“Expect to have very violent reactions after the pandemic”

Podcasts | Power in the 21st century

Mar 11, 2021

Pierre Lellouche worries that bad is likely to get worse. Listen as he discusses how Europe got stuck between the United States and China, the future of democracy, and the tragedy of social movements focused only on race and gender.

Pierre Lellouche, after a long career in the French Parliament (five consecutive terms, 1993-2017) and several appointments in the executive branch, is currently Associate Partner of the Agora Strategy Group, a consulting company with offices in Munich, Berlin, Brussels and Paris, and President of the NGO ‘Les Chantiers de la Liberté”. Pierre Lellouche was educated at the University of Paris-Nanterre, Sciences Po and Harvard Law School (LLM, 1974, SJD 1978, Doctoral thesis on the internationalization of the nuclear fuel cycle). A specialist of foreign affairs, he was a co-founder of the French institute for international relations (IFRI) and became diplomatic adviser to Jacques Chirac (1989-1997). He was elected President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (between 2004 and 2006) and French Special Envoy to ITER negotiations (thermo-nuclear fusion experimental reactor, 2003-2005). Later on, he was French Special Representative for Afghanistan-Pakistan (2008-2009), Minister for Europe (2009-2010) and Foreign Trade Minister (2011-2012). He is the author of numerous books and articles in national and international politics. His latest publications : Une guerre sans fin, éditions du Cerf, Paris and a parliamentary report on the extraterritoriality of American laws and compliance, 2016.

“I am struck that the bad guys—Trump, Boris Johnson, Netanyahu—have been able to handle this crisis infinitely much better than the good guys in Europe—Macron, Merkel, von der Leyen and so on—who have been highly bureaucratic, slow, incompetent.” — Pierre Lellouche

Europe has had a bad few years. The struggles between North and South mostly over economics, between East and West mostly over values. Brexit, which shifted the locus of power eastward and distracted European leaders from any possibility of a more positive agenda. The pandemic, which among all its other impacts led to interrupted borders in a Europe that prided itself on having no borders. Tensions with the Americans, the Russians, the Chinese, and overall a sense that Europe is largely irrelevant to what happens elsewhere in the world.

Pierre Lellouche, former French parliamentarian and minister, worries that bad is likely to get worse. Listen as he discusses how Europe got stuck between the United States and China, the future of democracy, and the tragedy of social movements focused only on race and gender.

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