Europe Has Much to Prove in 2021

War & Peace

With the international system in major flux as we turn the page on 2020, Ambassador Gérard Araud believes one main thing is clear: 2021 opens a new, more dangerous chapter.

A Crisis Group trustee who represented France on the world stage for over three decades, most recently as ambassador to the United States (2014-2019), Araud gives Olga Oliker and Hugh Pope a decidedly skeptical take on the state of power politics, describing destabilizing international rivalry, leaderlessness, and descent toward the law of the jungle.

Together they also touch on why Brexit has only just begun its destructive path, how the impact of COVID-19 is accelerating the surge in nationalism testing Western societies, and how the interlocking crises in the Eastern Mediterranean reveal where the European Union’s strengths and weaknesses really lie.

Ambassador Araud does highlight one hope: that the urgency of transnational risks, particularly on the question of climate change, could propel a multilateral coalescence around ways to address them.

For more information, read Ambassador Gérard Araud’s weekly column in Le Point.

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