The EU and Taiwan: Normalizing the Status Quo
When I read Egmont colleague Sven Biscop’s My Summer in Beijing, I was just about to depart to a little-recognized political entity off the Chinese coast that – constitutionally, at […]
Europe in the World
In a world that is largely driven by competition and rivalry (and partnership, yet) between great powers, understanding the Grand Strategy of each of these powers is crucial. So is developing a Grand Strategy for the EU itself. An EU that acts as one, as one pole of the multipolar world on a par with the other powers, is the only way to safeguard the way of life that the Member States of the EU have chosen, based on democracy, the free market, and equality.
Power cannot be divided: a global player must have political, economic, as well as military power. To that end, the Europe in the World Programme analyses the diplomacy and defence of the US, China, and Russia, and of the EU, NATO, and their members. We also focus on geoeconomics, researching Open Strategic Autonomy and the Global Gateway as key EU instruments, as well as the geoeconomic approaches of the other powers.
Defence policy is our third main axis of research, with a particular focus on European defence and its interaction with NATO, but also on nuclear deterrence and the deterrence of hybrid threats. Throughout all three research axis, we devote special attention to the role of Belgium, including notably the development of its own National Security Strategy and diplomatic and military capabilities.
Publications
Measuring the Unmeasurable: Indicators of Russian State Resilience
Twenty months into the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, what initially began as a highly mobile war has now transformed into a protracted battle of attrition—a grueling test of […]
Commentaries
“Cannon to Right of Them, Cannon to Left of Them”: Coping with War Around Europe
War over Nagorno-Karabakh, war over Palestine: there have, sadly, been many. Their direct impact on European and global security was mostly limited, but for the people on the ground they […]
Ten Years of Belt & Road – Quo Vadis?
A decade ago, President Xi Jinping announced the Belt and Road Initiative. Promising large infrastructure projects, the initiative was welcomed by vastly underinvested countries all over the world. Also on […]
Commentaries
Behind the Hamas attack on Israel, Hard Geopolitics lurk
Three key strategic issues underpin Hamas’s timing and extremely violent method in its recent attack on Israel. Rather than describing the facts, and staying away from the (very justified) emotional […]
Charting Belgium’s Economic Security – a complex country in a complex world
Economic Security is mentioned as one of the four pillars of the Belgian National Security Strategy (NSS). Ever since the inception of the NSS, the geoeconomic arena has been turbulent […]