Articles by: "Mark Leonard"
The end of the EU’s Brexit bounce

After the United Kingdom voted in 2016 to leave the European Union, policymakers and political leaders across Europe feared that they too would soon face a similar crisis. They worried about a domino effect in …

Auschwitz and the politicisation of history

Looming over this year’s commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, were two contradictory impulses that lay behind the creation of the Jewish state: cosmopolitanism and nationalism. A …

The Green Deal will make or break Europe

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s ambition to lead a ‘geopolitical commission’ has faced its first big test. European heads of state met last week to discuss her proposed European Green Deal, a sweeping …

The lost promise of 1989

After the collapse of communism in Europe in 1989, many dreamed of building a united and free continent with the European Union at its core. But 30 years later, Europeans have awoken to a new …

Inside Macron’s Russia initiative

French President Emmanuel Macron is one of those leaders who wants to bend the arc of history. Having upended French politics, he has secured positions for his preferred candidates at the head of the European …

Will the Iran conflict break the West?

Before last month’s G7 summit in Biarritz, France, it was a toss-up whether the greater disruption would come from US President Donald Trump or British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Yet the attendee who had the …

Can Europe become a global player?

The last five years have not been kind to the European Union’s foreign-policy prospects. A new great-power competition is shunting aside the international rules-based order, and aspects of globalisation—from trade to the internet—are being used …

What the end of Chimerica means for Europe

The escalating rivalry between China and the United States is ushering in a bipolar world. While the past few decades have been defined mostly by cooperation among the world’s leading powers, the next few will …

Is winter coming to the EU?

A popular narrative holds that the European Parliament elections in May will be Act III in the populist drama that began in 2016 with the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum and US President Donald Trump’s election. …

When European politics becomes personal

More often than not, Europe is invoked in abstract terms, such as when politicians argue that European sovereignty is the only path to security in a world dominated by great powers. But as the original …