Ex: Europe, Middle East, Education

Bruno Tertrais

Advisor for Geopolitics

Bruno Tertrais is Deputy Director of the Fondation pour la recherche stratégique (FRS), a leading French think-tank on international security issues. A graduate in law and politics, he obtained his doctorate under the supervision of Pierre Hassner. After working at NATO's Parliamentary Assembly, he worked for the Ministry of Defence and the RAND Corporation, and joined the FRS in 2001. He was a member of the committees in charge of the White Papers on Defence and National Security in 2007-2008 and 2012-2013. He has been a contributor to Institut Montaigne's studies since 2017 and published Le défi démographique (2018). His latest publications include: L'Atlas des frontières (Les Arènes, 2016, Prix de la Société de Géographie); Le Président et la Bombe (Odile Jacob, 2017, Prix du Livre géopolitique); La Revanche de l'histoire (Odile Jacob, 2018); Le choc démographique (Odile Jacob, 2020). Twice every month, he publishes a column in L'Express called "Le Regard du stratège".

Publications

The Demographic Challenge: Myths and Realities

Publication - July 2018

Resources, climate, conflicts, migration, urbanization, aging, geopolitics... Today, demography is at the heart of all major contemporary societal issues....

Analyses

After the Fall. Must We Prepare for the Breakup of Russia?

20 March 2023 | Bruno Tertrais

In the Risk board game, where many baby boomers learned the basics of geostrategy, one could look forever for Russia without finding it. Instead, one would come across Ukraine, Ural, Yakutia, Chita and Kamchatka. It is hard to think of the disappearance of the largest country by area in the...

After the Fall. Must We Prepare for the Breakup of Russia?

23 February 2023 | Bruno Tertrais

In the Risk board game, where many baby boomers learned the basics of geostrategy, one could look forever for Russia without finding it. Instead, one would come across Ukraine, Ural, Yakutia, Chita and Kamchatka. It is hard to think of the disappearance of the largest country by area in the...

The Fall of Russia

14 December 2022 | Bruno Tertrais

Exactly one hundred years after the birth of the Soviet Union on December 30, 1922, we could well be witnessing its second collapse. Putin's attempt to reconstitute a privileged sphere of influence around Russia is turning into a catastrophe. And this catastrophe may only be the beginning. It is...

The Never-Ending Iranian Nuclear Saga Is Nowhere Near Its Conclusion

2 September 2022 | Bruno Tertrais

Every five years, world powers meet in New York to take stock of nuclear non-proliferation risks, progress in nuclear disarmament, and advance the peaceful uses of atomic energy. The latest “Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference” took place on 1 - 26 August 2022 after having...

Back to the Future? NATO after Madrid

7 July 2022 | Bruno Tertrais

This time around the electric shock hit hard. Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea proved insufficient to reenergize the transatlantic alliance still heavily engaged in Afghanistan. Six years later, the violence of Russia’s aggression right when “Atlanticists” are back in the White House and...

Ukraine: Five Scenarios For the Coming Months

31 May 2022 | Bruno Tertrais

Several weeks ago, we covered the evolution of possible scenarios on the war in Ukraine. The range of these remains quite broad, but it has narrowed. It is now almost certain that the Russian "statocidal" project — one which denies Ukrainian statehood and will only recognize Ukraine within...

From Sarajevo to Mariupol: what the Yugoslav Wars can teach us about Ukraine’s fate

21 April 2022 | Bruno Tertrais | Loïc Tregoures

Comparisons between the former Yugoslavia and the war in Ukraine abound, especially with each new report of the horrors committed by Russian forces. The siege of Ukrainian cities is reminiscent of Vukovar and Sarajevo, while Butcha has been described as "the new Srebrenica". Commentators are...

Is It 1981 All Over Again?

12 April 2022 | Bruno Tertrais | Joseph de Weck

Remember 1981? It was a turning point in history. In London, Prince Charles married the so-called "commoner" Diana Spencer, effectively breaking the UK’s class ceiling. In Washington, Ronald Reagan became US President, unleashing the global free-market revolution. And in Paris, the French elected...

Tell Me How It Ends: Analogies and Scenarios for the Ukraine war

2 March 2022 | Bruno Tertrais

War never goes according to plan. Wars triggered by isolated dictators who no longer listen to the outside worlds do so even less. Given these truisms, how will Ukraine end? Are there historical analogies that could be useful in understanding and forecasting its outcome? Putin has...

Why Ukraine Matters to Russia: The Demographic Factor

14 February 2022 | Bruno Tertrais

Most of the reasons behind Russia’s interest in Ukraine are well-known. Dig a little deeper, though, and one finds an overarching theme: the underlying fear that Russia will be absorbed by Asia. A "demographic insecurity", if you will. While Russia’s population is shrinking, that of Central...

Of Ultimatums and Ukraine - And Why NATO Enlargement Is Not the Problem

7 January 2022 | Bruno Tertrais

As tens of thousands of soldiers massed on the Ukrainian borders, on December 17 the Kremlin threw down the gauntlet. It published two draft treaties, one to be signed with the United States and the other with NATO, with no stated intention to negotiate. It’s a "take it or leave it"...

Reassurance and Deterrence in the Mediterranean: the Franco-Greek Defense Deal

17 November 2021 | Bruno Tertrais

On September 28, 2021, France and Greece announced the signature of a strategic partnership and Athen’s purchase of at least three modern frigates. This defense equipment deal had been in ongoing discussion for years, but the specificities of the partnership were a surprise to many since it...

Climate Refugees: Do Not Hype Up The Problem

15 October 2021 | Bruno Tertrais

As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has begun publishing its new series of reports, and as COP-26 meets in Glasgow from November 1, a World Bank publication suggests that there could be over 200 million climate refugees by 2050. Are we going to see a great climate migration that...

After AUKUS: How Could France Reboot Its Indo-Pacific Strategy?

4 October 2021 | Bruno Tertrais | Michel Duclos

The September 15 earthquake is still producing aftershocks. The battle of "narratives" is raging. The French ambassador to Australia has not returned to Canberra. Nothing will ever be the same again. President Macron said that the affair "does not change France's Indo-Pacific strategy in...

France, America and the Indo-Pacific after AUKUS

20 September 2021 | Bruno Tertrais

A "stab in the back" France was violently shaken on Thursday, September 15, as it heard about the new US-Australia strategic partnership trampling over the relation that Paris and Canberra had been patiently building up over the past decade. It was common knowledge that the French submarine...

Endgame in Afghanistan: Should We Be Worried?

24 August 2021 | Bruno Tertrais

Is it a case of "back to the future"? The Afghanistan that has just been reclaimed by the Taliban is not the same country it was when the latter first took power in the late 1990s. For one, the population has doubled since then, to nearly forty million. Cities and overall infrastructure...

Armenia-Azerbaijan: The Fire Beneath the Ashes

6 August 2021 | Bruno Tertrais

On July 28, three Armenian soldiers were killed in border clashes with Azerbaijan. The result was both countries accusing the other of having violated the November 2020 ceasefire that ended the brief war of reconquest led by Baku. Russia again played the role of “peacekeeper” and negotiated a...

Weapons of Mass Debate - Time to Talk about Nuclear Deterrence in Europe (Again)

19 July 2021 | Bruno Tertrais

As nationalism and great power competition make a comeback on the international scene, nuclear weapons remain a key currency of power and are once again brandished as an instrument of influence. All nuclear-weapons possessors have shown intent to maintain and modernize their arsenals. Arms...

Past the Virus - Migrations, Mobility and Pandemics: Return to Normalcy?

7 July 2021 | Bruno Tertrais

The Past the Virus series explores the various consequences of pandemics throughout history. After looking at how events like the Spanish Flu or the Black Plague have caused paradigm shifts, public policy transformations and economic upheavals, we zoom into the migratory effects of previous...

Does China’s Population Bust Herald Our Own?

26 May 2021 | Bruno Tertrais

There was a time when Western countries worried about the fast growth of Asian populations. Current trends indicate that we should start worrying about the opposite one - and that, more generally, we should begin thinking about what it would mean to have a planet with too few humans. The...

The UK’s Integrated Review: What Global Britain Means for France

17 March 2021 | Georgina Wright | Bruno Tertrais

After months of delay, the UK government has finally published its long-awaited "Integrated Review", a blueprint for Global Britain in action. Almost five years after the UK voted to leave the EU, it is designed to answer one question: what does Global Britain actually mean? For Paris, two...

Do We Need a Global Alliance of Democracies?

7 January 2021 | Michel Duclos | Bruno Tertrais

The convening of a "Summit for Democracy," to help move forward the traditional US goal of strengthening the alliances between democracies, will be one of the centerpieces of the Biden administration’s foreign policy agenda. Michel Duclos, Special Advisor for Geopolitics, and Bruno Tertrais,...

Whose Sea? Untangling the Eastern Mediterranean Great Game

8 October 2020 | Bruno Tertrais

While the tensions between Greece and Turkey over their territorial waters are not new, the discovery of large natural gas deposits in recent decades in the Eastern Mediterranean has rekindled the latter's ambitions. On August 10, Ankara sent a seismic research vessel accompanied by a military...

Through the Looking Glass - Counterpart and The Last Ship: Geopolitics and Pandemics

17 August 2020 | Bruno Tertrais

Warning, this article may contain spoilers. While TV series whose plots revolve around a massive pandemic are not uncommon, they rarely include a geopolitical dimension1. Almost all of them are of the "post-apocalyptic" type. In The Stand (1994, based on a novel by Stephen King), a virus...

Portrait of Kim Jong-un - Supreme Leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

21 December 2018 | Bruno Tertrais

In North Korea, there’s no such thing as real elections or freedom. It is a pure dictatorship, and a dynastic one at that. We are including Kim Jong-un in this gallery of portraits because he seems to be introducing a form of renewal in his country's strategy - and also because Mr Trump has de...

Demography and Society: Overcoming Fantasies - The Perspectives of Hakim El Karoui and Bruno Tertrais

10 October 2018 | Hakim El Karoui | Bruno Tertrais

Hakim El Karoui, Senior Fellow at Institut Montaigne and author for Institut Montaigne of the report The Islamist Factory, and Bruno Tertrais, Deputy Director of the Foundation for Strategic Research and author for Institut Montaigne of the note The Demographic Challenge: Myths and Realities,...

North Korea, an Embrace Before the Apocalypse?

24 September 2018 | Bruno Tertrais

Life these days seems to be a bed of roses for Kim Jong-un. The inter-Korean summit held in Pyongyang this week gave yet another illustration of his current ascendancy. Although the state of war on the peninsula was not terminated - it cannot be without the United States and China, signatories...

Syria: The “Red Line” Dilemma

19 March 2018 | Bruno Tertrais

As if the Syrian tragedy was in need of an escalation in horror, indications of the use of chemical weapons have become increasingly clear since the end of 2017. Chlorine was allegedly used on several occasions, notably in Eastern Ghouta and probably in Idlib. We all remember that the United...

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