What is Europe’s strategic future as transatlantic ties unravel? What are its options as US priorities and capabilities change over in a world in which the distribution of power is changing rapidly? Europe has to chart its new course beyond the immediate impact of the second Trump presidency.
François Heisbourg is a senior advisor on Europe of the London-based
International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and special adviser of the Paris-based Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (FRS). He has served in government (French mission to the UN in New York, policy planning at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, international security adviser to the Minister of Defense), industry (Thomson-CSF, today’s Thales; Matra, now in Airbus), academia (professor of the world politics course at Sciences-Po Paris), and the think-tank world (as director of the IISS and subsequently the FRS). He has sat on blue-ribbon bodies, notably the French government’s White Paper on terrorism (2006) and the Defense and National Security White Papers (under President Sarkozy in 2007-2018 and President Hollande in 2012-2013); the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament; and the International Commission on the Balkans. He chaired the council of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) from 1998 to 2018, and of the IISS (2001-2018), and was a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Bosch Academy in Berlin (2015-2017). He dealt with defense and national security issues as part of Emmanuel Macron’s first presidential campaign (2016-17).Since the beginning of 2022, he has been focusing on French and European military assistance to Ukraine.

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