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Henri de GrossouvreEssayist on European geopolitics
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Strategic files

Five files. One argument, its context, its publications and its landmarks.

43°42′N 7°16′E

File 01

Nice, the Paris-Rome axis and the Mediterranean

An argument made in 2021, published in 2026 — first in Italian, then in French and English.

France and Italy together account for close to half the Union's budget. In 2021 they signed a treaty that nothing obliges them to leave dormant. And between Genoa and Marseille they have a city, founded by Greeks, that spent more centuries Italian than French.

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File 02

Sovereignty technologies: from 2005 to artificial intelligence

An argument set out as early as 2005, which the arrival of artificial intelligence has made urgent.

In 2005, in Revue Défense Nationale, Henri de Grossouvre wrote that a Europe of power would be decided not by institutions but by the mastery of sovereignty technologies. Twenty years on, compute, models, cloud and data have become exactly that.

44°26′N 26°06′E

File 03

NATO and the transatlantic relationship: from Bucharest to London

Two summits, eleven years apart, and a reading that has not needed correcting.

In April 2008, at Bucharest, a Franco-German move coordinated with Moscow denied Ukraine and Georgia official candidate status for NATO. That same year, Henri de Grossouvre read the episode as showing America's relative geopolitical decline.

48°12′N 16°22′E

File 04

Central Europe: Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade — the hinge

Four years spent in Vienna, then twenty years writing about what the West sees poorly.

From 1998 to 2002, Henri de Grossouvre ran Alcatel's major accounts for Central Europe and Russia from Vienna. That is not a line on a CV: it is why his reading of the region does not resemble the one made in western capitals.

52°31′N 13°24′E

File 05

Paris-Berlin-Moscow: the book, the network, the argument

Three distinct things bearing the same name. Confusing them means missing the point.

An essay published in 2002. An association founded in 2003. And a continental argument running through twenty years of publications. This file separates the three, because confusing them is the first mistake made by those who come new to this work.