Kristina Kausch
Deputy Managing Director and Senior Fellow, South and Wider EuropeKristina Kausch is deputy managing director of GMF’s South and Wider Europe program, dividing her time between Madrid and Brussels. An established voice on European foreign affairs and Europe’s relations with its neighborhood, she conducts research on a broad interdisciplinary portfolio that includes international security, connectivity, the geopolitics of technology, and global power shifts.
Prior to joining GMF, Kausch held positions with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; FRIDE, a Spanish think tank; the Bertelsmann Stiftung; and GIZ, the German development cooperation agency. She has contributed to a wide range of media outlets including The New York Times, the Financial Times, The Guardian, Politico, El País, RTVE, Defense One, Deutsche Welle, ARD, Der Tagesspiegel, and Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Media Mentions
Trump puts the war on hold, with negotiations still up in the air and the Strait of Hormuz and the nuclear issue unresolved
EU lists Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard as terrorist organization over protest crackdown
Spain facing the new Gaza: willing to contribute forces and money, opposed to expelling Palestinians
Featured Work
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August 12, 2026
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March 1, 2026
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February 11, 2026
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October 6, 2025
Hamas’ attack on Israel two years ago and the events unfolding in its wake have reverberated beyond the Middle East. The war in Gaza; the spillover...
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September 26, 2025
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June 23, 2025
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June 16, 2025
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April 11, 2025
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January 27, 2025
In 2025, the Middle East is set to undergo a profound reconfiguration. ...
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November 14, 2024
Read the full chapter by selecting "Download PDF"....
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June 12, 2024
The European Parliament election on June 6-9 saw overall gains for right-of-center parties without a feared surge toward the far right. Across...
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May 22, 2024
Spain's recognition of Palestinian statehood has symbolic rather than legal value, yet it sends an important signal at the right time to the...
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April 19, 2024
With Iran and Israel firing missiles at each other, the escalation widely feared since October 7, 2023 has begun. Whether it will be short-lived or...
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March 13, 2024
EU decision-making on the Israel/Palestine conflict has been paralyzed for more than a decade, making the Israel/Palestine file the poster child for...
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November 27, 2023
The United States’ and Europe’s perceived moral waywardness on Ukraine and Gaza is provoking global outrage and risking lasting damage to their...
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October 23, 2023
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July 26, 2023
It takes two to tango, and the Spanish election offers a sharp lesson for conservatives across Europe on how partnering with the radical right can go...
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July 24, 2023
Spanish voters dealt a blow to Spain’s far-right in the national elections on Sunday, July 23. Here, GMF experts provide insights into the...
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February 1, 2023
Since 1980, EU policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has served as a major barometer of the ability of the EU to formulate an autonomous and...
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September 29, 2022
President Vladimir Putin is about to announce that the four Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine where Moscow organized sham “referendums” in recent...
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December 11, 2020
"We had the deal with Turkey on the table, ready to sign", assures an advisor from the German chancellery. "But then Greece and Egypt struck their...
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July 16, 2020
Things are not going well for European diplomacy in the Libyan civil war....
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May 26, 2020
Depending on how the conflict evolves in the coming months, European states may seriously consider putting boots on the ground....
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March 17, 2020
In an environment of global geopolitical transition, long-standing patterns of partnership between states erode....
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March 3, 2020
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April 26, 2019
On Sunday elections are being held in Spain. Kristina Kausch argues that these will mark the end of the Spanish exception to the rise of right-wing...
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April 8, 2019
Local conflicts in Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq are increasingly diffused with regional and global power dynamics that have little or no direct...
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March 18, 2019
Editor's Note: This memo is part of a larger collection, POMEPS Studies 34: Shifting Global Politics and the Middle East....
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February 28, 2019
Editor's Note: Along with other experts, GMF's Kristina Kausch responds to the question "Is the U.S. Losing Europe When It Comes to the Middle East?"...
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February 11, 2019
Not even the best governance agreement will hold if regional powers, such as Iran and Turkey, do not stop placing their political bets on Syrian soil...
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December 12, 2018
Is the Middle East the transatlantic alliance’s Achilles’ heel?...
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November 8, 2018
The Istanbul summit was only marginally about a political solution in Syria (on which no new breakthroughs were achieved), and was, instead, focused...
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August 15, 2018
Photo Credit: Ekaterina Pokrovsky / Shutterstock...
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August 10, 2018
Cyber power has a vast geopolitical potential. Cyber technology is increasingly inseparable from all instruments of power, including diplomacy,...
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May 9, 2018
Photo Credit: Zbitnev / Shutterstock...
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February 2, 2018
The political use of cyber tools is a powerful accelerator of geopolitical confrontation. The past few years have witnessed a cyber awakening in the...
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January 16, 2018
Cyber warfare is a powerful accelerator of the geopolitical conflict in the Middle East. The crisis in the Gulf Cooperation Council after the...
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November 24, 2017
Photo credit: Shutterstock / Image Flow...
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November 22, 2017
Senior Resident Fellow Kristina Kausch gives her analysis on the evolving security situation in the Middle East to the European Parliment's...
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June 12, 2017
When Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt cut diplomatic ties with Qatar on 5 June, they did so not only because of Doha’s...
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May 16, 2017
Photo credit: thomas koch / Shutterstock.com...
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April 5, 2017
Kristina Kausch - Senior resident fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States
No—but power is clearly slipping out of Europe’s hands, due...
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March 8, 2017
A selection of experts answer a new question from Judy Dempsey on the foreign and security policy challenges shaping Europe’s role in the world....
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December 22, 2016
The fall of Aleppo shows painfully how Russia is largely given free hand in pressing forward its geopolitical interests with whatever means it chooses...
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October 3, 2016
Europe’s attention to its southern flank is absorbed by cascading disaster. In the face of war in Syria, Iraq and Libya, the migration crisis and the...
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September 30, 2016
urope’s attention to its Southern flank is absorbed by cascading disaster....
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The United States and Europe cannot be complacent about the risk of conflict in the Eastern Mediterranean....
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Since pictures of Spanish policemen beating peaceful citizens flooded TV channels and social networks on October 1, the inner-Spanish dispute over the...
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Under the avid eye of the international media, last month’s snap elections in Spain saw the far-right VOX party entering parliament by winning 10.3...
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Open the borders, protesters' signs read. Government: no more excuses, It's a human duty, Welcome them now, For an open Europe....
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The Middle East and Mediterranean having been the region where President Donald Trump most blatantly broke with established international consensus,...
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Three months before his murder in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Jamal Khashoggi joined EU policymakers in a public debate in the European...
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The 14th edition of GMF’s Mediterranean Strategy Group, themed “The Digital Mediterranean,” was held in Turin December 5-7....