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This foresight project focuses on a key question for the future of Germany’s foreign policy: Given changing geopolitical and economic relationships among major powers, what possible futures can be foreseen soft power approaches or external cultural policy (ECP) in terms of narratives, strategies, goals, policies, and programmatic activities? To address this question, we place Germany in a comparative framework of international relations that considers soft power approaches in the context of prevailing geopolitical and economic relations between the European Union, the United States of America, and the People’s Republic of China as well as other global players. In each case, we consider soft power approaches relative to hard and sharp power options. The time frame for the future scenarios is the year 2030, anticipating likely and potential developments and events from 2022 onward. The scenarios are based on a series of brainstorming and validation sessions, literature reviews, personal interviews, and an online survey fielded among experts and representatives of leading institutions. We identified two major drivers of future developments: the state of the world economy and the state of the world’s security situation. Exploring the interaction between these two drivers yielded four distinct scenarios.
This foresight project focuses on a key question for the future of Germany’s foreign policy: Given changing geopolitical and economic relationships among major powers, what possible futures can be foreseen soft power approaches or external cultural policy (ECP) in terms of narratives, strategies, goals, policies, and programmatic activities? To address this question, we place Germany in a comparative framework of international relations that considers soft power approaches in the context of prevailing geopolitical and economic relations between the European Union, the United States of America, and the People’s Republic of China as well as other global players. In each case, we consider soft power approaches relative to hard and sharp power options. The time frame for the future scenarios is the year 2030, anticipating likely and potential developments and events from 2022 onward. The scenarios are based on a series of brainstorming and validation sessions, literature reviews, personal interviews, and an online survey fielded among experts and representatives of leading institutions. We identified two major drivers of future developments: the state of the world economy and the state of the world’s security situation. Exploring the interaction between these two drivers yielded four distinct scenarios.
Over 100 days into the Biden administration, how have transatlantic relations shifted? This policy brief builds upon analysis from an October 2020 piece titled “No going back? A transatlantic cooperation agenda under Biden” and examines lessons for European policymakers from the first few months of Joe Biden’s presidency. It argues that while Biden has retained many core parts of Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda, there are still several promising avenues for transatlantic cooperation over the coming years. These include accelerated climate action, coordinated economic stimulus, and ensuring global vaccine access. Reaching these goals will require joint action to defuse geopolitical tensions and ensure greater economic justice at home and abroad.
After four turbulent years in trade relations, Europe has high expectations of the Biden administration. However, the room for big trade reforms is small and new grand-scale liberalization is neither economically necessary nor politically realistic. Accordingly, we propose a pragmatic agenda that focuses on ending ongoing trade conflicts and making progress on some WTO reforms as well as trade-adjacent issues such as climate change and supply-chain security.
If Joe Biden is elected US President in November, will he restore the preTrump era of transatlantic relations? While some Europeans may wish for that, it is neither feasible nor desirable, as Edward Knudsen argues in this
policy brief. A changing geopolitical landscape and declining economic conditions mean that new solutions are needed. Instead of focussing on traditional forms of cooperation like liberalising trade and bolstering defence, the US and EU should work together to tackle inequality and corruption, address the climate emergency, and defuse geopolitical tensions.
US secondary sanctions present a unique challenge for Europe. These measures limit where European firms can operate, hinder the EU’s ability to maintain its foreign commitments, and limit Europe’s ambitions of achieving strategic sovereignty. The US’s re-imposition of secondary sanctions on Iran in May 2018 has highlighted this issue. With geopolitical tensions rising, it is possible that the US could impose secondary sanctions on larger EU trading partners. In light of this possibility, this paper explores why secondary sanctions are so effective and offers concrete proposals to counter them.