Pakistan has historically maintained the closest ties to the Taliban movement and initially viewed its return to power in Afghanistan in the summer of 2021 with considerable optimism. The bilateral relationship has since deteriorated, and the two neighbors have been caught in a cycle of escalation since last fall. In October 2025, Pakistan launched its first airstrikes on Kabul. For three weeks in February–March 2026, Afghanistan intensified ground assaults on the Pakistani side of the border as well as drone attacks on Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Pakistan, for its part, has intensified airstrikes on Afghan border areas, as well as on Kabul and Kandahar. Given the dynamics at play at the bilateral and regional levels, the prospects for a sustained return to stability appear limited.

2026 may prove to be the end of the Norwegian exception. Norway has long prided itself on the successful combination of fossil fuel extraction with a strong social democracy. 

In recent years, virtually no other Asian country has seen such a rise in prominence in German foreign policy as India.

As Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) economies are confronted with mounting threats to critical raw materials (CRM) supplies, resolute interventionist policies are needed to build resilient value chains. 
 

Ifri’s 2nd Paris Geoeconomic Dialogue brought together in November 2025 experts, academics, and decision-makers around six themes relating to the prospects for interdependence in an increasingly tense international environment.

French President Emmanuel Macron has unveiled his country’s new nuclear doctrine. Are the changes he has made enough to reassure France’s European partners in the current geopolitical context?

Macron’s concept of ‘forward deterrence’ offers a distinctly European approach to nuclear deterrence.

The second Trump administration’s trade policy represents a rupture with the United States’ international commitments and a seismic shock for the multilateral trade system. Its destabilizing impact has been exacerbated by China’s disproportionate trade surplus, which has doubled since the 2020 pandemic. We are entering a new era marked by the erosion of norms and their replacement by a more transactional logic. For Europe, the challenge is enormous.