The 2022 Year of Geopolitics: Europe’s ‘Ring of Fire’ Keeps Smoldering

In 2022, EU foreign policy looks towards some fire fighting to salvage what is left of the once-dominant dream of building a ‘ring of friends’ from the Caucasus to the Sahara. Over the past year, Europe has woken up to the return of geopolitics, whether in Belarus, an increasingly revisionist Russia, or China’s coercive trade threats towards Lithuania and others. “Geopolitical changes have intensified with power politics repeatedly challenging the EU and its values,” EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell said in his end of the year blog post, adding the bloc “must respond with all the determination we can muster”. But 13 years on from the launch…