as those of the Netherlands, learning from the experiences and choices of comparable, like-minded countries is therefore of crucial importance. A comparative analysis Against this backdrop, based on a multi-methods approach of desk research and semi-structured interviews, this paper assesses the progress being made in closing critical capability shortfalls of the land forces of three close NATO allies and the Netherlands itself. This endeavour is founded on the following research question: What capability shortfalls exist in selected European land forces, and how are these shortfalls being addressed? The three studied allies (Denmark, Germany and Sweden) are selected on terms of geographical proximity, comparative force structures and industrial cooperation and integration. By examining how these European allies address and close capability gaps, the Netherlands can gain insight into alternative force development paths, trade-offs, and best practices. Countries with similar threat perceptions, alliance commitments, and industrial constraints may nonetheless pursue different solutions in areas such as force structure, procurement strategies, or capability prioritisation. Understanding such differences can help inform Dutch decision-making as it seeks to strengthen its land forces. Four nations and three capability shortfalls The report focuses on three critical capability shortfalls which stand central to NATO’s collective defence posture. The first is Ground-Based Air Defence (GBAD), which is essential for protecting manoeuvre units, critical infrastructure, and logistics against aerial threats such as missiles, aircraft, and unmanned systems. The second capability area is Land Fires, encompassing heavy fires such as 155mm artillery and rocket artillery capabilities that enable deep strike operations. The third capability area is Land Manoeuvre Formations, referring to armoured and mechanised units capable of conducting sustained offensive and defensive combat operations under contested conditions. Denmark, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands have all embarked on significant defence reforms since 2022, yet all approach capability development from a distinct political, industrial, and doctrinal starting point. The report is supplemented with an appendix on innovation, examining the role of innovation across the three assessed capability areas, highlighting its relevance for addressing identified gaps.
Topic:
International Security, Armed Forces, Defense Spending, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Europe

692. China’s ‘World-Class Military’ in the Indo-Pacific: Scenarios for 2049 and their Consequences for European Security

Author:
Kaspar Pucek, Karen van Loon, and Xiaoxue Martin
Publication Date:
03-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
China’s resurgence has been one of the defining geopolitical developments of our time. By the centenary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 2049, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wants to have completed its “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”. But what, exactly, does Beijing mean by this statement? And what will this entail for the Netherlands, the European Union, and NATO by 2049. The report is divided into four chapters. The first chapter will analyse the meaning of the 2049 centenary for the geopolitical strategy of the Chinese leadership. The second chapter will zoom in on China’s ambitions to build a “world-class military” by 2049 as part of its national rejuvenation strategy, the extent to which it has succeeded so far, and the areas where it still aims to catch up with the United States in particular. Chapter three will present three scenarios as to how China could possibly attain its military goals in the Indo-Pacific by 2049. Finally, the fourth chapter will reflect on the implications of these scenarios for European security and will present policy recommendations for what Europe could do to prepare for and navigate those scenarios. The scenarios are: 1. Forgone Formose: “Peaceful reunification” through a blockade of Taiwan. 2. Thucydides Trapped: A U.S.-China war of attrition along the First Island Chain. 3. Sino-centric Seas: China’s emerging primacy amid U.S. retrenchment. All three scenarios contain profound implications for European security, exposing it to political, geo-economic, and military pressure from both China and the U.S., maritime vulnerabilities, the potential weakening of the U.S. commitment to European security, as well as Chinese cyber and hybrid threats in retaliation for European support for the United States in case of a conflict with China. Europe should contribute to stability in the Indo-Pacific by raising the costs of conflict and lowering the risks posed by expanding Chinese influence in the region by reducing its own vulnerabilities, through: • Building a credible and usable European geo-economic deterrent. • Strengthening existing and new partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region. • Strengthening economic and supply chain resilience. • Prioritising maritime security, chokepoint resilience, and access diversification. • Rebuilding European security to reduce dependence on the United States, enabling Europe to take more responsibility for its own defence, thereby closing any perceived window of opportunity for Russian aggression during periods of U.S. strategic distraction while also making Europe less vulnerable to coercive leverage by the United States.
Topic:
Security, Armed Forces, Geopolitics, and European Union
Political Geography:
China, Europe, Asia, and Indo-Pacific

693. Inspiration for AI Diplomacy: A Glance at the AI Strategies of the United Kingdom, Denmark, France, and Singapore

Author:
Maaike Heijmans and Alexandre Ferreira Gomes
Publication Date:
04-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
In preparing to launch its forthcoming artificial intelligence (AI) diplomacy strategy, the Netherlands would benefit from a better understanding of leading peers’ (international) strategies and AI governance structures. This Clingendael Report contributes to this objective by offering an exploratory analysis of key initiatives and governance structures of the United Kingdom, Denmark, France, and Singapore. These countries stand out for their strong AI policies or their leadership in sub-fields such as AI safety. The case studies show that the United Kingdom (UK) has adopted a laissezfaire attitude towards AI, aligning with the United States (US) and focusing on attracting foreign investors. While this comes with development gains, it also poses risks to data sovereignty. The UK does have a notable ‘AI Security Centre’ focused on research around emerging AI risks and AI auditing, but it has recently withdrawn from international consensus-building efforts. Denmark’s approach consists of cultivating AI use across society in accordance with Danish values, with a particular focus on AI in the public sector and not so much in the private sector. Despite its focus on domestic sovereignty and risk management, it has made limited efforts internationally. France’s strategy somewhat resembles the underpinnings of the US’s DARPA program, focusing on funding a wide range of potentially good ideas instead of funnelling all investment into one project. This has led to the emergence of competitive startups, research hubs, and a pronounced international presence. However, this wide-scope approach means that France lacks centralised AI governance structures and has spread mandates across existing bodies. Singapore has a strong emphasis on safety, standards, and guidelines, and enables bottom–up development and testing of (opensource) models. It designates specific strategic niches in which it can carve out and sustain an edge and where it focuses its efforts. Its international presence is characterised both by its consensus-seeking efforts, and through providing a model for developing a well-rounded AI strategy using limited resources. While these four countries are frontrunners in specific domains, AI strategy and governance is an emerging field. The Netherlands would do well, first and foremost, to chart its path forward based on its own interests, priorities, and niches for AI development and not simply seek to replicate existing strategies.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Governance, Innovation, and Artificial Intelligence
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, France, Denmark, and Singapore

694. Pushing Boundaries: Externalisation of Asylum and a Broad-Based Reform Initiative

Author:
Huub Verbaten, Warner ten Kate, Monika Sie Dhian Ho, Anouk Pronk en, and Johan Wiersma
Publication Date:
03-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
The report Pushing Boundaries examines the legal, political, and practical conditions under which (parts of) the asylum procedure could take place outside the EU (‘externalisation’). The analysis is set against a backdrop of increasing political pressure to control the number of asylum applications, alongside ongoing debates on reforming the international and European migration system. The UN Refugee Convention does not in itself constitute a major obstacle; non-refoulement is the most important precondition. However, European rules in particular impose further constraints due to strong rights protections, individual risk assessments, and access to legal remedies. It is therefore essential to continue the discussion on interpreting and adapting EU legislation in Brussels and in national capitals. Recent amendments to EU legislation (the Asylum and Migration Pact, which will enter into force in June 2026) already broaden the possibilities for transferring applicants to ‘safe’ countries outside the EU. The authors analyse five models: disembarkation platforms, screening along the migration route, an external border procedure in a non-EU country, complete outsourcing via the safe third country model, and return/transit hubs. For each model, the report outlines the design, legal implications, feasibility, risks, and existing case studies (including Italy-Albania, EU-Turkey, the United Kingdom-Rwanda, and the Dutch plans involving Uganda). The conclusion is that while these models may be legally viable, their practical implementation is highly complex and requires intensive cooperation, with significant risks of human rights violations, insufficient capacity in partner countries, and political resistance. The report concludes that externalisation can only be effective if embedded within a broader reform initiative focused on shared global responsibility. This requires greater international involvement and a stronger commitment to protection closer to home (‘proximity protection’). This could be supported through stronger links between regional reception and migration cooperation, clearer and temporary forms of protection, improved funding for host countries, and selective legal migration pathways, with attention to potential brain-drain effects.
Topic:
International Law, Reform, Asylum, and Externalization
Political Geography:
Europe and Netherlands

695. Coercive Extractivism: The mechanics of Trump’s transactional approach to Europe

Author:
Rem Korteweg and Diederick van Wijk
Publication Date:
04-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
The episode with Greenland was telling. US foreign policy under the Trump administration has become increasingly transactional, raising serious doubts about the transatlantic relationship across Europe. On 17 January 2026, the US president threatened European NATO allies with ten percent tariff walls “until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.” Earlier, eight NATO allies had sent a very limited number of military personnel to Greenland for a reconnaissance mission, in response to the US president’s claims that Greenland was undefended and should therefore become part of the United States. Since coming to office in early 2025, the president had repeatedly made his ambition to annex Greenland clear. It was not the first time the US administration used European dependence on US economic or security ties to twist arms. This Clingendael Report examines the mechanics of Trump’s transactional approach to Europe, where security, economic and regulatory interests are fused in the pursuit of an ‘America First’ agenda. Based on a series of interviews conducted in Washington DC in late 2025, two papers drafted by US experts Max Bergmann and Peter Harrell, and an expert workshop in December 2025, eight key dynamics emerge that define contemporary US transactional policies. This, in turn, leads to a set of recommendations for how the EU and European countries, including the Netherlands, can respond. Europeans should expect President Trump’s transactional approach to continue as his administration aims to extract economic and political concessions from EU capitals. In the short-term, as European governments increasingly express concern about their dependence on the United States and seek to cushion themselves from US coercion, the extractive nature of US transactionalism could in fact intensify. Europe’s vulnerability will only diminish once steps to reduce lop-sided dependencies have materially delivered results. The report concludes with a set of options for how the relationship between Europe and the US could then evolve.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, NATO, Diplomacy, European Union, Donald Trump, Coercion, and Extractivism
Political Geography:
Europe, Greenland, and United States of America

696. Jihadism in the Middle East: From hierarchical territorial control to dispersed local insurgency

Author:
Matteo Colombo
Publication Date:
04-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
This brief argues that the main jihadi movements in the Middle East have experienced three interconnected and transformative crises since the collapse of Islamic State’s territorial control in 2019: a crisis of authority; a crisis of ideology; and a crisis of cohesion. These crises stem primarily from the decline of the central leadership and organisational capacity al-Qaeda and Islamic State in the Middle East due to the Syrian Kurdish People’s Defense Units (with US support), Iraq’s Hashd al-Sha’abi (with Iranian and US support) and Global Coalition efforts against Islamic State. Peer networks of violent jihadi groups remain active across the wider Sahel–Horn–Middle East–Afghanistan-Pakistan region, even though their structure has evolved. With al-Qaeda and Islamic State having lost much of their capacity to hierarchically direct and control affiliates across the Middle East, new spaces have opened. The result is a more networked and horizontally connected jihadist landscape rather than one dominated by strong central command. The erosion of central authority has also given jihadists more doctrinal flexibility in relation to local context. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham is a key example of pragmatic adjustment. Today, jihadism in the Middle East is characterised by ideologies and practices that are more localised, pragmatic and fluid than in the pre-2019 period. Increasingly it is bottom-up and more networked than it is territorial. A key implication for policymakers is that countering such configurations requires tailored and locally anchored responses.
Topic:
Insurgency, Governance, Counter-terrorism, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and Jihadism
Political Geography:
Middle East

697. Powering Resilience: Why Energy Innovation Matters for European Security and Defence

Author:
Floor Stoelinga, Hannah Lentschig, and Louise Van Schaik
Publication Date:
03-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
Europe’s security, readiness and transition objectives converge in a critical dimension: energy resilience. This policy brief analyses this nexus, outlining the strategic considerations and entry points linking energy innovation with the security and defence agenda. At a time when energy supplies are increasingly weaponised for political leverage and targeted to undermine stability, integrated planning is necessary to address vulnerabilities across both liquid fuel and electricity systems. This includes targeted security investments in critical infrastructure and increased system redundancy through diversified sources. Furthermore, improving the synergy between the civilian energy sector and the defence industry can help to identify niches where innovative energy solutions may provide an operational edge in efficiency, stealth or mobility. Ultimately, coordinated financing, policy alignment and pooled Research & Development can support the wider European industry by increasing economies of scale and the likelihood of cross-fertilisation with dual-use technologies, thereby supporting wider societal transition needs.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Innovation, Resilience, Energy, and Regional Security
Political Geography:
Europe

698. AI Diplomacy for a Multipolar World: Policy Brief Europe’s Moment to Act on Trusted AI Partnerships

Author:
Maaike Heijmans and Alexandre Ferreira Gomes
Publication Date:
03-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
US and Chinese AI models and their embedded normative biases are spreading, without any clear European counterbalance or alternative. The Netherlands and the EU need an AI diplomacy strategy that builds a modular tech offer to safeguard global AI diversity, openness, and democratic governance. By working on AI diplomacy through the EU’s Global Gateway, the Netherlands can also strengthen its own competitiveness and digital development. Dutch technological niches that are in high global demand and make for concrete sectoral offerings include agritech, cybersecurity, healthtech, and edtech.
Topic:
Development, Diplomacy, Science and Technology, Governance, European Union, and Artificial Intelligence
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, Netherlands, and United States of America

699. Middle Power and Powerlessness on a changing World Stage

Author:
Koen Aartsma, Gijs Verbossen, Liam Klein, Chiara Schrader, and Bart van der Wal
Publication Date:
05-2026
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
For this foresight study, eight scenarios were developed which together offer a unique perspective on the role of middle powers in a changing world. Middle powers can play a major role in the creation of a new world order, but do not yet have a decisive role at this point. Middle powers also face ‘middle powerlessness’ on the world stage. Middle power is a relative concept – a spectrum rather than a binary threshold level of power. A middle power is a country (or region) that can have a substantial influence on the actions of geopolitical actors without being able to change the world order on its own. There is therefore no such thing as ‘the’ middle power. In this study, middle power broadly refers to countries such as India and Russia at the top end of the spectrum and countries such as the Netherlands and Egypt at the bottom end. Over the coming years, middle powers will have the opportunity to take a proactive and assertive stance and play a key role in shaping a new geopolitical future. At the same time, like other players, they will be confronted with an unpredictable world stage on which various players, including the great powers, will try to impose their will. Middle powers have diverse worldviews and intentions, diverse visions of their own role and assertiveness in world affairs, diverse political, economic and military capabilities, and diverse strategic positions. This includes attempts to remain multi-aligned, non-aligned or fully aligned, and varying degrees of success in acquiring, maintaining and exercising power. How protean world affairs really are is illustrated well by the two central themes of this study: conflict resolution and the geopolitics of finance. These two themes were picked because they represent two of the main pillars of the ‘old’ liberal rules-based order. Both are subject to erosion and transformation. Middle powers must relate to this on the one hand but can also exert substantial influence on it. In the geopolitical developments towards a new world order, multipolarity is not a given but a key uncertainty. In addition to the precise polarity of the emerging order, the degree of cooperation versus non-cooperation between middle powers is a second key uncertainty. These variables strongly determine the degree of success of different middle power profiles and strategies. The Netherlands is a middle power, but whether it will remain so is unsure. It sorely needs a new strategic vision on changing relations with the great powers as well as with its middle power peers. In addition, the world stage is rapidly changing in a direction that the Netherlands (and, incidentally, the EU) is not accustomed to. Raw power politics prevails over international law, as demonstrated by the growing use of threats, using conventional and unconventional means. This points to a second urgent need: to find comfort in the uncomfortable and to get used to the unfamiliar. What’s more, neither NATO nor EU membership makes the Netherlands immune to the rise of brutal power politics. In particular, this study concludes that although strategic indispensability is a cost-effective strategy for smaller middle powers, it is also a particularly vulnerable strategy. Just as excessive dependence on the existing world order is unwise, so too is excessive dependence on a single vulnerable means of power. This foresight study shows that hedging and multialignment are becoming increasingly prominent strategies in the middle power arsenal. These instruments offer middle powers maneuverability in an uncertain geopolitical era. The Netherlands can also benefit from learning to manoeuvre on the basis of these strategies. The successful middle powers in this foresight study develop broad capabilities in multiple domains and deploy them with maximum effectiveness in strategically important moments and issues. Such middle power acumen requires various skills: (1) adaptability to a changing environment; (2) diversification and deepening of collaborations; and (3) broad resilience and geopolitical fortitude. Insight into, and investment in one’s own strengths and skills (one’s own middle power), but also insight into the limits of one’s own capabilities (one’s own ‘middle powerlessness’) are indispensable for meeting the current and future challenges of a world order in flux.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Geopolitics, Finance, Multipolarity, and Middle Powers
Political Geography:
Netherlands and Global Focus

700. Curbing the proliferation of Policy Brief commercial spyware starts at the demand-side

Author:
Myrthe de Boon
Publication Date:
09-2026
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
The proliferation of commercial spyware has given governments powerful, sophisticated, and highly invasive espionage tools to access messages, locations, cameras, and microphones without the target’s knowledge. Although marketed to intelligence and law enforcement agencies as a tool to protect national security, its illegitimate deployment has repeatedly driven political scandals, abuse, and human rights violations across the globe. In response, the UK and France established the international multistakeholder “Pall Mall Process” to curtail the harmful use of commercially available cyber intrusion capabilities, including commercial spyware. The Process is currently developing guidelines for industry, and it has consulted governments, industry stakeholders, and civil society organisations – including the Clingendael Institute. Against this background, this policy brief argues that regulating the commercial spyware market is necessary but not sufficient, since states remain the actors responsible for authorising, overseeing, and remedying its use. While the Pall Mall Process addresses responsible practices for states as ‘demanders’ in this market, the Process’ overall impact is limited by representation, implementation, and enforcement challenges. This brief calls for a layered response to strengthen ‘demand-side’ governance to curb the proliferation of commercial spyware: (1) stronger domestic safeguards and clarity on national security definitions; (2) more assertive use of rule-of-law and foreign policy instruments by the EU, and (3) a more inclusive Pall Mall Process that advances international knowledge diffusion and clarity on the application of international law.
Topic:
Science and Technology, International Security, Espionage, and Spyware
Political Geography:
Global Focus