Mark Leonard's World in 30 Minutes

In recent weeks, the conversation on military aid for Ukraine has shifted from battle tanks to fighter jets. Poland and Slovakia have already delivered Soviet-era MiG-29s, and Ukraine's leaders have repeately called for the West also to supply modern jets. As with tanks, a decision from the US to supply its own fighters to Kyiv could be highly influential for European governments. This week, Mark...

Despite being a NATO member, Turkey has stayed neutral in the war in Ukraine and continues to block Sweden’s accession to the alliance. Yet, Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is better known domestically for his economic mismanagement and shoddy response to the earthquake that killed 60,000 people in February than his government's increasingly aggressive international strategy. Presidentia...

Last week, France’s president Emmanuel Macron threw the EU bubble into turmoil by suggesting that Europe should not become the United States’ “vassal” over Taiwan. But is the controversy overshadowing the possibility that he could be right? This week, Mark Leonard welcomes two ECFR colleagues: director of the Wider Europe programme and former French diplomat, Marie Dumoulin, and head of the Paris...

Although European leaders have stepped up in many ways to support Ukraine, the war has also laid bare Europe’s profound dependence on the United States. This reality was at the heart of French president Emmanuel Macron’s recent call for more “strategic autonomy”, which stirred a new debate over the transatlantic power imbalance. It was also the topic of a new publication, “The Art of Vassalisation...

From the rise of China and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to more independent middle and regional powers – our global political order is rapidly changing. But what is Hungary’s position in this increasingly multipolar world? In this week’s episode, Mark Leonard is joined by Balazs Orban, the political director of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban. (They are not related.) Balazs is also the chair...

Last week, the Chinese leader Xi Jinping completed a three-day visit to Moscow, his first since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Before the war, Xi and Vladimir Putin had famously announced a “friendship without limits”. But it is unclear whether that relationship is purely transactional, a marriage of convenience, or based on more fundamental, ideological factors. In this week’s episode,...

Last week, China helped broker an agreement between long-feuding Saudi Arabia and Iran to begin the process of normalising their relations. Both the deal and China’s role surprised many observers – especially in the West. So, how significant is the agreement, and what consequences will it have for the Middle East? To address this and other questions, Mark Leonard welcomes Julien Barnes-Dacey, dire...

This week, Mark Leonard welcomes Christoph Heusgen, longstanding foreign policy chief during the Merkel years and now chair of the Munich Security Conference. They discuss Western and non-Western reactions to the war in Ukraine – and, in particular, the role of Germany. Should Berlin have taken a harder line against Russia after 2014? How can Scholz realise his vision for the Zeitenwende? And what...

A year into the war in Ukraine, economic sanctions remain the West’s strongest instrument against Russia. But the Russian economy has proven surprisingly resilient: Russia still sells oil to Turkey and China, and – according to a recent investigation by The Economist and SourceMaterial – the Kremlin’s sanctions-dodging is becoming increasingly advanced. This week, Mark Leonard is joined by James O...

Some analysts argue that capitalism would work better without democracy, while others believe that democracy would be better off without capitalism – so what’s the solution? In his new book “The crisis of democratic capitalism”, Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, sets out how they actually need one another if either is to thrive. In this week’s episode, host Mark Leon...

A major new public opinion poll from ECFR indicates that, a year into Russia's war on Ukraine, the Western alliance is consolidating – but that there are divisions between the West and other global powers. These divergences range from their views of the conflict to their interpretations of democracy and their ambitions on the world stage. In this week's episode, the authors of the research – Mark...

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine upended many Western leaders’ previous assumptions about security policy, warfare, and the international order. Mark Leonard and his ECFR colleagues Camille Grand, Jana Puglierin, and Ulrike Franke got together at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) last weekend to discuss the dramatic changes – such as Germany's Zeitenwende – that have taken place as a result of thes...

This week, Mark Leonard is joined by Michael Thumann, foreign affairs correspondent for the German weekly newspaper Die ZEIT, longtime expert on Russia, and one of the only German correspondents still reporting from Moscow. Following the publication of Thumann’s new book, “Revanche. Wie Putin das bedrohlichste Regime der Welt geschaffen hat” (“Revenge: How Putin created the most threatening regime...

Over the last decades, sanctions have become the West’s diplomatic tool par excellence. Faced with wars, humanitarian crises, and human rights violations, the West’s response has often been to impose sanctions to avoid resorting to military force. This week, Mark Leonard invited Agathe Demarais, global forecasting director of the Economist Intelligence Unit and author of “Backfire - How Sanctions...

On 25 January, after months of deliberation, Germany's chancellor Olaf Scholz announced he would send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine – and permit other countries to do the same. What led to this turnaround? Mark Leonard is joined by ECFR heavyweights on security and defence policy – Camille Grand, Gustav Gressel, Jana Puglierin, and Jeremy Shapiro – to discuss what this decision means for the war in U...

This week’s episode comes to you all the way from the snowy peaks of Davos, Switzerland. Mark Leonard is joined by ECFR board member Alexander Stubb – who is director of the school of transnational governance at the European University Institute in Florence and a former prime minister of Finland – to give us their take on this year's World Economic Forum. What does cooperation in a fragmented worl...

In this episode, Mark Leonard welcomes Catherine Ashton – the European Union’s first high representative for foreign affairs and security policy and the first female EU commissioner for trade – to talk about her new book “And Then What? Inside Stories of 21st Century Diplomacy”. As a seasoned mediator, Ashton played a crucial role in negotiating the ‘Brussels agreement’ between Serbia and Kosovo i...

Our beloved predictions episode is back! As they do every year, Mark Leonard and ECFR research director Jeremy Shapiro forecast the foreign policy trends and events for the year ahead. If other analysts saw it coming, Mark and Jeremy certainly didn’t. Their 2022 prediction of “no large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine” really threw last year’s scoring off leaving them with only 6/10 points. Will...

After the EU finally came to an agreement with Hungary over financial aid for Ukraine, all eyes are now on Poland and its own protracted conflict with Brussels over its rule-of-law inadequacies. Meanwhile, a series of public spats between Warsaw and Berlin has drawn attention to the rifts within the EU and a new East-West divide. In this week’s episode, Mark Leonard is joined by Piotr Buras and Ja...

New mini-series! Subscribe here: https://soundcloud.com/ecfrclips China is becoming ever more important to global affairs. But the covid-19 pandemic, as well as political and geopolitical challenges, mean that Europeans’ ability to engage with Chinese thinkers and understand their views and ideas about the world has diminished. In this mini-series, Mark Leonard and Janka Oertel will try to change...

The European Council is considering freezing €7.5 billion in funds allocated to Hungary due to concerns about rule of law violations. Meanwhile, prime minister Viktor Orban has embarked on a controversial “national consultation” concerning EU sanctions against Russia, increasingly isolating Hungary among member states. In this week’s podcast, Mark Leonard is joined by Zsuzsanna Szelenyi, a Hungari...

From search engines to social media, from navigation systems to medical gear, our everyday lives are already intertwined with artificial intelligence. But as AI becomes ever more powerful, questions around security risks, ethical use and disinformation arise. In this week’s episode, Mark Leonard is joined by Stuart Russell, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences and holder of th...

The semiconductor industry has become the cornerstone of the structure of the global economy and the balance of geopolitical power. And Europe has now joined the United States and China in a ‘chip war’ for global semiconductor domination. In this week’s episode, Janka Oertel, head of ECFR´s Asia programme and senior policy fellow, is joined by Chris Miller, assistant professor of international his...

Many Europeans see the war in Ukraine as an attack on the ‘rules-based order’. But to many people in other parts of the world, there is no consensus on a set of rules to govern global affairs – and no sense of order. In this mini-series, Mark Leonard will go on an intellectual tour of the world, talking to key thinkers about how order is being defined by different powers. He explores how the clash...

9 November is a day of low and high points in history – moments of both loss and of joy. Some important examples include the Pogromnacht in 1938 or the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which marked the end of the cold war. But 9 November 2007 was also the day that brought ECFR’s 50 founding members together, united by a sense that the EU member states could combine their values and resources to be...