Kristina Kausch is no longer with the Carnegie Endowment.
Kristina Kausch was a nonresident associate at Carnegie Europe. Her research focuses on Europe’s relations with the Middle East and North Africa, political transformations in the Arab world, and broader geopolitical trends in the Middle East.
Kausch is based in Madrid, Spain. Prior to joining Carnegie, she was the head of the Middle East and North Africa Program at the Madrid- and Brussels-based think tank FRIDE and a lecturer at San Pablo CEU University in Madrid. Previous to her think tank activity, she worked in international development cooperation for the German technical cooperation agency GTZ (now GIZ).
She has edited three books: Democracy and Geopolitics in the Middle East (FRIDE, 2015); Islamist Radicalisation: The Challenge for Euro-Mediterranean Relations (with Michael Emerson and Richard Youngs, Center for European Policy Studies, 2009); and Europe in the Reshaped Middle East (with Richard Youngs, FRIDE, 2012). She has also published in academic journals such as International Affairs, Mediterranean Politics, the International Spectator, and Política Exterior.
Kausch is a member of the Advisory Board of the IEMed Mediterranean Yearbook and a member of the OSCE New-Med Research Network. She comments regularly in English-, Spanish-, and German-language media.
Over the past decade, Russia has reinforced its position in and around the Mediterranean, combining a strengthened defensive posture with renewed global ambitions. The political and security ramifications of Moscow’s activities extend beyond the region and directly concern NATO, insofar as they disrupt the Euro-Atlantic defense architecture.
From peaceful political and social grassroots movements to violent extremists, nonstate actors can put pressure on flawed states by demanding accountability, justice, revolutionary change, or power.
Europe must invest more heavily in countries such as Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia to help build regional players that are open to reform and resistant to crises.
As a foreign policy road map, the EU global strategy may be wishful thinking. But it is also a manifesto for the defense of a liberal internationalist world order.
A new layer of ambitious small and midsize powers is emerging in the Middle East, representing a structural shift in the regional order and an opportunity for European diplomacy.
