experts
about
Sophia Besch is a senior fellow in the Europe Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her area of expertise is European defense policy.
Before joining Carnegie, Sophia was a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform (CER) in London and Berlin, where she led research on European armament policy, the EU’s role in European defense, transatlantic relations, German defense policy, and the security implications of Brexit.
Sophia has also worked with the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies and the Atlantic Council's Europe Centre, where she served as co-chair of the US-Germany Renewal Initiative. Earlier in her career, Sophia was a Carlo Schmid fellow in NATO’s Policy Planning Unit and a researcher for the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. She is a member of the Atlantik Brücke Young Leaders program.
Sophia regularly comments on political and defense issues in print and broadcast media and has published opinion pieces in the Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Internationale Politik, Politico, Project Syndicate, War on the Rocks, and others. She has served as an expert witness for the UK House of Commons Defence Select Committee, the German Bundestag EU Committee, and the European Parliament Subcommittee for Security and Defence.
She holds a doctorate in European Studies from King’s College London, and degrees in international relations and international security from Sciences Po Paris and the London School of Economics.
education
PhD, King’s College London; MSc, London School of Economics ; MA, Sciences Po Paris, BA, Münster Universitylanguages
English, French, Germanfeatured work
All work from Sophia Besch
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It must work together to prevent the worst for Ukraine, NATO, and the European project.
Sophia Besch sits down with Darshana Baruah to discuss maritime security and great power competition in the Indian Ocean.
Sophia Besch sits down with Chris Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim to discuss why meaningful change in U.S. foreign policy is so difficult to achieve—and what it would take for the next American president to make such a change happen.
Türkiye’s foreign policy has been deemed by analysts as a “re-orientation” and rupture with the country’s diplomatic past.
- Sinan Ülgen,
- Sophia Besch,
- İlke Toygür
Kais Saied has chipped away at a decade of progress, but a few factors offer hope for the country’s democratic future.
Sarah Yerkes, a senior fellow in Carnegie's Middle East Program, joins Sophia to discuss the recent re-election of President Kais Saied and what it means for Tunisia's democracy.
Solar geoengineering could be a climate lifeline. It’s also a gamble, with no comprehensive global governance.
- Sophia Besch,
- Cynthia Scharf
Sophia sits down with Cynthia Scharf, a senior fellow at the International Center for Future Generations, to discuss the geopolitics of solar geoengineering.
- Sophia Besch,
- Cynthia Scharf
The narrative of a retreating superpower and emerging competition from China and Russia is doesn’t capture what’s happening on the ground. U.S. policy should change accordingly.
The Middle East and North Africa region is witnessing a fierce competition among the world’s current “great powers”—the U.S., Russia, and China. Director of the Carnegie Middle East Program Amr Hamzawy joins Sophia to discuss the current state and future of great power competition in the region.