"European Security and Transatlantic Relations in the Age of Trump"

NYU’s Center for European and Mediterranean Studies and Deutsches Haus at NYU present a moderated discussion among Sophia Besch (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), Hans Kundnani (UC Berkeley / London School of Economics), and Tara Varma (Brookings).

The election of Donald Trump to a second term in office has thrown the transatlantic relationship between the United States and the European Union (EU) into disarray. NATO seems at risk. American foreign policy has become transactional, based overtly on power rather than cooperation. And new areas of policy—everything from trade to digital technology—have been brought into the sphere of geopolitics. What are the implications for European security, given that Russia is still waging an aggressive war on Europe’s doorstep? How is the EU responding to the prospect of losing America’s security umbrella? Can it create strategic autonomy, and delink its military from that of the United States? And how are rifts within Europe hindering or helping the EU as it charts a new path through an ever-changing security landscape?

About the participants:

is a senior fellow in the Europe Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her area of expertise is European defense policy. Dr. Besch also teaches as an adjunct lecturer at Johns Hopkins SAIS.

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.

Hans Kundnani is a Visiting Professor in Practice at London School of Economics Europe Institute and a Lecturer at Boston University's Center for the Study of Europe. He was formerly an Adjunct Professor at CEMS, a visiting fellow at the Remarque Institute at New York University and an Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop fellow. He was previously the director of the Europe programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London, a senior Transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a Bosch Public Policy Fellow at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington, D.C., and research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations. He is also an associate fellow at the Institute for German Studies at Birmingham University and teaches at the Collège d’Europe in Natolin, Poland.

Hans is the author of three books: Eurowhiteness. Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project (London: Hurst, 2023); The Paradox of German Power (London/New York: Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2014), which has been translated into German, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Spanish; and Utopia or Auschwitz. Germany’s 1968 Generation and the Holocaust (London/New York: Hurst/Columbia University Press, 2009). He studied German and philosophy at Oxford University and journalism at Columbia University in New York, where he was a Fulbright Scholar.

Tara Varma is a visiting fellow in the Center of the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. Her research focus includes French and European foreign policy priorities. In particular, she works on European strategic autonomy, European defense and security priorities, transatlantic relations, and domestic developments in Europe.

Until December 2022, she was a senior policy fellow and the head of the Paris office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, where she followed French foreign policy and European and Asian security developments. In 2022, she was part of the working group on the French European Council presidency, set up by the French Foreign Ministry, which led to the publication of a report entitled “A Europe for Today and Tomorrow: Sovereignty, Solidarity, Shared Identity.” The report included a number of recommendations on how to strengthen Europe’s strategic autonomy and how to bridge the gap between France’s ambitions for Europe and a form of “soft Euroskepticism” borne by a growing part of the French population. In November 2023, Varma was awarded the honor of Knight of the National Order of Merit of France.

Varma’s recent publications include “Beyond the NATO summit, key questions remain for European security,” “Alliance of Revisionists: A New Era for the Transatlantic Relationship” with Sophia Besch, and “The China-Russia relationship and threats to vital US interests” with Patricia Kim, Asli Aydintasbas, and Angela Stent. She has been quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Le Monde, and more, appears regularly on France24, and is a frequent guest on the Center for a New American Security’s “Brussels Sprouts” podcast. Varma has previously worked and lived in Shanghai, London, New Delhi, and Paris. She has a master’s degree in international relations from Sciences Po Lille (2011) and a Master of Science in international politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (2011), with a focus on Asian politics and Indian and Chinese foreign policies.

Attendance:

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"European Security and Transatlantic Relations in the Age of Trump" is funded by the DAAD from funds of the German Federal Foreign Office (AA).

Host or Publisher Deutsches Haus at NYU