The Iran-Saudi deal and its impact
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 – es...
24 Mar 202334min
German foreign policy with Christoph Heusgen
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 reac...
17 Mar 202334min
James O’Brien on sanctions
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 an...
10 Mar 202338min
The crisis of democratic capitalism with Martin Wolf
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 crisi...
3 Mar 202333min
United West, divided from the rest: Global public opinion one year into Russia’s war on Ukraine
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 po...
24 Feb 202332min
Live from the Munich Security Conference: Where is world politics turning?
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 Pu...
20 Feb 202327min
How Putin created the most threatening regime in the world – with Michael Thumann
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...
10 Feb 202331min
Agathe Demarais on sanctions as a foreign policy tool
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 ...
3 Feb 202330min
