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Preparing for 2050: From foresight to grand strategy

On 16/02/2023

This article is the English version of Martin Briens and Thomas Gomart, « Comment préparer 2050 ? De la « prévoyance » à la « grande stratégie » », published in Politique étrangère, Vol. 87, Issue 4, 2021.

“Nothing is more necessary in governing a state than foresight, since by its use one can easily prevent many evils which can be corrected only with great difficulty if allowed to transpire,” observed Cardinal Richelieu, adding that “it is more important to anticipate the future than to dwell upon the present, since with enemies of the state, as with diseases, it is better to advance to the attack than to wait and drive them out after they have invaded.” This evident but often forgotten truth points to the need for France to rethink its foresight systems, amid a strategic acceleration that is making long-term planning a matter of urgency.

Game Over: Western military interventionism, 1991–2021

de Politique Etrangère

On 09/02/2023

dans PE in english

This article is the English version of: Louis Gautier, « Fin de partie : retour sur l’interventionnisme militaire occidental, 1991-2021 », published in Politique étrangère, Vol. 87, Issue 4, 2021.

On August 31, 2021, after twenty years of war against the Taliban, American troops withdrew from Afghanistan. This brought an end to the longest conflict ever waged by the United States (US), and marked the final phase of disengagement of the US’s military resources, which had been deployed on a massive scale in the Middle East since 2001. It indicated an operational change in the fight against terrorism, now no longer an open declared war, but once again a covert war. Most commentators drew a line under the event as an end to the sequence that began on September 11, 2001. But on a more fundamental level, the withdrawal from Afghanistan signaled an end to the policy of military interventionism pursued by the West since 1991.

European economic governance: Past errors and future promises

de Politique Etrangère

On 02/02/2023

dans PE in english

This article is the English version of: Vivien A. Schmidt, « Gouvernance économique européenne : entre erreurs passées et promesses d’avenir », published in Politique étrangère, Vol. 87, Issue 4, 2021.

Image de fond avec les drapeaux de l'Union européenne, couverture du numéro 4 de 2021 de la revue Politique Étrangère.

The responses to the Covid-19 crisis, in which the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) were suspended and the European Union (EU) took on significant EU level debt for the purposes of redistributive solidarity, constitute a great leap forward for the EU. They also represent a tacit acknowledgment that the policies put in place in response to the Eurozone crisis, focused on “governing by rules and ruling by numbers”, with punitive conditionality for countries in trouble, were not fit for purpose. The question for today is: Will the EU go back to the status quo ante of the Eurozone, focused on rules-based, numbers-targeting governance, with limited common EU instruments for investment in the future? Or will it instead move beyond the Eurozone and Covid-19 crisis effectively and democratically, toward more sustainable and equitable growth and prosperity for all Europeans?