Enrico Fassi

Europe's “depopul-ageing” bomb?

For a long time International Relations did not pay much attention to population studies and it took the end of the Cold War to find new attention to global phenomena even included global demographic trends and their implications. Yet such an attention is still limited in academia and fails to find its place in the pages of many leading reviews of the discipline. This is rather surprising given the relevance of demographic trends on the overall future of international politics. The aim of this article is to contribute to the recent literature that shows the relevance of demographic trends for international politics. In particular, the article aims to shed light on two main issues likely to have a major impact on Europe: population growth and ageing. If these phenomena can be considered as global trends, in Europe they compound themselves to depict a particularly worrying scenario for the future. As a matter of fact, while all world regions will experience significant ageing of their populations, the effect of such an event in Europe is particularly troublesome as in this region (contrary to others) it is combined with a declining population. Moreover, when considering trends in other dimensions, and especially in the economic domain, the added effect of demographic decline and aging assumes an ever worrying significance. The net effect on Europes internal balances and its stance in the world are due to be affected. In conclusions, demographic dynamics are worth considering if Europe is to remain a relevant and influential actor in the global landscape.

Simul stabunt, simul cadent: The US, the EU and the liberal international order in the Trump era

The election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States was perceived by many observers as a threat to the international liberal order. This paper sets out to contribute to the debate by focusing on the role of a specific component of this order: the relationship between the United States and the European Union. The question addressed is whether the potential transformations experienced by the element of the transatlantic relationship due to the ‘ Trump effect’ are liable to have a substantial and distinctive impact on the wider order. Using the lenses of the security community approach, we point out variance and convergences in interests, interaction, institution and identities of the two partners, and to what extent the advent of Trump has actually – or is likely to – impinge on each of these categories, and how this affects the foundations of the international liberal order.

NATO’s demographic paradox

ABSTRACT Russia, cyberterrorism, Da’esh are among the most quoted challenges to NATO mentioned in the organizations’ documents, specialized literature and newspaper articles. How about a subtler, less striking but real challenge like demographic change? Demographic trends are increasingly recognized as relevant in understanding international politics and particularly international security, but only seldom taken into consideration when dealing with NATO’s future challenges. NATO, hence, suffers from the limits of a political–military institution designed for a post-Second World War demographic and security context that is changing drastically – and is expected to change even more in the foreseeable future. The aim of this article is to explore the current and projected demographic trends at the global level, evaluate their security implications and then draw inferences for the challenges and opportunities that will arise for NATO out of the sketched scenarios. Based on this analysis, we posit that the Alliance is facing a demographic paradox, whereby it is increasingly unable to cope with external demographic challenges because internal demographic changes are weakening the cohesion needed to provide an effective response.

The European Endowment for Democracy and Democracy Promotion in the EU Neighbourhood

The European Endowment for Democracy (EED) is a recently established instrument of democracy promotion intended to complement existing EU tools. Fashioned after the US National Endowment for Democracy, the EED’s privileged area of action is the European neighbourhood. Meant as a small rapid-response, actor-oriented ‘niche’ initiative, its main task is to select those actors, from both civil and political society able to produce a change in their country. The EED represents a step forward in the EU’s capacity to foster democracy, but does not necessarily go in the direction of more rationality and effectiveness. Not all EU member states support the EED with the same enthusiasm and it is still not clear how it fits into the EU’s overall democracy promotion architecture. Its actions may be successful in a very constrained timeframe. However, recent crises at the EU’s borders would seem to call for a strategy that takes into consideration systemic hindrances, post-regime change complexities, regional dynamics and finally rival plans of autocracy promotion.