19.03.2025 : Speaker Series 2024/2025 – Milada Vachudova

For the seventh event in our 2024/2025 speaker series, we invite you to attend the lecture by Milada Vachudova (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), titled “Europe’s Geopolitical Power in the Face of America’s Authoritarian Turn”.

Date: Wednesday, March 19, 2025 Time: 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM Location: Leacock Building, Room 927, McGill University

No registration required.

The challenges facing European states in the quest for security have come into sharp relief in 2025 as the United States has become an unreliable partner. The new US administration is attacking democratic allies and currying favor with authoritarian regimes. By withdrawing military aid from Ukraine, it is strengthening the hand of a weakened Russia instead of helping Ukraine achieve a just peace. Can Europe dramatically ramp up its aid to Ukraine and also its own defense capabilities — even with the UK outside of the EU and authoritarian-minded regimes inside of it? Drawing on work coauthored with Nadiia Koval, I argue in this talk that defending liberal democratic values is an essential foundation of the EU’s current and potential geopolitical power — and should drive the expansion of its defense capabilities as well as its soft power to fill the void left by an autocratizing United States.