The Diplomat's Cabinet

Behind every NATO summit's declarations of unity, the real story often lies in what goes unsaid. Marta Mucznik, senior EU analyst at the International Crisis Group, joins host Maria Luísa Moreira to unpack what the Hague summit left unresolved: looming U.S. troop reductions, Europe's uneven defence spending, Ukraine's elusive security guarantees, and the quiet rise of ad-hoc coalitions of the willing. A conversation on what these silences are shaping for the future of European security and the transatlantic alliance.

Ambika Vishwanath, founder director of the Kubernein Initiative and a DFAT-funded research fellow at La Trobe Asia, joins host Maria Luísa Moreira to examine feminist foreign policy's unfinished promise and the alternative approach India has taken, one that is deliberately inclusive in practice without adopting the label. The conversation looks at the limits of exporting global frameworks without local adaptation, and at why a foreign policy approach built around the people who designed it, rather than around durable institutions, struggles to survive once those people move on.

Ricardo Borges de Castro, EU affairs analyst and foresight expert, joins host Maria Luísa Moreira to explain what strategic foresight is actually for, and why democracies so consistently struggle to plan beyond the next crisis. The conversation covers why permacrisis stopped being a useful buzzword some time ago, why foresight exercises fail without real political translation into policy, and how Brussels could use its existing mandate to take long-term thinking seriously instead of treating it as an afterthought.

Across Europe, growing numbers of young men are drawn to anti-feminist and far-right political narratives, and the reasons are as much economic as cultural. Javier Carbonell, policy analyst at the European Policy Centre, joins host Maria Luísa Moreira to unpack his research on the collapse of the traditional provider role, rising job insecurity and downward mobility, and how that economic frustration gets channelled into politics, often at progressive movements' expense. A conversation on what happens to democratic coalitions when economic anxiety finds a political home on the far right.

Ahead of the 2025 NATO summit in The Hague, with President Trump in attendance, long-standing questions about the alliance's core guarantee were gaining new urgency. Foreign policy analyst Luka Ignac joins host Maria Luísa Moreira to discuss the political mood heading into the summit, what a push for five percent defence spending really signals, and the risk of a two-tier alliance emerging if U.S. security guarantees become more conditional. A conversation on what it would mean for Europe to actually be ready to stand on its own.

Extreme weather keeps intensifying, yet mainstream political parties still hesitate to name climate change as the cause, let alone build it into their platforms. António Valentim, political scientist and assistant professor at the London School of Economics, joins host Maria Luísa Moreira to explain why climate shocks so rarely translate into lasting political shifts, why prevention remains a hard sell to voters, and what it would actually take for public opinion and activism to force the issue onto the agenda before the next crisis arrives.