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International Centre for Defence and Security Accessibility

Constanze Stelzenmüller

Director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution

Dr Constanze Stelzenmüller is the Director of the Center on the United States and Europe and the inaugural holder of the Fritz Stern Chair on Germany and Transatlantic Relations at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. A German native herself, she is an expert on German, European, and transatlantic foreign and security policy, as well as international law and human rights. From 2019-20, Dr Stelzenmüller held the Kissinger Chair on Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress and from 2014-19, served as the inaugural Robert Bosch Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. She has contributed to a variety of publications, writes a monthly column for The Financial Times, and is a frequent commentator on American and European news outlets.
Subjects:
Brexit, China, Defence, Democracy, Europe, European Union, Germany, Migration, NATO, Populism, Russia, Security, Terrorism, Transatlantic relations, United States, USA, West
Updated: April 9, 2025

Agenda

Lennart Meri Lecture
LMC 2025
No Man Is Rich Enough to Buy Back His Past: Perceptions of the US
LMC 2023
Incipit Vita Nova – So Begins New Life
LMC 2023
European Union, NATO
Dragging Our Cart Uphill Together? NATO@70 and the Army of Europeans
LMC 2019
Transatlantic relations, USA
Eighteen Months of Trump Foreign Policy: Right Direction Wrong Track?
LMC 2018
Defence, Migration, NATO, Russia, Terrorism
Geography and Threat: Should NATO Mind the East/South Gap?
LMC 2018
6 more

Articles

Europe’s Very Special Relationship Problem

Concessions to Russia, pressure on Ukraine, rumours of US-Russian deals to open the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, tariffs, threats to “take” Greenland, election support for far right parties, equivocations over NATO: Europe learned very quickly that Donald Trump’s second administration will be an extraordinary challenge…

Constanze Stelzenmüller
LMC 2025
Lennart Meri Lecture: Shall We Go Forward Together? Of Deals and Red Lines 

Lennart Meri Lecture given by Constanze Stelzenmüller, Director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, on 17 May 2025 at the Lennart Meri Conference 2025 in Tallinn.

LMC 2025
U.S. President Joe Biden at the EU-U.S. summit in Brussels in June 2021. Relieving the U.S. of some of the burden of European defense means giving the Biden administration more leeway to protect democracy at home, Constanze Stelzenmüller argues.
China, Democracy, Europe, Germany, Russia, Security, Transatlantic relations, USA
America Is Back, but… Europe and Especially Germany Need To Do Much More for European Security

It took President Joe Biden nearly five months before he made his first trip abroad in June, to Europe; he had more important things to do. Arguably, that is still the case today.

Constanze Stelzenmüller
LMC 2021

In the news

‘No peace without accountability for aggression’: Russian invasion of Ukraine must lead to European security rethink

Arab News, May 14, 2023