Even though the six Western Balkan countries (WB6) have close political ties with the EU, their alignment with the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) has in­creasingly come into focus since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. The EU should take a...

Germany should pay more attention to risks in procurement, manufacturing and sales in China. First, China’s population has been shrinking since 2022 and is rapidly ageing; this will cause its economic strength as well as production and consumption opportuni-ties to decrease. Secondly, the...

What are the characteristics of President Moon Jae-in's policy toward North Korea, and what lessons can be drawn for the future? More than 70 years have passed since the establishment of the two republics in 1948, during which continuous attempts have been made to achieve reconciliation, peace,...

For at least the last seven years, Lebanon has been in a deep economic and political crisis that has sparked several mass demonstrations in the heart of Beirut. Every time demonstrations were joined by up to more than a hundred thousand demonstrators with vast participation from the Lebanese...

Western powers have discussed and implemented several policies in response to the full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. One such possible answer was an immediate embargo on all Russian energy exports to the EU. While seen as a strong measure against Russia's war effort, some...

India has risen internationally since the 1990s. The most important reasons for this success are its economic reforms since 1991 and new inter­national constellations since the East-West conflict. Both have earned the country a significantly greater say on global issues, but India’s rise is...

Chinese foreign policy is at the crossroads of regional interests and global power rivalry in the Middle East, especially in Iran. China's interests in the Middle East increasingly collide with those of the US, which has brought about a significant re-orientation of Chinese foreign policy on...

Purpose The new century has witnessed rapid growth in China's foreign aid. However, there is still yet any consensus about the nature or the consequences of China's foreign aid. In this study, the author reviews the history of China's foreign aid and finds significant changes in China's foreign...

Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. won the Philippines’ presidential election by a land­slide on 9 May and was officially sworn in on 30 June. During the election cam­paign, Marcos Jr. - the son of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. who was ousted in 1986 - remained extremely vague when...

Since Brexit, the United Kingdom (UK) has been increasing its focus on bilateral rela­tions with EU member states, in particular in the field of foreign and security policy. One year after the end of the transition period, London has achieved its first successes: The UK has won over Germany and...

Even during his 2018 election campaign, Jair Bolsonaro promised a fundamental shift in Brazilian foreign policy. Since taking office as Brazil’s president on 1 January 2019, foreign policy change has been ever present in Bolsonaro’s discourse and, in some cases, is evident in policy...

Domestic repression and external autonomy of Belarus have developed in cyclical patterns since its independence. The country's narrowed action space that followed its elections in August 2020 has affected, not least, the security situation in the Baltic Sea region. Relations between Minsk and...

In this policy brief, Robert C. Blitt explores how the Kremlin continues to deepen its reliance on the Russian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (ROC) as a lever of soft power in Russian foreign policy. Constitutional amendments ratified in July 2020 suggest that this church-state partnership...

The major challenge facing Sri Lanka in the post-war period, which came with the end of the long- term civil war in Sri Lanka, was to build the country's economy and peace. Sri Lanka, which was already in the throes of a political, economic and social catastrophe, had to seek the assistance and...

France's President Emmanuel Macron and Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz have stressed the geopolitical emergency of re-designing the European Union's relationship with its neighbourhood. Both acknowledge that EU enlargement is necessary, but also emphasise that profound EU institutional reform...

Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine has disastrous consequences for the country. Although an end to the war is currently not in sight, it is already clear that a huge international effort will be required to support Ukraine’s reconstruction. At the Ukraine Recovery Conference in July, the...

This article addresses how systemic stimuli and domestic constraints, specifically on the perception of foreign policy executives, influence Indonesia’s leadership decline in ASEAN under Joko Widodo’s first presidential term. Through the lens of neoclassical realism, it is concluded that...

Scholars continue to debate whether public opinion in democracies influences the foreign policy preferences of their leaders. We intervene into this literature through a survey experiment in which we asked 101 British members of Parliament (MPs) for their views about the United Kingdom’s...

Moscow’s decision on 24 February 2022 to invade Ukraine constituted a culmination in the militarisation trajectory of Russian foreign policy since 2008. At the same time, the war has exposed the weaknesses of the military reform launched by Moscow in 2008. The high losses of the country’s...

Great Britain played a significant part in the endeavours directed at organizing the peace process in the aftermath of the Second World War. A series of myths were consequently associated to its actions and foreign policies-related decisions, myths that still surface to the present day in some...

The paper examines the question how the EU and other countries who are in a similar position of "being caught between the US and China", such as South Korea, will shape their relationship with China and how their strategies complement, or contradict, the policies pursued by the US under the...

Despite the political differences, China and India are in an interdependent trade relationship. Both major powers are each other's largest trading partner. Nevertheless, there is competition between the two countries for supremacy in the Indo-Pacific. India's democratic system and rules-based...

Mit der Präsidentschaft Joseph Bidens sind in Deutschland und anderen EU-Staaten hohe Erwartungen an einen "Neustart" der transatlantischen Beziehungen verbunden. Die Handlungsspielräume auch dieses Präsidenten werden allerdings wesentlich mitbestimmt von langfristigen Trends in der...

Indien ist seit den 1990er Jahren international aufgestiegen. Die wichtigsten Ursachen dieses Erfolgs waren die Wirtschaftsreformen seit 1991 und die neuen internationalen Konstellationen nach dem Ost-West-Konflikt. Beides verschaffte dem Land in globalen Fragen deutlich mehr Gewicht. Allerdings...

The South Caucasus region has a strategic geopolitical significance due to its importance for energy transports to Europe, but the conflicts, the pandemic and the instability affect people's safety. Moreover, these conflicts are an obstacle to the economic and social development of these...

International relations play out on multiple frequencies, where adversary states in one conflict may be partners in another. How do such shifting circumstances influence the conditions for ongoing international military operations? This paper seeks answers through an analysis of Operation...

In the debate in Europe, conflict, lack of development, population growth, and climate change are often described as the 'root causes' of African migration. However, recent research-based literature on the links between migration and development stands in stark contrast to such simplified...

Online training events deserve more attention as a form of people-to-people connectivity. The purpose of the article is to elaborate on how online training events gain prominence in the context of the COVID-19 imposed restrictions on geographical mobility. The autoethnographic account provides...

Under the influence of economic, technological and political factors, the oil market is prone to constant change, which requires analysis of its developmental trends. The purpose of this article is to do a comprehensive analysis of the impact of OPEC + countries on trade wars in the global oil...

This paper investigates whether sanctions imposed in the wake of the Ukraine crisis by Western countries and Russia have been evaded by analyzing monthly product-level trade patterns. Consolidating different methods from the literature related to the detection of illicit trade, I find that goods...

The mainstream International Relations (Neorealism and Neoliberalism) believes the world to be in a status of anarchy consisting of identical states as the unit of study. Based on their definitions, states are in a constant state of competition for survival for which they key increasing their...