Mark Leonard (original) (raw)

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Mark Leonard

Director

Areas of expertise

Geopolitics and Geoeconomics; China; EU-Russia relations; transatlantic relations; EU politics and institutions; public diplomacy and nation branding; UK foreign policy

Languages

English, French, German

Biography

Mark Leonard is co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the first pan-European think–tank. He is also the current Henry A Kissinger chair in foreign policy and international relations at the US Library of Congress, Washington DC. His topics of focus include geopolitics and geoeconomics, China, EU politics and institutions.

Leonard hosts the weekly podcast “Mark Leonards’s World in 30 Minutes” and writes a syndicated column on global affairs for Project Syndicate. Previously he worked as director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform and as director of the Foreign Policy Centre, a think-tank he founded at the age of 24 under the patronage of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In the 1990s, Leonard worked for the think-tank Demos where his Britain™ report was credited with launching Cool Britannia. Mark has spent time in Washington, D.C. as a Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and in Beijing as a visiting scholar at the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences.

He was Chairman of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Geoeconomics until 2016.

Honoured as a “Young Global Leader” of the World Economic Forum, he spends a lot of time helping governments, companies, and international organisations make sense of the big geo-political trends of the twenty-first century. He is a regular speaker and prolific writer and commentator on global issues, the future of Europe, China’s internal politics, and the practice of diplomacy and business in a networked world. His essays have appeared in publications such as Foreign Affairs, the Financial Times, the New York Times, Le Monde, Süddeutsche Zeitung, El Pais, Gazeta Wyborcza, Foreign Policy, the New Statesman, the Daily Telegraph, The Economist, Time, and Newsweek.

As well as writing and commenting frequently in the media on global affairs, Leonard is the author of best-selling books. His first book, Why Europe will run the 21st Century, was published in 2005 and translated into 19 languages. Leonard’s second book, What does China think? was published in 2008 and translated into 15 languages. He has published an edited volume on Connectivity Wars and in September 2021, his latest book on this topic The Age of Unpeace. How Connectivity Causes Conflict was released.

10 Feb

The Norwegian way: Why Oslo talks to everyone

Mark Leonard welcomes Andreas Motzfeldt Kravik to discuss Norway’s distinct approach to diplomacy and international engagement

Europe confronts Trump: the politics of transatlantic relations

Mark Leonard welcomes Camille Lons, Marta Prochwicz Jazowska, Jana Puglierin, José Ignacio Torreblanca and Arturo Varvelli to discuss how European capitals are responding to Trump’s dramatic return to the White House

Trump at Davos

Donald Trump’s return marks the start of an anti-Davos age, defined by the lack not only of a global order but also of any desire to create one. The world should expect deeper fragmentation and chaos in the face of unresolved crises and frequent disruptions

German leadership: Gone for good or just resting?

Welcome to the inaugural episode of Searching for Deutschland, a new podcast by ECFR exploring the European and foreign policy dimensions of the German election…

Poland’s presidency: A new European leadership

Mark Leonard welcomes Joanna Bekker, Piotr Buras, and Marta Prochwicz Jazowska to discuss Poland’s presidency of the EU Council at a time of geopolitical uncertainty

Publications

The idea of China

China’s ideas could become the country’s next big export. The Idea of China examines Chinese thinking about global order, AI, demographic change, and more – and considers how these ideas could influence the world

A new political map: Getting the European Parliament election right

Mainstream parties are hoping to prevent an anticipated far-right surge in this year’s European Parliament election. But the results of ECFR’s latest opinion poll suggest their current strategy could backfire – and what they should do instead

Wars and elections: How European leaders can maintain public support for Ukraine

As Russia’s war on Ukraine approaches its second anniversary, European leaders need to prevent Vladimir Putin from capitalising on war fatigue in the West. To maintain public support for backing Kyiv in this crucial election year, they should make clear that a Russian victory is not peace

Living in an à la carte world: What European policymakers should learn from global public opinion

A new global opinion poll for ECFR reveals that many people outside the West want Europe and the US in their lives for all they have to offer – but that does not translate into full political alignment. People instead prefer an a la carte arrangement, in which their governments pragmatically select their partners depending on the matter at hand

Strategic interdependence: Europe’s new approach in a world of middle powers

Middle powers are shaping a fragmented world for which Europe is ill prepared. To protect its interests and values, the EU needs a foreign policy strategy that emphasises its wide range of interdependencies

Articles

Trump at Davos

Donald Trump’s return marks the start of an anti-Davos age, defined by the lack not only of a global order but also of any desire to create one. The world should expect deeper fragmentation and chaos in the face of unresolved crises and frequent disruptions

Living in Trump’s world

Faced with the threat that Donald Trump poses to Europe’s economic and military security, European leaders must avoid both panic and complacency. The best way to do that is to use the time between now and 20 January 2025, to agree on their common interests and work out how to defend them

The US election will overturn Europe’s strategic status quo

Kamala Harris’s ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket has eliminated Donald Trump’s polling lead and allowed Europeans to contemplate alternatives to what would be their worst-case scenario. Yet, even if Harris wins, it would be foolish to expect complete continuity with the Biden administration

Harris must challenge Trump’s overtures to American workers

While Democrats frame the US presidential election as an existential battle between democracy and authoritarianism, Republicans are trying to position Donald Trump as a champion of the working class. To win in November, Kamala Harris’s campaign must show voters how wrong this narrative is

Europe’s coming paralysis

Given the state of the world today, it is difficult to imagine a worse time for Europe to be left rudderless. But with little room to manoeuvre after the European Parliament election, French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Olaf Scholz are in no position to steer the EU through major challenges

What the Weimar Triangle could do for Europe

While the traditional Franco-German axis has fallen short of providing the kind of unifying leadership that the EU so desperately needs, the addition of Poland could change everything. And should Donald Trump win the US presidential election, this triumvirate would become Europe’s best hope for salvation

The Macron moment

Underlying all the problems that Europe faces in a new age of geopolitical, economic, and climate insecurity is a crisis in leadership. Judging by his recent speech at the Sorbonne, French president Emmanuel Macron could be the politician to supply it, but only if he abandons his standard political playbook

Specials

The Power Atlas

Power is now defined by control over flows of people, goods, money, and data, and via the connections they establish. Only states that see the new map of geopolitical power clearly will be able to control the modern world

What Europeans really want: Five myths debunked

New ECFR/YouGov research reveals huge fluidity in current voting intentions: 70 percent of Europeans certain to vote are yet to make their choice. Nearly 100m swing voters are up for grabs

Podcasts

The Norwegian way: Why Oslo talks to everyone

Mark Leonard welcomes Andreas Motzfeldt Kravik to discuss Norway’s distinct approach to diplomacy and international engagement

Europe confronts Trump: the politics of transatlantic relations

Mark Leonard welcomes Camille Lons, Marta Prochwicz Jazowska, Jana Puglierin, José Ignacio Torreblanca and Arturo Varvelli to discuss how European capitals are responding to Trump’s dramatic return to the White House

German leadership: Gone for good or just resting?

Welcome to the inaugural episode of Searching for Deutschland, a new podcast by ECFR exploring the European and foreign policy dimensions of the German election…

Poland’s presidency: A new European leadership

Mark Leonard welcomes Joanna Bekker, Piotr Buras, and Marta Prochwicz Jazowska to discuss Poland’s presidency of the EU Council at a time of geopolitical uncertainty

Ten foreign policy predictions for 2025

Mark Leonard and Jeremy Shapiro look back over their 2024 predictions and forecast ten foreign policy projections for 2025

Forging peace: Europe’s role in Ukraine’s future

Mark Leonard welcomes Camille Grand, Jana Kobzova, and Nicu Popescu to discuss European security guarantees for Ukraine and the path to sustainable peace

A fragmented world: Europe’s geoeconomic dilemmas

Mark Leonard welcomes Agathe Demarais and Abraham Newman to discuss how Europe can overcome its internal dysfunction to meet the geoeconomic challenges of today

Live from the Doha Forum: The Middle East after Assad

Mark Leonard welcomes Julien Barnes-Dacey, Ellie Geranmayeh, and Vali Nasr to discuss shifting dynamics in the Middle East and their implications for global geopolitics

Events

10 Feb

15 Jan

10 Dec

22 Nov

China’s views in today’s changing global order

With increased US-China competition likely to shape Trump’s second term, significant attention in Washington is focused on the primacists, prioritisers and restrainers vying to shape…

ECFR event

16 Sep

American Foreign Policy after the Elections

As discussions intensify on both sides of the Atlantic about the implications of a Trump 2.0 presidency, European leaders are now having to confront a…

26 Mar

Transatlantic Public Opinion on the War in Ukraine

In celebration of the opening of the ECFR Washington office, this public panel will look at the state of public opinion on the war in…

8 Jul

29 Mar

10 Mar

The EU and Japan: Strategic partners in the Indo-Pacific

In collaboration with the Embassy of Japan in Madrid, ECFR has organised a public virtual debate to explore how the EU and the Indo-Pacific can build a strategic alliance and how the EU-Japan relationship can drive this process

5 May