Geopolitical Europe: Summer Favourites

Your summer reading list on all things Geopolitical Europe

August is arguably a good month to take some time to read all the longer articles that have been in the “bookmarks” list since the beginning of the year… or perhaps even longer. Here’s your reading list with favourites featured in previous editions of the Geopolitical Europe Pulse this year — and two Substack recommendations as an extra summer treat.

Summer favourites: long reads

European strategic autonomy: Is there such a thing as European strategic autonomy? Yes, argues Tara Varma, Visiting Fellow at Brookings Institution, in the article “European Strategic Autonomy: The Path to a Geopolitical Europe”, published in the Washington Quarterly. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, Europeans have increasingly stepped up their tools to respond to global challenges, and the Ukraine war has been a catalyst for this endeavour.

EU geopolitics via geoeconomics: The EU increasingly leverages its economic toolkit to address geopolitical challenges, either through existing measures (sanctions…) or through designing new instruments (e.g. anti-coercion instrument). Sarah Bauerle Danzman and Sophie Meunier provide a deep-dive into this topic in their article “The EU’s Geoeconomic Turn: From Laggard to Institutional Innovator”, published in the Journal of Common Market Studies.

Israel-Palestine: How did the EU engage in conflict mitigation in the past? In their article “EU Policy towards the Israel-Palestine Conflict: The Limitations of Mitigation Strategies”, published in The International Spectator, Sinem Akgül-Açıkmeşe and Soli Özel explain the reasons for the EU’s limited role and successful approaches in the region.

The EU in US-China competition: The big challenge for the EU when crafting China policy is that China policy is just as much about navigating the relationship with Beijing as with Washington, given that the US increasingly pressure Europeans to follow their strategy on China. Accordingly, “Europe is both a site of and participant in contemporary US–China geopolitical competition”, write Richard Maher and Till Schöfer in their fresh-off-the-press book chapter “Europe’s role in US-China Strategic Competition”, published in the book “The United States and China in an Era of Global Transformation” (Cambridge University Press).

Substack favourites: beyond Europe

Fancy another intellectual treat focusing on regions beyond Europe? Add these two Substacks to your reading list, and make sure you subscribe to and thereby support the work of two outstanding experts:

Coffee in the Desert by Jesse Marks is an outstanding collection of longer academic-style essays, shorter policy-oriented pieces, historical analyses, and essays quite literally taking you for a coffee in the desert — all related to humanitarianism, the Middle East, and China’s approach to the two former, and sometimes archeology. Superb writing style guaranteed; the latest paper “Two Trajectories of Humanitarianism: Liberal vs State Humanitarism in Civil War”, is just one of many examples.

India Watch Briefing by Patrizia Cogo is a newsletter on Indian foreign policy, with insights into India’s relations with the EU, China, as well as the geopolitics of technology. Launched just a few months ago, the format provides a crisp but dense update on developments in Indian foreign policy that are often under the radar in many European media. The readout of the results of the Indian elections and their implications for foreign policy is a good example of what to expect.