Soccer Meets Geopolitics
Two competitions are currently predominating Europe’s agenda – the UEFA Euro 2024 in Germany and the brute reality of geopolitics. While the former will decide over Europe’s next soccer champion, outcomes of the latter will arguably shape whether Europe will champion the new geopolitics of the 21st century. To win this competition, we argue that the European Union (EU) does not need a unified military force, but rather a new defense commissioner who would act as a dual security manager, bringing together the EU’s global entanglements with its economic clout to enhance the military power of its Member States. Continue reading >>A Swedish NATO Membership and Its Constitutional Barriers
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the debate about a possible NATO membership in Sweden has been intense. The ruling Social Democratic Party was against a membership for a long time, but on Sunday 15 May it changed its position. Now everything points to a Swedish NATO accession and it seems likely that the constitutional barriers for that are surprisingly low: parliamentary approval with a simple majority vote. Continue reading >>Russia’s Eurasian Großraum and its Consequences
The available options for the German and Western policy towards Russia have to be based on the correct diagnosis of the causes of the conflict. The purpose of this analysis is to shed some light on the structural reasons for the Russian expansionism and make some projections on the possible long-tern consequences. The rivalry between the Russian-dominated space (Großraum – greater space) and the EU/NATO systems fuels an intense geopolitical antagonism in Europe, which can be transformed into actual conflict. I understand the Großraum in the sense of Carl Schmitt as a tightly managed sphere of interests, under the direct or indirect control of an authoritarian Great Power (infra II).
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