Diplomacy

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s victory brings to an end one of the most closely contested elections in Brazil’s recent history. Before any broader analysis, however, a qualification is necessary. Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin’s controversial decision to extend voting hours sparked debate over the electoral process. Although the measure was not mathematically decisive in Lula’s come-from-behind victory, the episode risks fuelling challenges to the result and further eroding poli ...

Ce Policy Paper analyse les élections législatives marocaines du 23 septembre 2026 à travers l’articulation entre participation, implantations partisanes et conversion des suffrages en sièges. Il s’appuie sur les résultats des 92 circonscriptions locales, les données démographiques et socio-économiques du Haut-Commissariat au Plan et une comparaison avec le scrutin régional. L’analyse met en évidence une mobilisation très inégale, marquée par la faible participation de plusieurs gra ...

Strategic hedging is rational when it preserves a worthwhile choice at a tolerable cost while respecting existing commitments. Drawing on the literature on hedging and Latin American autonomy, this Policy Brief examines contrasting illustrations of that proposition. It distinguishes ambiguity about future alignment from uncertainty about existing obligations and explains how clearly bounded commitments can reconcile autonomy with credibility. The cases reveal different vulnerabiliti ...

In October 2026, Brazil will elect its president. It will also renew the entire lower legislative chamber and two-thirds of the upper chamber, elect governors in all states, and renew state legislatures. What will be the impact of these elections nationally, regionally, and internationally? Who are the main presidential candidates, and what are their agendas? What are the main challenges facing Brazil over the coming years? These are the questions that this Policy Brief seeks to ans ...

The author of this opinion, Chaimae Bourjij, is a 2019 alumna of the Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders Program. An election result tells only part of a country’s political story. The rules that turn votes into seats also shape which voices reach Parliament, how local interests are represented, and whether any party can claim a clear mandate. Morocco’s 2026 vote invites this wider reading: not only who came first, but how the electoral framework distributes political ...

Le rapport du Secrétaire général des Nations Unies du 1er octobre 2026 marque une étape importante dans l’évolution du processus politique relatif au Sahara marocain. Le premier présenté depuis l’adoption de la résolution 2797 (2025), le rapport met en évidence une dynamique diplomatique nouvelle, caractérisée par la reprise de négociations substantielles à quatre sous l’impulsion des États-Unis et avec l’accompagnement des Nations Unies. Cette évolution traduit un déplacement ...

The UN Secretary-General’s report of October 1, 2026 marks an important stage in the evolution of the political process concerning the Moroccan Sahara. As the first report issued since the adoption of Resolution 2797 (2025), it highlights renewed diplomatic momentum, marked by the resumption of substantive four-party negotiations led by the United States with United Nations support.This development reflects a gradual shift in a debate long focused on the territory’s final status tow ...

Cet article soutient que le Chief Geopolitical Officer (CGO) doit être repensé à partir de l’expérience des entreprises africaines. Dans un environnement multipolaire et fragmenté, leur principal défi n’est pas seulement la gestion des risques, mais la préservation de plusieurs options stratégiques simultanément selon une logique de hedging. Trois modèles de CGO sont à distinguer : l’intermédiation (Office chérifien des Phosphates (OCP), Tanger Med), l’intégration régionale (Ethiopi ...

In the first seven Policy Briefs of this ongoing series of analysis on Pan-Atlanticism: The Atlantic Basin in a Multipolar-Transnational World, we developed the argument that the strategic significance of the Atlantic Basin is on the rise for a range of international actors (states, regions and non-state agents) and from distinct political or ideological perspectives. In addition, in the most recently published Policy Brief -- “The U.S. and the Current International Reconfiguration: ...

In the two years since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Russia has restructured its Mediterranean presence. Although Russia’s limited and increasingly conditional access to the Khmeimim and Tartus facilities in Syria has been preserved, its presence in the country has morphed from Assad’s ‘patron-client’ configuration to a more negotiated engagement. Simultaneously, Russia has upgraded its force-projection and logistical infrastructure in eastern Libya, giving it an access path ...

Brazil's election poses a question that extends well beyond Latin America: how much freedom does a country retain to define its international role when external pressure collides with domestic political exhaustion? For the Global South, the answer matters more than any foreign government's preference regarding the next occupant of the presidential palace. Strategic autonomy remains fragile if every change of government puts a country's freedom of action back up for negotiation. ...

The author of this opinion, Marie-Noelle Nwokolo, is a 2024 alumna of the Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders Program.In September 1978, delegations from 138 countries gathered in Buenos Aires, Argentina, around a powerful idea: developing countries had knowledge, experience and capabilities worth sharing with one another. The Buenos Aires Plan of Action gave institutional form to what we now call South-South Cooperation, part of a wider post-colonial effort by developing ...

The incident involving Flydubai Flight FZ1073 between Dubai and Tel Aviv does not yet support any definitive attribution. It does, however, provide a useful warning sign: as aviation security closes off traditional avenues of intrusion, threats may shift towards alternative pathways by exploiting the people, service providers, and systems that the aviation ecosystem must necessarily trust.  ...

L’incident du vol FZ1073 entre Dubaï et Tel-Aviv ne permet encore aucune attribution définitive. Il constitue en revanche un révélateur utile : à mesure que la sûreté aérienne ferme les voies classiques d’intrusion, la menace cherche à emprunter des voies alternatives en exploitant les personnes, les prestataires et les systèmes auxquels l’écosystème aéronautique doit nécessairement accorder sa confiance. ...

On August 7, 2026, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Défense Agreement, a collective-defense pact widely compared to NATO’s Article 5. This essay argues that the comparison is misleading. Mecca borrows NATO’s language of solidarity without yet possessing NATO’s institutional machinery, and the Houthi offensive against Saudi Arabia in September 2026 provided an early and revealing test of what the agreement actually means in practice. Neither Pakistan nor Turk ...

You can imagine how often I've been asked to comment on where the Brazilian economy is headed after the election. With polls pointing to a runoff on October 25 and currently showing a statistical tie between Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro in vote simulations, I'm naturally asked about their economic programs and about the country's relations with the United States. ...

The author of this opinion, Marianna Albuquerque, is a 2022 alumna of the Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders Program.As world leaders gather in New York for the 81st United Nations General Assembly, climate change returns to the center of multilateral diplomacy under markedly different circumstances. The debate is no longer confined to whether the world must decarbonize, but increasingly centers on how the transition will happen, who will bear its costs, who will capture ...

Various competing cross-border payment networks have become vehicles for geopolitical competition. As tensions have risen, many countries want to secure access to cross-border payment systems by joining with like-minded countries to form interoperable networks, either via tokenization or Instant Payment Systems (IPSs). Three major projects are under development, serving the strategic interests of the US, China and the Rest of the World—corresponding to the three trading spheres taki ...

Much of Western debate was revealingly silent on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, which took place on August 31 and September 1 in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. That relative silence reflects how poorly the organization’s growing significance is still understood. The meeting has not gone unreported. Any gathering of Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi, and Vladimir Putin inevitably attracts&nbs ...

The author of this opinion, Joana Ama Osei-Tutu, is a 2017 alumna of the Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders Program.South-South cooperation (SSC) is often presented as an alternative to the hierarchical relationships that have historically characterized international development. In principle, SSC means Global South countries learn from one another, share expertise and resources, and develop solutions grounded in their own experiences, rather than importing models designe ...

La conférence de lancement du projet POMIRE Sud-Sud, tenue au Policy Center for the New South à Rabat les 11 et 12 février 2026, a constitué un moment fondateur. Pour la première fois, l'ensemble des acteurs institutionnels de cinq des six pays partenaires du projet — Côte d'Ivoire, Guinée, Mali, Maroc et Sénégal — se sont réunis pour poser les piliers d’une vision commune et identifier les priorités qui guideront les phases opérationnelles du projet. Quatre focus groupes thématique ...

This Paper was originally published on cgdev.org. Escalatory attacks on multilateral rules and institutions in this era of raw power politics have plunged international politics into uncharted territory. Traditional alliances have been fractured and new partnerships between unlikely bedfellows are emerging. No longer in transition, the post-World War II world order is in rupture. This paper examines international cooperation under these conditions and argues that a new "flexi-l ...

The next Secretary-General should begin with an act of institutional rebellion: refuse to become the Secretary-General ofeverything. Over three decades the office's political and administrative reach has spread across sustainable development, climate, health, migration, digital governance, financing, gender, food systems, and a still-growing list of global priorities. These issues are not unimportant; the trouble is that institutional ambition has simply outrun institutional capabil ...