The CSDS Conversations are high-level seminars designed to bring together leading academics, think-tankers and public policy practitioners from Europe and across the world to debate some of the most pressing security and foreign policy challenges of an international system reshaped by the return of great power competition.
The 11 closed-door sessions organised in 2021 focused on tackling both global and regional issues. They included Sino-American competition, the future of transatlantic relationship, Europe’s role in US grand strategy, EU-China trade relationship, UK in the post Brexit world, South Korean security policy, Germany’s foreign and security policy after Merkel, strategic cooperation in the Indo-Pacific and the Russian challenge to European security.
The speakers hosted by the CSDS were Enrique Mora (Deputy Secretary-General for Political Affairs, EEAS), Marina Henke (Professor of International Relations, Hertie School), Stephen Brooks (Professor, Darmouth College), Sabine Weyand (Director-General of DG Trade, European Commission), Tom Codrington (UK FCDO’s Head of Policy Planning), Yoichi Funabashi (Chairman of the Asia Pacific Initiative, Tokyo), Eric Edelman (Former Undersecretary of Defense, US), Kim Hyoung-zhin (Deputy ROK National Security Advisor), Claudia Major (Head of the International Security Division, SWP), Caroline Millar (Australian Ambassador to Belgium, EU and NATO), Tomasz Szatkowski (Permanent Representative of the Republic of Poland to the North Atlantic Council).
The discussants included Karel De Gucht (President, Brussels School of Governance), Antonio Missiroli (Assistant Secretary-General for Emerging Security Challenges, NATO), Benedetta Berti (Head of Policy Planning in the Office of the Secretary General, NATO), Alice Pannier (Head of Geopolitics and Technologies Program, IFRI), David van Weel (Assistant Secretary General, NATO), Ruben Diaz-Plaja (Deputy Head of Policy Planning, NATO), Bonnie Glaser (Director of Asia Program, GMF), Robert G. Bell (Distinguished Professor of the Practice at Georgia Tech), Eva Pejsova (Senior Japan Fellow at the CSDS, BSoG-VUB), Alexander Mattelaer (Associate Professor in International Security at CSDS).
