Leonard Schütte

Dr. Leonard Schütte is a DAAD/AGI Research Fellow in March and April 2024.

Dr. Schütte is Senior Researcher at the Munich Security Conference, where he co-edits and contributes to the Munich Security Report and other publications. He holds a PhD from Maastricht University and studied in Cambridge, Oxford, St. Andrews, and Paris. In 2018-2019, he was the Clara Marina O’Donnell Fellow at the Centre for European Reform in London.

Dr. Schütte has published widely on European defense, transatlantic relations, international organizations, and geoeconomics. Recent publications include Munich Security Report 2024: Lose-Lose? (Munich Security Conference, 2024, co-edited with Tobias Bunde and Sophie Eisentraut), Defense Sitters: Transforming European Armies in Times of War (Munich Security Conference, 2023, co-edited with Nicole Koenig), “The Show Must Go On: The EU’s Quest to Sustain Multilateral Institutions Since 2016” (Journal of Common Market Studies, 2023, with Hylke Dijkstra), and “Why NATO survived Trump: the neglected role of Secretary-General Stoltenberg” (International Affairs, 2021).

During his time at AGI, Dr. Schütte will build on previous research to develop a typology of rebalancing options for the transatlantic relationship, with a focus on NATO and Ukraine policy. Whichever way the U.S. elections go, the next U.S. administration will likely shift at least some resources and attention away from Europe, given the multiple parallel threats to the United States, ballooning public debt, and an underperforming defense industrial base. Rebalancing can take many forms, however. Between the extreme ends of the spectrum—with a formal U.S. withdrawal from NATO and abandonment of Ukraine on the one and the status quo on the other end—there are various shades, each with different policy implications. Based on interviews with (former) officials and experts, this project aims to spell out the various scenarios, which in turn can serve to inform European policymaking.