Foreign & Security Policy

The Heinrich Böll Stiftung’s Foreign Policy Conference in February gave a snapshot of the German Green Party’s foreign policy priorities vis-à-vis Ukraine and Eastern Europe.

The ‘Global South’ and ‘Global North’ diverge in how they view and relate to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Differences in means, risks and perceptions explain the gap but do not have to be an unsurmountable obstacle.

Russia's war in Ukraine is changing the balance of power in Eastern Europe. This has implications for the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict and provides new options for mediation for the EU and the West.

The Russian aggression against Ukraine weakens Russia's hegemony in the post-Soviet space. Countries such as Turkey and China are becoming important players in the reorganization of the regional order. The EU must improve its policy towards the eastern neighborhood in order to remain a relevant stakeholder.

In Iran, feminist foreign policy demands both short-term interventions to alleviate the suffering of the civilian population and a long-term approach to deal with the state’s structural violence against its own citizens.

Hungarian foreign policy has been standing on two pillars in the past decade: building multilateral ties with great economic powers in order to boost trade, foreign investment, and development, and in the meantime maintaining traditional commitments to EU and NATO allies in the security and defence realm. However, with the tensions between Russia and Ukraine escalating to a war, Hungary has had to change its long-established attitudes overnight. In such a situation, any pro-Russian stance and balancing became practically impossible.

How will the world’s biggest developing country bring down the world’s highest greenhouse gases emissions to net-zero in the shortest period of time? (How) is China’s decarbonisation different from the rest of the world?

At the third session of the 22nd Heinrich Boell Foundation Foreign Policy Conference, the penultimate panel will focus on the German-Indian relationship - and the blurred lines between environmental and climate issues.