Gesine Weber

Fellow
Paris Office
Geostrategy
Staff,
GMF Expert
Chinese (Mandarin)
English
French
German
My Areas of Expertise:
Defense Cooperation Foreign Policy
China European Union France Germany Indo-Pacific United Kingdom

Gesine Weber is a fellow on GMF’s Geostrategy team, where she works on European security and defense issues. Based in Paris, she focuses on EU defense initiatives, security and defense policy of the E3 (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom), and Europe's role in the global order. 

During a 2024 fellowship at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, Weber led a research project on European balancing in the Indo-Pacific in the context of US-China competition. 

Prior to joining GMF, she worked as a defense policy adviser at the German parliament and as a consultant for the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation in Shanghai. Weber is pursuing a PhD in defense studies at King’s College London, where she is part of the European Foreign Policy Research Group and contributes to the work of the Centre for Grand Strategy. She is an associate researcher for the European Council on Foreign Relations and a nonresident Hans J. Morgenthau Fellow at the Notre Dame Center for International Security.

Weber holds a master’s degree in European affairs from Sciences Po in Paris and another master’s degree in political science from the Freie Universität Berlin. She studied Mandarin at the Beijing Foreign Studies University. Her writing and commentary appears regularly in English, French, and German in European and other international media, including the BBC, the Neue Züercher Zeitung, Politico, and France 24. 

Media Mentions

by
Gesine Weber
“ "For Emmanuel Macron it remains to be seen whether the huge gamble will pay off. In the end, his strategy to strengthen the center failed," German Marshall Fund (GMF) analyst and researcher Gesine Weber told CNN Greece. ”
Translated from Greek
CNN Greece
by
Gesine Weber
“ So when Ukraine applied for NATO membership a few months after the outbreak of war, he reacted cautiously. "Ukraine's accession would be perceived by Russia as a confrontation," he told Le Monde newspaper in December. "Macron has long been convinced that you have to shape European security with Russia and not against Russia," says Gesine Weber. She is a France expert at the Paris office of the German Marshall Fund. "France therefore rejected Ukrainian accession for a long time because they feared it could be perceived as a threat by Moscow."
(...)
This has led to a huge outcry among France's allies and shown Macron that he is not getting any closer to his goal of a sovereign Europe by telling the press his uncoordinated, abstract ideas," said France expert Weber. "He realized that he can show leadership at the same time and get closer to his goal of a sovereign Europe by speaking out in favor of Ukraine joining NATO."
(…)
"Giving Ukraine security guarantees outside of NATO in the long term would also be damn expensive for France," Weber says. At the same time, Macron's confidence in NATO as a guarantor of security has grown. While he declared it "brain dead" in 2017, he said in May that Article Five is having its full effect. "It keeps Russia in check," Macron said. Letting Kiev share in it is thus the more favorable alternative for Paris. ”
Translated from German
Die WELT

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