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Open Questions‘Saying you’re a geopolitical actor doesn’t make it so’: Sven Biscop on Europe

The Belgian political scientist on what the Iran war and the transatlantic collision reveal about Europe’s place in a fast-changing world

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Illustration: Lau Ka-kuen
Finbarr Berminghamin Brussels

Sven Biscop is a Belgian political scientist and strategist specialising in the foreign affairs and security of the EU and its relations with great powers. He is a director at the Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations in Brussels and a professor at Ghent University. He is also a senior research fellow at Renmin University in Beijing, where he teaches in the summer. Biscop is the author of many books, including 2024’s This Is Not a New World Order: Europe Rediscovers Geopolitics, from Ukraine to Taiwan. His voice is one of the most prominent in the policy debate in Brussels. Note: this interview was updated last week before the most recent developments in the Strait of Hormuz and the Israeli ceasefire with Lebanon.

For other interviews in the Open Questions series, click here.

As a European, what does the Iran war and how it has unfolded tell you about the world in 2026?

I’m not sure it heralds a new trend, but it shows that power politics is of all the ages. To have an impact doesn’t mean you have to play that game. It’s not that you only have impact if you start a war from time to time, but you do have to have military power so that your voice will be listened to. That’s one of the lessons for Europe from the Iran war. We’re totally sidelined because everybody knows we don’t have the military capacity to contribute much.
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Open Questions – SCMP interviews with global opinion leaders
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