Sophia Besch is a fellow in the Europe Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her area of expertise is European defense policy.
Before joining Carnegie, Sophia was a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform (CER) in London and Berlin, where she led research on European armament policy, the EU’s role in European defense, transatlantic relations, German defense policy, and the security implications of Brexit.
Sophia has also worked with the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies; the Atlantic Council's Europe Centre, where she served as co-chair of the US-Germany Renewal Initiative; and as a strategic advisor to the conception of 'Forum Neue Sicherheitspolitik', a network of independent experts on security and defense policy situated within the Heinrich Böll Stiftung. Earlier in her career, Sophia was a Carlo Schmid fellow in NATO’s Policy Planning Unit and a researcher for the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. She is a member of the Atlantik Brücke Young Leaders program.
Sophia regularly comments on political and defense issues in print and broadcast media and has published opinion pieces in the Atlantic, Financial Times, Internationale Politik, Politico, Project Syndicate, Prospect, Survival, and War on the Rocks. She has served as an expert witness for the UK House of Commons Defence Select Committee and the German Bundestag EU Committee and has provided evidence to the European Parliament Subcommittee for Security and Defence.
Sophia holds degrees in international relations and international law from Münster University, the London School of Economics, and Sciences Po Paris, and is finalizing her PhD dissertation on EU defense-industrial policy at King’s College London.
Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Sophia Besch, a fellow at the Carnegie Europe Program, and Eric Ciaramella, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia and Eurasia Program, to discuss the outcomes of the NATO summit in Vilnius.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is widely said to have transformed European defense, aligning threat perceptions, raising defense budgets, and focusing political will.
Thus, even as the clamor dies down, the visit raised two important questions that cannot easily be explained away: When it comes to China, who speaks for Europe? And where is European policy on China heading?
Russia’s war against Ukraine has triggered a “Zeitenwende”—or sea change—not just in Germany, but across Europe. Since last February, European countries have put aside their many strategic differences to step up on defense and forge a united front in support of Ukraine.
The Sondervermögen was a necessary step on Germany’s long road toward becoming a European defense leader. Now, EU countries have a rare window of opportunity to integrate procurement and create a genuinely European defense base.