Security assistance has long served as a site where international hierarchies are enacted and contested, and where relationships between donors and recipients, as well as allies and partners, are forged, managed, and disciplined. Traditionally analysed as an instrument of Western order-making, it has diffused particular visions of military capability, governance, and professionalism in the pursuit of stability and reform. Yet in an era of renewed strategic competition and shifting geopolitical alignments, the relational dynamics underpinning security assistance are increasingly unsettled.

Europe’s return to territorial defence in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine raises important questions about the future of its out-of-area engagements. Will these external relationships be deprioritised, reconfigured, or reimagined? At the same time, as the United States recalibrates its global posture and rival powers expand their own networks of assistance, security cooperation is increasingly framed as a tool of competitive influence, and as a means of shaping dependencies and solidarities across a fragmented international order.

What happens to existing assistance capabilities as global competition deepens? How are new forms of partnership, hierarchy, and reciprocity emerging in response? What might these developments reveal about the future of security assistance as a mode of relation-building in world politics? By addressing these questions, in this workshop, we seek to rethink the meanings, purposes, and trajectories of security assistance in a changing international environment.

At the EUI and the Robert Schuman Centre, we are dedicated to removing barriers and providing equal opportunities for everyone. Please indicate in the registration form your accessibility needs, if any. Alternatively, you can contact the logistics organiser of the event.