Mark Leonard's World in 30 Minutes

This week, Mark Leonard welcomes Célia Belin , head of ECFR’s Paris office and senior policy fellow, and Jeremy Cliffe , ECFR’s editorial director and senior policy fellow, to discuss Marine Le Pen’s decision to run in France’s 2027 presidential election. After a Paris appeal court ruling rescinded her ban from holding public office, Le Pen has reasserted leadership of the far-right National Rally...

This week, Mark Leonard speaks to Mike Kuiken , vice chair of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, and Randy Schriver , chair of the commission and former US assistant secretary of defence for Indo-Pacific security affairs, about US-China relations in this period of heightened geopolitical uncertainty.  The war in Iran and Russia’s war against Ukraine are raising questions ab...

It is ten years since Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, and the country is once again facing political upheaval. Keir Starmer has resigned as prime minister after his Labour rival Andy Burnham’s decisive victory in the Makerfield by-election. At the same time, ECFR has released new research which suggests that the public view on Brexit has evolved significantly—despite much of the po...

This week, Julien Barnes-Dacey welcomes Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud , Saudi Arabia’s minister of foreign affairs, for a fireside chat at ECFR’s Annual Council Meeting. In Prince Faisal’s first public appearance since the Iran-US memorandum of understanding was announced, he and Julien discuss what the deal means for the prospect of stability in the Middle East. Prince Faisal argues that the m...

This week, Mark Leonard welcomes Carl Benedikt Frey , associate professor of AI and work at the Oxford Internet Institute and author of How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation and the Fate of Nations , to discuss whether AI enthusiasm is obscuring a more fundamental problem: the global slowdown in productivity and innovation. Carl argues that technological progress is neither inevitable nor guar...

This week, Mark Leonard welcomes Anton Jäger , lecturer in politics at Oxford University and author of Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization Without Political Consequences , to discuss why political engagement is surging across Western democracies—even as traditional political institutions continue to weaken. Anton argues that the West has entered a “hyperpolitics” era, marked by intense political...

This week, Mark Leonard welcomes Liam Byrne , a British Labour Party MP and chair of the House of Commons Business and Trade Select Committee, to talk about the rise of right-wing populism across Europe and why mainstream politics is struggling to respond. Drawing on his new book, Why Populists are Winning and How to Beat Them , Byrne argues that widening wealth gap, declining local communities an...

This week,  Mark Leonard  is joined by Kelsey Davenport , director for non-proliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, and Ellie Geranmayeh , deputy director of ECFR’s Middle East and North Africa programme, to introduce ECFR’s Iran nuclear monitor . The new online tool, updated monthly, forecasts Iran’s nuclear programme after a year of Israeli and American strikes, and maps possible pa...

This week,  Mark Leonard  welcomes  Curtis Yarvin , American blogger and political thinker, to talk about the ideas reshaping parts of the American right and Silicon Valley. Known for his critiques of liberal democracy, bureaucracy and what he calls “the cathedral”, Yarvin reflects on his intellectual journey from libertarianism to monarchism and e...

This week, Mark Leonard is joined by David Runciman , British political theorist and philosopher, to explore whether today’s sense of crisis really marks the end of democracy—or something more complex. As the global order fragments, Runciman argues that democracy itself is not disappearing, but the forces shaping the world no longer fit the model that worked for the past 50 years. From shifting de...

This week,  Mark Leonard  welcomes  Ayşe Zarakol ,   professor of international relations at Cambridge University,   to explore whether today’s global crises signal disorder or a deeper shift toward “unorder,” where shared rules and assumptions are no longer relevant.  Drawing on historical parallels—from the interwar...

This week in London, Mark Leonard introduced his new book Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics When the Rules Fail and reflected on what it means to navigate a world in which old assumptions about rules-based order, power and international cooperation no longer hold. ECFR’s new weekly accompaniment podcast series “Surviving Chaos” will introduce the most interesting and controversial thinkers to explain t...

This week, Mark Leonard speaks with Zsuzsanna Szelényi , a Hungarian politician and foreign policy specialist, about the forces behind Hungary’s historic political shift and what comes next for both the country and Europe. Together they explore how economic pressures, corruption scandals, and a newly mobilised electorate—especially younger voters—reshaped Hungary’s political landscape after 16 yea...

For the last few days, a set of pronouncements from the White House have filled the news regarding the war in Iran. President Donald Trump has gone from threatening to destroy an entire civilisation to negotiating a ceasefire between Washington and Tehran, led by Pakistan.  This week,  Mark Leonard  is joined by  Aslı ...

This week,  Mark Leonard  welcomes  Szymon Kardaś , senior policy fellow in ECFR's European Power programme, to unpack how war in the Middle East is reshaping Europe’s energy landscape. While Europe is not heavily reliant on Middle Eastern imports directly, disruptions—especially around Qatar and the Strait of Hormuz—are pushing up global prices&nb...

This week Mark Leonard welcomes Jana Kobzova , co-director of ECFR’s European Security programme and senior policy fellow, to discuss how the war in Iran is reshaping Ukraine’s war effort. What began as cautious optimism in Kyiv has turned into concern, as American military resources—especially air-defence systems—are redirected to the Middle East, leaving Ukraine increasingly exposed to Russian a...

Mark Leonard welcomes Piotr Buras , Carla Hobbs , Camille Lons , Jana Puglierin and Arturo Varvelli and to discuss how Europe is responding to the war in Iran. This week Mark Leonard records live from ECFR’s all-staff retreat in Sofia, bringing together colleagues from across the continent to unpack European reactions to the escalating conflict between the US, Israel and Iran. While some leaders h...

This week, Mark Leonard is joined by  Aziz Alghashian , senior non-resident fellow at the Gulf International Forum, Eran Etzion, former Israeli diplomat and deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council at the Pime Minister’s Office and Ellie Geranmayeh , deputy director of ECFR’s Middle East and North Africa programme. Over the past couple of weeks, the US and Israel have continued attac...

This week Mark Leonard speaks to Raja Mohan , academic and foreign policy analyst, in a podcast episode recorded live from New Delhi during the Raisina Dialogue conference. Together they explore how India views the current global moment: from the resilience of US autonomy to the diffusion of influence across emerging powers. Why has India’s relationship with the EU become more strategically import...

In this emergency episode, Mark Leonard is joined by Ellie Geranmayeh , deputy director of ECFR’s Middle East and North Africa programme, Jeremy Shapiro, ECFR’s research director, and Cinzia Bianco , ECFR visiting fellow, to discuss the dramatic escalation following a massive joint US–Israeli military operation against Iran’s leadership and military infrastructure. What are Trump’s war aims and do...

As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine enters its fifth year, negotiations are finally entering a productive phase.  Mark Leonard  is joined by  Jennifer Kavanagh , senior fellow and director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, and author of the new report, “An Armed Nonalignment Model for Ukraine’s Postwar...

This week  Mark Leonard  is joined by  Mark Malloch-Brown . Mark is the former president of the Open Society Foundations, former head of the United Nations Development Programme, formerly UN secretary general Kofi Annan’s chief of staff, and former UN deputy secretary general. From 2007-2009 he joined the British gover...

In this special episode of the World in 30 Minutes, Mark Leonard welcomes Editorial Director and Senior Policy Fellow Jeremy Cliffe , Senior Policy Fellow, Ulrike Franke , Distinguished Policy Fellow, Janka Oertel and Senior Policy Fellow, Majda Ruge live from the Munich Security Conference to unpack its biggest moments. Recording from the Bayerischer Hof Hotel in Munich, they reflect on Marco Rub...

This episode features a live recording of a conversation between ECFR director Mark Leonard and US undersecretary of war for policy, Elbridge Colby , which took place during the Munich Security Conference 2026.  Together, they discuss how ideas developed in think-tanks translate into government policy, and how the “America First” approach is shaping US national security priorities. Mark and E...

This week,  Mark Leonard  is joined by  Tiago Antunes , Portugal’s former secretary of state for European affairs and senior visiting fellow at ECFR, and  Jim O’Brien , former US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, to reflect on the recent transatlantic crisis over Greenland.  After mee...