Diplomacy & Crisis News

Newly inaugurated President Min Aung Hlaing also announced a reduction in the 27-year prison sentence of ousted former leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The canonization process for Sybil Kathigasu underscores how Pope Francis’s legacy continues to shift the lines of Catholicism, in subtle and surprising ways.

/ Kazakhstan, Charbon, Nucléaire civil, Matières premières, Infrastructures, Industrie - Asie / Kazakhstan, Charbon, Nucléaire civil, Matières premières, Infrastructures, Industrie

Cet article sera bientôt disponible. / Sri Lanka - 2026/04 / Sri Lanka

The war-torn country wants to reconstruct in a way that is environmentally, socially, and geopolitically more sustainable.

But it’s unclear whether the strategic waterway is really open without conditions.

Frileuse en économie, la gauche de gouvernement sri-lankaise reste fidèle à la tradition d'émancipation léguée par ses aînés. Colonisés pendant environ quatre siècles et demi par des puissances européennes, les Sri-lankais se gouvernent depuis moins de quatre-vingts ans. C'est pourquoi ils (…) / Relations internationales, Diplomatie, Autodétermination des peuples, Sri Lanka

For the past decade, India-South Korea interactions have been limited. President Lee’s upcoming visit is set to change that.

What do Japanese and Chinese think about each other’s countries? Let’s look at the numbers.  

BRICS appears to be more riddled with internal conflicts than most multilateral groups.

Amid turbulence in the international order, will international society remain capable of countering totalitarian heresies?

At the 61st session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on March 30, 2026, South Korea reaffirmed its position on human rights in North Korea, joining 50 countries as a co-sponsor of the council’s annual resolution. The move marked Seoul’s first such participation since the inauguration of President Lee Jae-myung, a former human rights lawyer. The resolution, adopted for the 24th consecutive year since 2003, passed again by consensus without a vote.

The measure condemns “in the strongest terms” what it calls “systematic, widespread and gross” violations in North Korea, citing crimes against humanity that include forced labor used to support nuclear and missile programs, the operation of political prison camps, torture, public executions and what it describes as a “pervasive culture of impunity.” It urges Pyongyang to take “immediately all steps” necessary to end such crimes, including the closure of prison camps, the release of detainees and sweeping legal and institutional reforms.

Compared with last year’s text, the 2026 resolution makes only modest adjustments but places clearer emphasis on dialogue. It highlights the “importance of dialogue and engagement to improve the human rights situation in North Korea, including inter-Korean dialogue,” signaling a subtle shift from earlier iterations that focused more heavily on the severity of abuses.

The resolution also offers limited acknowledgment of North Korea’s recent engagement with international mechanisms. It “welcomes” the country’s compliance with certain human rights obligations and its participation in the fourth cycle of the Universal Periodic Review, including a United Nations review on disability rights in Geneva in August last year and its appearance in the U.P.R. process in November 2024.

As various assessments have noted, however, North Korea’s normalization in the international community is unlikely to be realized without parallel progress on both denuclearization and human rights. From this perspective, human rights should not be treated as a secondary or downstream issue, but rather as a form of leverage operating alongside CVID‑style denuclearization—jointly shaping the conditions under which meaningful engagement, and ultimately normalization, can occur.

Despite the strategic importance of such parallel progress, South Korea’s new Lee administration marks a departure from the previous government’s policy emphasis, weakening its leverage to nudge North Korea onto a path toward normalization. Under the previous Yoon administration, former Vice Foreign Minister Kang In‑sun explicitly linked human rights pressure with denuclearization objectives. At the 2025 high‑level segment of the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, she called on North Korea to abandon all nuclear and missile programs in a “complete, verifiable, and irreversible manner,” directly invoking the CVID framework.

By contrast, at the 2026 session of the same forum, Jeong Yeon‑du—serving as a senior official overseeing strategic affairs and North Korea policy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—outlined a phased approach centered on “halt, reduction, and dismantlement,” while emphasizing dialogue, coordination, and a return to negotiations. Notably, his remarks did not include any reference to CVID.

Taken together, the shift from an explicit CVID formulation to a phased, open‑ended sequence narrows the gap between pressure and process, but at the cost of blurring the intended end‑state of denuclearization.

On March 26th, 2026—the 16th spring since ROKS Cheonan (PCC-772), a Pohang-class corvette comparable to the US Navy’s Cyclone-class PC-1, sank after North Korean torpedoes struck in 2010—this waterside memorial gathering honors the 46 sailors whose sacrifice still weighs heavy on their families and the Republic of Korea Navy 2nd Fleet Command (Photo credit: RoK Navy).

China’s Gray Shadow Still Looms Over Defectors

On the issue of North Korean defectors, the resolution again addresses China indirectly by reaffirming the principle of non-refoulement, urging all states to ensure that no one is forcibly returned to North Korea. The wording closely mirrors that of resolutions adopted from 2023 through 2025, reflecting a continued effort to preserve consensus by avoiding explicit reference to Beijing — a choice that, critics say, comes at the cost of diminishing attention to the plight of defectors.

While the resolution maintains general language on forced repatriation, it stops short of expanding or sharpening scrutiny on the issue, even as reports of ongoing detentions and returns persist. The relative lack of new emphasis has drawn criticism from experts, who warn it risks signaling reduced urgency at a time when conditions for North Korean escapees in China remain severe. Ahn Chang-ho, chairperson of South Korea’s National Human Rights Commission, said that “some core elements were reduced or deleted,” including protections related to North Korean defectors, expressing concern that attention to the issue had been weakened. 

Even so, criticism of China persists. Advocates argue that Beijing continues to fall short of its obligations under international law, including the Convention against Torture and the 1951 Refugee Convention, both of which prohibit returning individuals to countries where they face a risk of torture. This concern is underscored by a particularly telling latest case from March 2026 documented by Human Rights Watch: a North Korean woman in China who helped her son survive a border crossing is now facing forced repatriation. If returned, she is at high risk of torture, forced labor, sexual violence, and enforced disappearance—abuses that the 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry on North Korea identified as potentially amounting to aiding and abetting crimes against humanity when carried out in cooperation with another state. Human Rights Watch stresses that, even as a party to these core treaties, China’s ongoing pattern of forcibly returning North Koreans, exemplified by this recent case, continues to erode the fundamental principle of non-refoulement.

Estimates suggest that roughly 2,000 North Korean defectors are being held in China without access to asylum procedures, often in undisclosed facilities or border detention centers, prior to being repatriated. Those who are returned face a high risk of torture, enforced disappearance, or execution.

 

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Les 22 et 23 mars 2026, les électeurs italiens ont rejeté, par 54 % des voix pour le non contre 46 % pour le oui, le projet de réforme constitutionnelle de la magistrature porté par la présidente du Conseil, Giorgia Meloni. Avec une participation proche de 60 %, un taux exceptionnellement élevé (…) / Fascisme, Droit, Italie, Justice

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A small meeting room in the European External Action Service is an unlikely place to get goosebumps. Yet, this happened time and time again as I spoke to European Union (EU) officials about the ground-breaking decision to deploy the European Peace Facility (EPF) to support Ukraine’s military response against Russia’s full-scale invasion during a cold February weekend in 2022. They all recall the gravitas of the moment: High Representative Borrell’s famous “Just add a zero” line that allowed the EPF budget to be multiplied by ten, the ground-breaking decision to deploy it to provide lethal equipment, and the momentous feeling of unity between Member States – a Union that, for once, rose up to the stakes of the moment.

Yet, the goosebumps are a momentary experience, and quickly go away as the conversation shifts to the months and years that followed. The tone gets more sour and frustrated. From a powerful innovation signifying European resolve, since 2024, the EPF has been completely blocked by the assertiveness of Hungarian vetoes. The officials I interview often use this as an example to show me that, although we tend to see the EU’s reaction to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine as an ideal case of unity, consensus is not part of the equation at all.

How and why, then, has internal disagreement not impeded a common response in support of Ukraine? The conventional wisdom – that EU foreign policy action requires unanimity – cannot explain this.

My PhD starts from a different premise. Full agreement is a lot to ask of a group of twenty-seven Member States bound together by a sprawling institutional architecture and a multiplicity of tools, but torn apart by diverging interests and strategic cultures. In a decision-making machinery still dominated by unanimity, collective action does not require the elimination of disagreement by channelling twenty-seven voices into one. It requires organising twenty-seven voices into patterns of complementarity rather than contradiction.

These are the theoretical propositions I carried with me back and forth in my Eurostar journeys from London to Brussels since January 2026, when I began my fieldwork, generously supported by the UACES PhD Fieldwork Scholarship.

What I Am Finding: Complementarity, Not Unity 

The central conceptual move emerging from my research is a shift away from thinking about EU unity as the enabling factor of common external action to thinking about complementarity.

The dominant framing treats EU unity and consensus as necessary conditions for EU presence on the global stage: either it ‘speaks with one voice’ or it fragments into competing national positions. A holistic analysis of those cases that are considered closest to ideal types in this binary – Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the Gaza conflict – reveals something this dichotomy cannot capture.

By taking into account the multiplicity of actions across the Union’s multi-actor, multi-method, multi-level system of foreign policy, one starts seeing a different picture. It is the management of conflict and disagreement – not consensus – that enables EU external action, which can exist in multiple forms short of unity. What matters is not whether agreement can be found in the Council, but whether EU institutions and Member States act, in practice, to fill the gaps left by one another.

The EU’s multi-centred architecture – its multiple voices – does not merely constrain action, but provides avenues through which action can be routed around blockages at any given level. The European Peace Facility is a particularly successful and evident example of this: where disagreement existed, and common competencies lacked to support the provision of lethal equipment to Ukraine, the Commission provided EU financing through off-budget mechanisms, Member States delivered weapons bilaterally, and the EEAS coordinated. Each maintained its distinctive organisational approach, but these were structured to complement each other. No preference convergence or further integration occurred, but institutional innovations and procedural flexibility organised these differences productively.

I propose complementarity as the concept to capture this: the degree to which EU institutions and Member States reinforce rather than contradict each other at political, strategic, and operational levels. Complementarity is not coherence or uniformity: it allows for differentiated contributions, sequenced actions, and division of labour across a spectrum. What matters is not the institutional design of decision-making, but its outcome in practice, and whether actors reinforce, supplement, or contradict one another.

What Complementarity Reveals

 This concept helps to start theorising three more and more explicit developments in EU foreign policy into a single framework. These are typically analysed in isolation or misread as signs of dysfunction. Rather, I argue that they are all part of the same phenomenon whereby the EU assumes different patterns of complementarity as the outcome of internal conflict management.

The first concerns the simultaneous rise of Commission assertiveness and Member State coalitions. The European Commission increasingly deploys its own instruments – SAFE, Readiness 2030 – to provide frameworks for action in areas where unanimity in CFSP/CSDP cannot be reached. At the same time, Member States form informal ‘coalitions of the willing’ to tackle urgent problems outside the constraints of unanimity. These are usually analysed as two distinct trends, and the latter is often read as a sign of fragmentation. Yet, I argue that they are symptoms of complementarity in action: efforts of separate actors to enable or strengthen the collective effort.

The second development concerns the increasing visibility of Commission instruments in the making and shaping of EU external action. The existing debate has long equated EU foreign policy with its most visible intergovernmental surface – Council conclusions, statements, declarations. These are either voted on by unanimity or fail to come into existence. But a more holistic view that understands Community and Member State instruments and external competencies as part of the same system of foreign policy, a different picture emerges. Political, strategic, and operational coordination do not always move in tandem: Community tools can be effectively deployed at the operational level even when political consensus is absent. What appears as “disunity” at one level does not necessarily mean the EU is failing to act, or vice versa. It is precisely in these intermediate configurations – visible through a complementary view – that some of the most undertheorised dynamics of EU foreign policy reside.

Third, these configurations are not static. Complementarity is better understood as a process than a state – something that is constructed, sustained, and that can erode. The EU’s response to Ukraine illustrates this vividly: the rapid construction of a coherent response in the weeks following February 2022 gradually became more pluralistic over time – regardless of the sustained existential threat to European security. Changes external configuration of the EU – whether it speaks with one voice or it is characterised by coalitions of the willing and Commission-led workarounds – are often read as predictive signs of the trajectory of EU foreign policy integration. My argument is that this is the wrong frame entirely. These are not steps forward, backwards, or sideways on an integration spectrum that can tell us whether the EU is advancing unevenly, retreating, or finding a differentiated middle path. They are pragmatic, adaptive responses to the specific configuration of external constraints and internal costs the EU faces at a given moment. The EU is not on a linear trajectory; rather, a kaleidoscopic, shape-shifting polity in which coalitions form and reform around specific issues, and where the relevant question is not the degree of integration but the pattern of alignment.

Bridging Theory and Practice: Fieldwork in the Brussels Bubble

The core of my fieldwork consists of elite interviews with practitioners across the EU’s foreign policy ecosystem: officials from the EEAS, the Commission, the Council Secretariat, and Member States. The interviews seek to unveil not the achievement of unanimity as described by the treaties, but the daily, often improvised work of finding éscamotages, creative solutions, and producing collective action under pressure.

Brussels is a bubble that rewards presence. Many of these conversations would not have happened over Zoom. The willingness to speak candidly about politically charged dynamics – particularly about why coordination breaks down and how dissent is absorbed rather than resolved – depends enormously on trust built face to face. The informal chats after the recorded interview, the run-ins around Schuman or To Meli, the introductions passed along by a colleague: these are the understated elements that make research beyond the diplomatic narrative possible. I still have much to do: the human component of interviews requires time – digging into the EUWhoIsWho to identify interlocutors, waiting for answers (which often never come), and finding an appropriate time in the interviewees’ busy schedules. This means: I am still deeply in the process – widening my reach to Member State officials in Permanent Representations and select national capitals.

The UACES PhD Fieldwork Scholarship is essential to sustaining this presence. The scholarship supported my travel and living costs, allowing me to conduct a far richer set of interviews than would otherwise have been feasible. I am deeply grateful to UACES for this support, and for the broader role the association plays in enabling early-career researchers to undertake empirically grounded work.

Looking Ahead

The broader ambition is to equip scholars and practitioners with a framework that makes sense of recent developments in EU foreign policy while relieving them of the unrealistic expectation of consistent unity and the frustration of apparent weakness. The EU is not a unitary state. It cannot always ‘speak with one voice’. But it can and does act – sometimes with remarkable coordination, sometimes in productive pluralism, and sometimes in disarray. Understanding why it takes these different forms can offer insights into how this adaptive quality could become a strength rather than a source of anxiety in an increasingly volatile international order.

The post Conflict Is Underrated: From Unity to Complementarity in EU Foreign Policy appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Despite the swearing-in of a new "civilian" government, progress on the project is likely to remain sluggish.

Meeting in Beijing, To Lam and Xi Jinping declared that they view the bilateral relationship "as a strategic choice of overarching and long-term significance.”