Rachel Tausendfreund

Senior Fellow
Berlin Office
Staff,
GMF Expert
English
German
My Areas of Expertise:
Democracy Foreign Policy
European Union Germany United States

Rachel Tausendfreund is a senior fellow with GMF’s geostrategy team. From 2015 to 2022 she was GMF’s editorial director, overseeing the organization’s research output and publication planning. She co-created GMF’s Out of Order podcast and is the co-host of Transatlantic Takeaways, a podcast produced in cooperation with Common Ground Berlin.

Tausendfreund researches and writes on US and German domestic and foreign policy, and transatlantic relations and alternative (post-colonial and feminist) approaches to foreign policy. She is a regular commentator in German and US media, including in outlets such as NBC news, Der Spiegel, and Deutsche Welle.

Tausendfreund was a visiting senior fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs from August to November 2022. Prior to joining GMF, she was editorial director at the European Council on Foreign Relations, and editor at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) and its foreign affairs magazine, Internationale Politik.

Media Mentions

by
Rachel Tausendfreund
“ The Israeli ground offensive is already facing growing political challenges even before it begins. The more people die in Gaza, the more difficult it will be for Israel's allies - especially the United States - to fully support a major invasion of Gaza. ”
Translated from German
Focus Online
by
Rachel Tausendfreund
“ Germany’s partners need to understand that the Zeitenwende was never about Germany suddenly becoming a geopolitical security policy leader in Europe. It was about an important shift in Germany’s security understanding – the realisation that Germany should also be able to defend its freedoms. But the Zeitenwende was not a promise of German leadership or vision. ”
France 24
by
Rachel Tausendfreund
“ People in Germany and in the chancellery look at this kind of escalating rhetoric in Washington of an unavoidable escalation of conflict with China and view that with some concern and think that an escalation is still avoidable. And so that's going to be the difficult part for Olaf Scholz and German politics in general, if tensions continue to rise with China. ”
npr
by
Rachel Tausendfreund
“ The shock of Putin’s war has turned the geopolitical times for Germany. Prior to the invasion, Berlin was unique in the West for having a strategic logic still shaped primarily by the lessons of the First World War. ”
The Week
by
Rachel Tausendfreund
“ Climate change is more on the mind of Germans than certainly other bigger issues. Foreign policy, [the] transatlantic relationship, that has not entered into this campaign at all. And climate change has been consistently an issue. ”
NBC News
by
Rachel Tausendfreund
“ [Angela Merkel] really managed to bring other Europeans together on a few important issues and issues that were really important to transatlantic politics, so she has a strong legacy in that regard. She waited for the time to be right, and she managed to pull a lot of different people around the table together. ”
NBC News

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