Neil Winn’s research while affiliated with University of Leeds and other places

Robotics and autonomous systems are reshaping the world, changing healthcare, food production and biodiversity management. While they will play a fundamental role in delivering the UN Sustainable Development Goals, associated opportunities and threats are yet to be considered systematically. We report on a horizon scan evaluating robotics and autonomous systems impact on all Sustainable Development Goals, involving 102 experts from around the world. Robotics and autonomous systems are likely to transform how the Sustainable Development Goals are achieved, through replacing and supporting human activities, fostering innovation, enhancing remote access and improving monitoring. Emerging threats relate to reinforcing inequalities, exacerbating environmental change, diverting resources from tried-and-tested solutions and reducing freedom and privacy through inadequate governance. Although predicting future impacts of robotics and autonomous systems on the Sustainable Development Goals is difficult, thoroughly examining technological developments early is essential to prevent unintended detrimental consequences. Additionally, robotics and autonomous systems should be considered explicitly when developing future iterations of the Sustainable Development Goals to avoid reversing progress or exacerbating inequalities.

With China and Russia acting more assertively vis-à-vis Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan have gradually moved to the core of contemporary Eurasian geopolitics – albeit to varying degrees. The European Union (EU) has purposefully sought to promote its norms and values in the region for quite some time in the past. However, considering the ongoing Western “polycrisis” exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic most recently, our paper investigates how the EU has been recalibrating its relationship towards Central Asia – within the timespan of its two EU Central Asia Strategies, dating from 2007 and 2019, respectively. We argue that the reformulation of EU policy towards Central Asia is pragmatically taking its lead from the growing constraints of EU foreign policy as well as Chinese and Russian intervention in the region; it is, in the end, geographical proximity that continues to shape geopolitics in Central Asia.

The quest for substance, capability, and strategic autonomy goes on – or does it? Is the objective of CSDP territorial defence and strategic autonomy, or crisis management and softer security concerns like peacekeeping, border management, protection of shipping lanes, and/or cyber security? The Union needs to move beyond familiar complaints about the lack of common strategic culture and EU intrusion into NATO responsibilities. Geostrategic and economic imperatives dictate that the EU should progress CSDP beyond civilian crisis management in the EU Neighbourhood, and military training and security sector reform (SSR). The Strategic Compass must signal CSDP clarity of objectives, coherence, enhanced capability, and appropriate burden sharing with NATO. The response to the Strategic Compass must build European strategic autonomy in ways that strengthen NATO. For military strategic and economic reasons, both the EU and the post-Brexit UK need intensive cooperation to maintain their geostrategic relevance and strengthen the NATO alliance. This paper reflects on prospects for the EU Strategic Compass and offers timely analysis of recent trends in EU foreign and security policy and expresses cautious optimism regarding the enhanced European strategic autonomy/actorness.

The global response to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020/21 was dominated by the Westphalian primacy of national territory and sovereignty, significantly worsening and prolonging this global health crisis. Global platforms for cross-border coordination and cooperation, set up by the WHO and other global health partnerships, were constrained by national self-interest. Arguably, the lack of a global supranational (or post-Westphalian) authority in global health governance is one important structural reason for the fragmented, chaotic and ineffective global health response to a post-Westphalian challenge like Covid-19. We argue that the failure of Westphalian governance responses to the pandemic provides a unique window of opportunity for post-Westphalian governance structures to be established and play a vital role in reforming international pandemic preparedness. While we realise that this is unlikely to happen anytime soon at the global level, we show that a comprehensive post-Westphalian health governance framework is indeed emerging at EU level in the form of a European Health Union. Through a combined conceptualisation of supranational governance and the securitisation process of international health crises, we demonstrate how COVID-19 has pushed the door wide open for the emergence of post-Westphalian health governance at EU level coordinated by the European Commission. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

The European Union (EU) integration project is under attack from a reassertion of national sovereignty following Brexit and the Covid-19 crisis. Our analysis examines the impact that traditional forms of sovereignty and national interests will have on the conduct of EU foreign and security policy post-Brexit. We focus on the Brexit challenge to the EU mode of regulation and diplomacy in internal/external policies in Common Foreign and Security Policy, Common Security and Defence Policy, and Justice and Home Affairs. The article also considers key scenarios for future UK-EU security cooperation to inform analysis of likely policy outcomes for the UK and the EU. The article concludes that the EU will have a greater impact through its laws and regulations on the post-Brexit UK than vice versa and that Brexit is not an immediate threat to the EU's regulatory mode of security governance. The new realities of internal/external security governance in Europe post-Brexit will mean weakened EU–UK security arrangements, which will impact the scope and quality of European security cooperation beyond traditional defence. This is both undesirable and potentially dangerous for European security cooperation and for Europe's position in the wider world.

The European Union (EU) and India are global powers in search of a strategy. The EU is a realist strategic actor, which emphasises economic and political power. It is also a normative power predicated on democracy, the rule of law and human rights. The EU Global Strategy (2016) is an extension of those norms and policies, but also emphasises the internal resilience of extra-European states in international relations and principled pragmatism in EU foreign and security policy. In effect, the EU Global Strategy is a relaunch of EU Foreign Policy. This contribution seeks to focus on what this tells us about the changing nature of the EU-India Strategic Partnership from an EU/European perspective and to what extent the EU Global Strategy can reinvigorate EU-Indian cooperation.

Has the United Kingdom Brexit referendum been a catalyst for more European Union security cooperation? How significant are post-referendum initiatives in security and defence? What are the implications of Brexit for EU and UK security and defence? This article analyses EU post-Brexit strategic choices following the launch of the EU Global Strategy (2016). EU autonomy in security and defence requires close cooperation with third countries, including Norway and post-Brexit UK. It remains to be seen whether the EU and the UK can forge a new bespoke security and defence relationship that delivers mutual benefits through shared strategic ambitions, while also protecting their various interests. We suggest there will be serious collateral damage to UK-EU security and defence cooperation if post-Brexit trade negotiations descend into acrimony and mistrust, especially in the event of “no-deal” once the “transition period” ends. This would undermine European security and the EU’s quest for strategic autonomy in world affairs and have serious implications for both UK and EU security. We conclude that the EU needs to work with the UK on a plan to achieve global strategic autonomy, or both risk reduced influence in the wider world in the years ahead.

Can we speak of a joined up European Union (EU) Grand Strategy in the world? Strategy-based policy-making in the EU is a shared enterprise between the EU and its member state governments. The EU and its member states focus in the EUGS (Shared vision, common action: a stronger Europe: a Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy, Brussels, http://www.eeas.europa.eu/archives/docs/top_stories/pdf/eugs_review_web.pdf, 2016) on the EU homeland as a priority and not the Neighbourhood or the global level of diplomacy as was the case previously in the ESS (A secure Europe in a better world, http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cmsUpload/78367.pdf, 2003). This is partly as a result of changing EU foreign policy priorities and partly as a result of the reassertion of national interests into the EU’s transnational foreign policy. EU Grand Strategy has shifted focus from the global to the regional level reflecting the new pragmatic turn in EU foreign policy. The new strategy is more regional, more pragmatic, and less ambitious in furthering the EU as a global actor as a result.

This paper examines the connections between identity politics and European Union (EU) aid effectiveness in peacebuilding education in Somalia. It engages with a severe educational challenge, which is that a lack of capacity in rigorous educational design and/or implementation across Somali Ministries in the South Central Zone, Somaliland and Puntland has led to the importation of multiple foreign curricula into the country simultaneously that do not address Somali history and contemporary conflict drivers and that frequently clash with local values as well as with each other. We critique this from a ‘new barbarism’ perspective, arguing that Somali voices and educational priorities have not been provided a sufficient space for expression in the EU debate on the global and therefore also the national development agenda.

How can we best describe the operation of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), and how can we improve policy-making in CSDP? The Open Method of Coordination (OMC) is predicated on the conviction that there are clear limits to the extent that European Union (EU) foreign and security policy can be strengthened through the restricting tendencies of intergovernmental cooperation between EU member states. Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) – agreed by the European Council and 25 EU member states in 2017 – offers practical instruments towards delivering value-added capacity to the process of crisis management beyond intergovernmentalism. As a process, PESCO is analogous to the logic of OMC, including more appropriate levels of coordination at the national organisational level in order to effectively facilitate the EU’s comprehensive approach to conflict prevention and crisis management. The requirement for new and “open” types of EU foreign and security policy coordination is underlined by the immense differences between EU member states in external policy, both concerning national crisis management structures and the resulting inefficient segmentation of policy at the EU level.