I am continuing to monitor and research the main geo-strategic developments affecting European security and defence policy.

The war in Ukraine has radically changed the overall context in which that policy is set. Prior to the war, there seemed to be a serious debate about European strategic autonomy.

My main research project at present is to complete a book (co-authored with Sven Biscop) entitled European Strategic Autonomy and the Future of European Defence for which we have a contract with Oxford University Press.

However, the Ukraine war has called into doubt the desire for autonomy on the part of the EU member states - even while the case for Europeans doing more is as strong as ever. This will be a difficult course for both Europe and the US to navigate.

Meanwhile, as a researcher attached to both the Institut Français des Relations Internationales (IFRI) in Paris and the Martens Centre for European Studies, Brussels, I continue to carry out research and writing of short articles and reports for both these think-tanks.

I also have a long-standing project to write a book on Iraq, investigating what it would have taken, going right back to the founding of the country after World War One, to become a viable functioning state – a status that, over its one hundred years of history, it has never managed to attain.