Geopolitics

This Opinion was originally published in globalpolicyjournal.com ...

La Marche Verte fait partie de ces moments féconds qui n’ont pas cessé d’influer sur le cours des événements politiques du Maroc, par la place qu’elle a prise, dès le départ, dans la longue durée, le contexte dans lequel elle s’est déployée, la logique des interactions dans laquelle elle s’est inscrite par ses causes et ses effets, et comme une des figures éclatantes du récit national. ...

There is a story told by Václav Havel, the Czech dissident writer who later became president after the fall of communism. In his essay The Power of the Powerless, Havel describes a shopkeeper who, every morning, places a sign in his window reading: “Workers of the world, unite!” He does not believe in it. Nor do the people around him. Yet the sign remains. ...

Divergent regulatory regimes for data, driven by different motivations, ranging from privacy protection in the European Union to information control in China, could eventually produce distinctively different, and possibly contradictory, bodies of data. Artificial-intelligence models trained on those datasets could produce differing and possibly even conflicting outputs. To the extent that AI outputs start to shape human perception and to influence decisions, in governments and ...

The U.S.–China technological rivalry has become a central axis of global economic and geopolitical competition. While the United States continues to lead in frontier innovation—most notably in advanced semiconductors and artificial intelligence (AI)—China has consolidated strengths in large-scale implementation, manufacturing capacity, and control over critical segments of global supply chains. These advantages are especially visible in clean energy technologies and in the processin ...

This Paper was originally published on orient-online.com  The Western Mediterranean’s exposure to the Sahel is usually framed in terms of security spillovers and crisis management. This paper argues that this framing misreads how Sahelian access conditions now shape Mediterranean integration. Morocco’s Atlantic Initiative is a state-led corridor strategy combining Atlantic port infrastructure, inland transit routes, and energy systems to connect landlocked Sahelian economi ...

This article examines the quiet but profound implications of the erosion of U.S.-led hegemony for small and vulnerable states of the New South. While the post-1945 international order was never egalitarian, it offered predictability: power was organized through law, and sovereignty for weaker states rested less on justice than on procedural stability. Davos 2026 marked a turning point in the public acknowledgment of that system’s unraveling. Statements by leading Western figures rev ...

From the use of tariffs as a foreign policy instrument, to the weaponization of critical resources, and from targeted sanctions to attacks on critical infrastructure, economic security is at the forefront of international debates. The aggressive use of economic instruments for strategic purposes has become an explicit feature of international affairs, in a way not seen since the interwar period[1]. Beyond the weaponization of resources of all kinds, an increasing ‘monetization’ is u ...

The 2026 World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting took place in an environment of elevated economic uncertainty and structural risk repricing. According to the Global Risks Report (GRR) 2026, geoeconomic confrontation and economic downturn rank among the most severe near-term risks, while inflation-related risks and economic volatility have risen sharply in perceived severity compared with the previous edition. Notably, 50% of respondents to the Global Risks Perception Survey ...

Le Mali, le Burkina Faso et le Niger, réunis au sein de l’Alliance des États du Sahel (AES), affirment l’ambition de bâtir une souveraineté nationale qui leur permettrait de s’émanciper de la domination et des influences extérieures et de se doter d’une liberté d’action dans les choix de développement politique et économique. Cependant, cette ambition se heurte à de nombreuses contraintes économiques et sécuritaires.La souveraineté ne peut se construire sans une base économique soli ...

The post-1945 international order, an architecture born of war-weariness and colonial twilight, is now a majestic but empty shell. Its foundational promise—a universal system of rules administered impartially—has been hollowed out by decades of selective enforcement, instrumentalized law, and a chasm between the rhetorical ideals of its custodians and their geopolitical practice. This is not a temporary dysfunction, but a systemic failure of legitimacy. From the invasion of Iraq und ...

In response to developing countries’ dissatisfaction with the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) of $300 billion, which was decided at the Twenty-Ninth Conference Of the Parties (COP29) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan, the COP29 and COP30 presidencies promised to develop a roadmap to achieve $1.3 trillion in external climate finance that developing countries need, and to present it at COP30 in Belém, Brazil[1]. The two pre ...

Global cooperation is under stress. It hardly requires detailed analysis: the international system is in a profound crisis, when seen from many Northern vantage points. What if we see the same turbulence but from a different vantage point? For many in the Global South the current period signals risk, but also opportunity. That the same events could spark a sense of crisis in one group but opportunity in another is nothing new. However, the sheer scale, speed, and scope of recen ...

La création de l’Alliance des États du Sahel (AES) symbolise une rupture politique et géostratégique majeure, appuyée sur un discours souverainiste et anti-occidental. Deux ans après, Mali, Burkina Faso et Niger peinent à assurer leur intégrité territoriale, à stabiliser leur sécurité intérieure et à bâtir une gouvernance solide. L’intégrité territoriale est un problème commun aux trois États, car dans ces pays, la cohésion de l’État et le contrôle du territoire sont directement men ...

The candidate could not have been more controversial—or more celebrated. Born in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, once ruled by Idi Amin, who famously declared himself “Conqueror of the British Empire” and “King of Scotland,” Zohran Kwama Mamdani, 34, is of Indian descent. His father is an academic, a professor of anthropology at Columbia University, his mother, Mira Nair, is an influential filmmaker. Zohran arrived in the USA on a visa at age seven. No doubt the agents of the feared ...

Fuel access has become a strategic pressure point across Mali and its neighbors. In 2025, Jama’t Nusrat al Islam wal- Muslimeen (JNIM) shifted from sporadic interdictions to a deliberate fuel-blockade strategy intended to pressure Bamako without holding territory. By selectively constraining movement along the Sikasso–Kayes–Bamako corridor, the group turned fuel scarcity into a tool of coercion, governance, and narrative control—shaping behavior in the capital while remaining largel ...

The return of President Donald Trump to the White House at the start of 2025 was expected to signal an American retreat from international engagement, especially in regions of traditional security interest, such as southern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. To the surprise of many observers around the Mediterranean, and perhaps to the dismay of some in the Trump administration’s ideological orbit, this has not happened. If anything, the second half of 2025 has seen a high d ...

An unusual gesture indeed—the dictator, more often than not a recluse, withdrawn behind his fortress and protected by 1.2 million armed soldiers, finally admitted what had long been seen on the battlefield in Ukraine and by spy satellites far above. North Korean soldiers—possibly 12,000 of them—are fighting on front lines alongside Russian troops, and they are falling or being wounded; some 4,000 men so far, by current estimates.  ...

La résolution 2797 du Conseil de sécurité des Nations Unies ne marque pas la fin d’un dossier, mais l’aboutissement d’une gestion magistrale du temps. Le Maroc n’a pas seulement gagné des appuis, il a gagné le tempo.
En combinant le Chronos de la constance et le Kairos de l’opportunité, il a démontré qu’une politique étrangère pouvait s’appuyer sur la philosophie du temps autant que sur la géopolitique.Cette diplomatie du temps maîtrisé peut aujourd’hui être considérée comme une doc ...

Le 17 novembre 2025, le Conseil de sécurité de l’Organisation des Nations Unies (ONU) a adopté la résolution 2803 par laquelle il fait sien le Plan d’ensemble du Président Donald Trump ayant pour objectif de mettre fin au conflit à Gaza. Contrairement à ce qu’on pourrait croire, l’initiative américaine ne date pas du 2ème mandat de l’Administration Trump. Elle a vu le jour durant son premier mandat.  Le Plan entériné par la résolution du Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU, surnommé ‘ ...

The meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea, was more than an exercise in diplomacy. It was an emblematic performance of a world in transformation. Behind the formalities, the cameras, and the studied smiles lay an unspoken recognition: the world is no longer unipolar. The era of American supremacy, sustained for decades through its economic reach, military presence, and ideological projection, is giving way to a more diffuse, multipolar reality. ...

Almost a year after President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the United States displays little of the isolationism many of the country’s international partners anticipated, and many of Trump’s supporters desired. From economic sanctions to military intervention, Trump is proving to be something of a foreign policy president, although with distinctly unilateral instincts. This approach is particularly evident in Washington’s current approach to the ‘South’, including Latin ...

Now that a cease-fire is in place, it is time to consider Gaza’s reconstruction. This will be the fifth such effort in less than twenty years. Lessons from the previous four indicate that rebuilding houses, bridges, and roads is relatively straightforward. Far more challenging is building a thriving Gazan economy and society—one where young people live with dignity, have jobs, feel heard and included in their communities, and are hopeful about their future. Achieving this requires n ...

Le panorama géopolitique mondial expose, certes, cruellement les vulnérabilités structurelles de l'Afrique (dépendance alimentaire, financière, exposition aux chocs), mais il ouvre aussi une fenêtre d'opportunités sans précédent depuis les indépendances. Le continent n'est plus seulement un objet de la géopolitique mondiale ; il tend de plus en plus à jouer un rôle d’acteur qui dispose d'une marge de manœuvre accrue. Le défi pour le continent et ses Éta ...

Depuis plus de trente ans, les relations entre le Maroc et l’Union européenne (UE) se caractérisent par un équilibre entre pragmatisme politique, ouverture économique et convergence stratégique. Le processus de Barcelone de 1995 a marqué le début d’une coopération euro-méditerranéenne renforcée, consolidée par l’Accord du Statut avancé en 2008 et le Partenariat euro-marocain de prospérité partagée, faisant de l’UE le principal partenaire économique du Royaume. Dans un contexte régio ...

Prochainement disponible sur Livremoi & Amazon. Les Dialogues Stratégiques, fruit d'une collaboration entre le HEC Center for Geopolitics et le Policy Center for the New South, constituent une plateforme d'échanges biannuelle dédiée à l'analyse des grandes tendances mondiales et des problématiques régionalesqui lient l'Europe et l'Afrique. Réunissant praticiens, décideurs, universitaires et représentants desmédias, cet espace de réflexion permet de décoder les transfor ...

A direct threatIs history repeating itself? That was the question circulating at NATO headquarters in Brussels as officials observed a joint Russian-Belarusian strategic exercise held in Belarus last September, Ukraine’s neighbor and Moscow’s staunch ally. ...

Cementing the Position of a Global PowerNo doubt the news was unwelcome for Pentagon planners in Washington, who had long pressured the Venezuelan government. In August, the United States placed a $50 million bounty on the Venezuelan leader’s arrest. By late September 2025, multiple Chinese vessels, including a naval hospital ship, were detected in the Caribbean. These ships appear to be part of a broader Chinese diplomatic and military strategy in Latin America, heightening tension ...

Almost a year after the December 2024 fall of former President Bashar al-Assad, Syrians on October 5 took part in their first parliamentary vote—a symbolic milestone for a nation emerging from years of war and authoritarian rule. Rather than a direct popular election, the process followed an indirect model: about 7,000 members of regional electoral colleges cast ballots to choose two-thirds of the 210 seats in parliament. The remaining one-third will be appointed directly by Preside ...

Conventional wisdom holds that the United States has undergone massive deindustrialization in recent decades, with the country's manufacturing sector supposedly withering as it lost ground to China. This narrative has fueled debates about industrial policy, economic nationalism, and the reshoring of manufacturing production. But what if this story is only partially true? What if, instead of disappearing, American industry simply changed its address?  ...

Global economic growth has been more resilient than expected, as the artificial intelligence-led growth seems to be compensating for the negative impacts of trade conflicts. Overstretched asset values and slowing jobs growth may be signaling that the balanced crossing of those two paths will be challenged. ...