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Briefs

Raising awareness of both existing and emerging foreign and security policy challenges facing the European Union, EUISS Briefs provide key information in a concise, focused format.

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    20May 2020
    Who’s first wins? International crisis response to Covid-19
    China has sought to demonstrate that its authoritarian political system has been more efficient at dealing with the coronavirus crisis than Western liberal democratic systems. This Brief examines the validity of this hypothesis, and concludes that predispositional factors – notably the demographic and age profile of a country – as well as whether a state had been previously exposed to a pandemic or not, were more important in shaping the authorities’ response than the political system in place.
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    14May 2020
    Towards urban decoupling? China’s smart city ambitions at the time of Covid-19
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    China is rapidly consolidating its expertise in building smart/safe cities, with the Covid-19 crisis significantly accelerating this trend. The crisis has also seen China step up its activism in the global promotion, donation and export of some of its smart city technologies with dual-use capabilities. What risks does this pose for Europe?
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    30April 2020
    Arctic stress test
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    In the three decades after the Cold War, the perception of ‘Arctic exceptionalism’, the sense that the Arctic region is immune from broader geopolitical tensions, prevailed. However, this notion is currently being challenged: climate change is accelerating the opening of new maritime trade routes and exploitation of natural resources in the region, while great power competition between the US, Russia and China in the Arctic is intensifying, changing regional power dynamics.
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    21April 2020
    Beyond Yemen’s militiadoms
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    The ongoing conflict in Yemen is complex and multi-layered, with the involvement of rival regional powers adding a geopolitical dimension to the war. As the national framework has disintegrated, local rivalries have intensified, leaving more room for foreign state interference in the country. In this fragmented political landscape, militias and other armed groups have come to play a prominent role in Yemen’s security governance. This Brief analyses the intertwined layers of conflict in Yemen and their implications for war resolution efforts, arguing that reforming the state on the basis of a decentralisation of power is key to rebuilding national institutions and achieving peace.
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    17April 2020
    Cyber conflict uncoded
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    The complex nature of cyber conflicts makes it difficult to design effective, targeted conflict prevention instruments. Yet existing approaches to prevent conflict in cyberspace have, so far, brought about very little change in state behaviour. How might the EU lead the way in preventing conflicts from escalating or breaking out?
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    31March 2020
    Russia's forays into sub-Saharan Africa
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    Russia is mounting a remarkable political comeback in sub-Saharan Africa through a ‘low costs, high returns and visibility’ approach. Can a coherent strategy be discerned behind this push? And how is sub-Saharan Africa reacting to Russia’s overtures and what does it mean for the EU?
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    17March 2020
    A blacklist is (almost) born
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    In the sanctions practice of the EU, human rights motivations feature prominently, reflecting their centrality to the Union’s foreign policy. This Brief discusses plans to create a new EU sanctions regime addressing gross human rights violations. It examines the various challenges surrounding the initiative and its implementation, and argues that the way forward could be to disaggregate the proposed sanctions regimes into two separate strands: one dealing with breaches of international humanitarian law and a second addressing human rights abuses linked to large-scale transnational corruption.
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    11March 2020
    Digitalising defence
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    Digital technologies can vastly improve the operational readiness and effectiveness of Europe’s armed forces. As this Brief shows, however, the EU needs to better understand the risks and opportunities involved in the digitalisation of defence and it needs to financially invest in its technological sovereignty.
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    05March 2020
    Digital divide? Transatlantic defence cooperation on AI
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    In the wake of the Artificial Intelligence Strategy unveiled by the US Department of Defense in 2019, this Brief examines the implications of the initiative for Europe and for transatlantic defence cooperation. It argues that Europeans need to develop a strategy for military innovation, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), while the transatlantic partners need to design a common approach to AI governance.
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    28February 2020
    Devil in the detail: local versus regional approaches to peace in Donbas
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    This Brief analyses the peace efforts in Ukraine and argues that it would be in the country’s interest to continue decentralising and strengthening local governance structures, including in the east. But how does Moscow view this?

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