In this intensive course we will examine the geopolitical and geoeconomic transformations of the contemporary world, and the increasingly important entanglements between the two. We will focus, in particular, on the ways in which political and economic risk is being ‘secured’ today, and the new domains of the geopolitical and geoeconomic strategies of states and international actors such as the European Union. Upon completing the course, students will be able to critically assess current geopolitical transformations and their implications for states, markets and individuals.

We will spend the first two weeks, in Section I, building the bases for a ‘geopolitical’ understanding of contemporary transformations, reviewing key concepts in geopolitical thought and ways of ‘envisioning’ the world. We will then proceed, in Section II, to discuss how geopolitical and geoeconomic risks are being understood today and made the object of political, economic and military strategies. Section III of the course will focus on a key shift in the geopolitics and geoeconomics of global risk – the so-called ‘weaponization of everything’, from supply chains to physical and digital infrastructures. In the final part of the course, Section IV, we will apply the insights gained in the preceding weeks to assess how various objects of risk are being secured: from infrastructure, to critical technology like microchips, to agricultural goods and raw materials. In these last 5 sessions of the class, you will take a direct role. Working in small groups, you will be asked to prepare a presentation assessing how a particular object is being secured today, in Europe or elsewhere, since current strategies to secure, for example, supply chains, are placing the EU and its Member States in direct conflict also with allies and partners such as the United States.