About the authors

Dr. Tim Sweijs is the Director of Research at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies. He is the initiator, creator and author of numerous studies, methodologies, and tools for research projects in horizon scanning, conflict analysis, international and national security risk assessment, and strategy and capability development. His main research interest concerns the changing character of modern day conflict. He has led multicenter research projects for both private and public sector organisations. Tim is also an Affiliate at the Center for International Strategy, Technology and Policy in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgiatech. Tim spearheads the HCSS StratMon program which offers strategic assessments of medium to long term risks in the global security environment to the Strategic Monitor of the Dutch Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs. He is the architect of the HCSS Political Violence Monitor, a web-based interactive mapping platform of global state vulnerability to intrastate conflict. Tim has lectured at universities and military academies around the world. Prior to HCSS, he was a researcher at TNO Defense and Security in The Hague and at the research staff of NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly in Brussels. He studied in London, Amsterdam and Hong Kong and holds degrees in War Studies (PhD, MA), International Relations (Msc.), and Philosophy (BA). Tim is married and has three children.

Floris Holstege is an assistant analyst at HCSS.

Danny Pronk is a Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Strategic Foresight Program at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’. His research focuses on geopolitical trend analysis, alternative futures development, and horizon scanning. He brings to the Clingendael Institute over 20 years of experience as a practitioner in intelligence. He started his career as an intelligence officer in the Royal Netherlands Air Force and has since then held several senior analytical and operational leadership positions at both the Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service (GISS) and the Defense Intelligence and Security Service (DISS). He has also served as a Staff Officer (G2) in the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea, and as Head of the National Intelligence Cell at the NATO Mission in Afghanistan.

He holds a BA in political science, and an MA in international relations from Leiden University, and a BSc in war studies from the Royal Military Academy in Breda. He specializes in diplomatic and military history and strategic studies, with a special interest in the so-called ‘missing dimension’ of the study of international relations: intelligence. He has lectured at the Universities of Amsterdam and Leiden, and at the Netherlands Defense Academy on the topic of intelligence failures and strategic warning.

Jan Braun is a Strategic Energy Analyst at HCSS. His research focuses on international energy markets, climate policies as well as the strategic consequences, risks and opportunities for state and non-state actors in the global energy transition.

Jan has studied in Maastricht, Durham and Edinburgh and holds degrees in International Relations (MA) and Political Science & Economics (PhD-magna cum laude). He completed his PhD at Osnabrück University on legislative decision-making in EU climate and energy policy in a Marie Skłodowska-Curie research network on institutional cooperation in the European Union.

Before joining HCSS, Mr. Braun held various positions in climate and energy policy for the Dutch and German Ministries of Environment, the Centre for European Policy Studies, Handelsblatt, and the Embassy of the Republic of Korea to Germany. He has also completed internships in the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in the Energy Policies Unit of the Council of the European Union.

Reinier Bergema is a Strategic Analyst at HCSS. He holds a dual Master’s degree in Political Science (International Relations) and Public Administration (Crisis and Security Management), both from Leiden University. His research interests include, inter alia, radicalization, (jihadist) foreign fighters, and terrorism.

More specifically, Reinier has conducted research on Dutch jihadist foreign fighters, travelling to Syria and Iraq since the violent escalation of the conflict in 2011, combining both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Part of this research involved the setup of a (quantitative) database, consisting of over 220 Dutch jihadists who remain(ed) in Syria and Iraq, as well as the development of an interactive monitor, the Jihadist Foreign Fighter Monitor (JihFFMON).

Despite this specific interest, Reinier has been involved in a wide range of research projects on various contemporary issues in national and international security for a variety of clients, including, but not limited to, the (Netherlands) Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Interior and Kingdom Relations, the Ministry of Defense, the National Police, EUROPOL, and NATO.

Furthermore, Reinier serves as the Internship Coordinator, being responsible for the HCSS Internship Program. In addition to his work at HCSS, he is an assistant editor at the editorial team of the perspectives on Terrorism journal and a member of the General Board of the JASON Institute. Prior to HCSS, Reinier was a Research Assistant at the Centre for Terrorism and Counterterrorism of Leiden University, The Hague.

Dick Zandee is Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Security unit of the Research department at the Clingendael Institute. His research focuses on security and defence issues, including strategies, policies, capability development, research and technology, armaments cooperation and industrial aspects. Recent subjects are: EU and NATO responses to new threats; the counter-ISIS campaign; the implementation of the EU Global Strategy in the security and defence area; lessons from multinational defence cooperation models. He also focuses on current news in the security and defence area, commenting in the press and to other media.

Jan Rood is affiliated with Clingendael as a Senior Research Fellow. At Clingendael, he focuses on global issues and European integration. He is also an endowed professor of European integration from a global perspective at Leiden University.

Willem Oosterveld is a Strategic Analyst at HCSS. He holds degrees in political science, law and history, having studied in Amsterdam, Leiden, Paris, New York and Harvard. A former Fulbright scholar, he earned a PhD in the history of international law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.

Willem has experience in academia, government, journalism and business. Before joining HCSS, he worked for an economic intelligence company in Johannesburg, Jakarta and Casablanca. In Geneva, he worked for the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) and with the Dutch Mission to the UN. In New York, he interned with the Security Council Secretariat at UN headquarters.

At HCSS, Willem focuses on security, justice, and development issues, as well as the geopolitics of the greater Middle East. He has contributed to various projects commissioned by the Dutch Ministries of Defence and Foreign Affairs, as well as international organizations and multinational companies. In addition, he has contributed to various international media outlets, including The Economist and the Financial Times. Willem speaks English, French and German fluently. He also has some knowledge of Spanish and Italian, and studied Arabic as well.

Bianca Torossian is an assistant analyst at HCSS.

Peter van Ham is Senior Research Fellow at the Clingendael Institute. Since 2000, he is also visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges (Belgium). His research focuses on European security and defence issues, transatlantic relations, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and place branding.

From 1996 to 2001 he was Professor of West European Politics at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies (Garmisch-Partenkirchen). He has held research positions at the former WEU Institute for Security Studies (current European Union Institute for Security Studies - Paris), the Royal Institute of International Affairs (London), Columbia University (New York) and the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute (COPRI - Denmark). He is a member of the editorial board of Security Dialogue (PRIO - Oslo). Peter van Ham teaches in the two-year Master's Programme International Relations and Diplomacy (MIRD) at Leiden University.

He holds a doctorate in Political Science from Leiden University (1987).

Ana Uzelac is a political scientist by training, Ana Uzelac has worked as a reporter and a policy advisor in the humanitarian sector before joining the Clingendael’s Conflict Research Unit. She brings to CRU over 15 years of experience of field work in various political upheavals and protracted crises across the world – from Eastern Europe to Horn of Africa and the Middle East.

Ana has a life-long interest in human mobility, and the ways in which it shapes the world we live in. She is particularly interested in the politics of forced displacement, demographic rearrangements in the root of - or caused by - violent conflicts, and the way in which economic, personal and political interact, resulting in migratory flows. Underlying all this is critical curiosity about state as a model for organising human societies and its challenges, advantages and limitations in the rapidly globalising world.

Ana feels most comfortable in the murky philosophical space where norms overlap with interests and sees politics also as an art of operationalizing and negotiating between different value systems. She hopes that the research work she does can assist policy-makers in identifying practical solutions that uphold some of the key shared universal values, resulting in less and less violent conflicts, protection of vulnerable, and increased space for everyone to realize their human potential in dignity.

Renske van der Veer (1980) brings 10 years’ experience in the field of counter-terrorism (CT). She has worked with various government organisations in the CT field across the interface of local, national and international spheres. She has held various positions in executive organisations, as a senior analyst in the field of jihadist terrorism, and various positions in programme and project management. Since 2015 she has served as coordinating senior policy advisor and deputy head of unit in the Counter-Terrorism Department of the National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism (NCTV), part of the Ministry of Justice and Security.

From April 1 Renske van der Veer has been appointed Director of the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) - The Hague. Renske succeeds Alastair Reed, who has served as acting director since 2016.

As director of ICCT Renske van der Veer is responsible for the strategic agenda and management. She will be the lead for ICCT in stakeholder relations, monitor research quality and contribute to research and innovation. She also represents ICCT in the relevant networks.

Stephan De Spiegeleire is senior scientist at HCSS. He has Master’s degrees from the Graduate Institute in Geneva and Columbia University in New York, as well as a C.Phil. degree in Political Science from UCLA. He worked for the RAND Corporation for nearly ten years, interrupted by stints at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik and the WEU’s Institute for Security Studies. Mr. De Spiegeleire started out as a Soviet specialist, but has since branched out into several fields of international security and defense policy. His current work at HCSS focuses on strategic defense management, security resilience, network-centrism, capabilities-based planning, and the transformation of defense planning. He is particularly active in HCSS’s security foresight efforts to inform national and European security policy planning in the broader sense. He also teaches at Webster University in Leiden. Stephan keeps a personal blog, where he records his reflections on his fields of expertise. Please visit: gettingdefenseright.blogspot.com

Khrystyna Holynska is a strategic analyst. She holds a PhD in political science, worked since 2010 as a lecturer at top Ukrainian universities (currently - Kyiv School of Economics and Ukrainian Catholic University, prior - Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv), expert for The Index for Monitoring Reforms (iMoRe) of VoxUkraine. As an experienced researcher, at the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies Khrystyna is involved in a RuBase project, implemented by HCSS and Georgia Tech University (funded by the Carnegie Foundation), working with bibliometrics, event datasets and other innovative tools. She is co-founder and the former Head of women political NGO with a demonstrated history of working in the non-profit organizations and political parties management.

Yevhen Sapolovych is a strategic analyst involved in the HCSS RuBase project, implemented by HCSS and Georgia Tech University and funded by the Carnegie Foundation. He currently focuses on new quantitative tools for policy analysis (textmining, event datasets, information retrieval etc.)

Willem Oosterveld is a Strategic Analyst at HCSS. He holds degrees in political science, law and history, having studied in Amsterdam, Leiden, Paris, New York and Harvard. A former Fulbright scholar, he earned a PhD in the history of international law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.

Willem has experience in academia, government, journalism and business. Before joining HCSS, he worked for an economic intelligence company in Johannesburg, Jakarta and Casablanca. In Geneva, he worked for the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) and with the Dutch Mission to the UN. In New York, he interned with the Security Council Secretariat at UN headquarters.

At HCSS, Willem focuses on security, justice, and development issues, as well as the geopolitics of the greater Middle East. He has contributed to various projects commissioned by the Dutch Ministries of Defence and Foreign Affairs, as well as international organizations and multinational companies. In addition, he has contributed to various international media outlets, including The Economist and the Financial Times. Willem speaks English, French and German fluently. He also has some knowledge of Spanish and Italian, and studied Arabic as well.

Lucie Kattenbroek is an assistant analyst at HCSS.

Gabriella Gricius is an assistant analyst at HCSS.

Kristina Tranakieva is an assistant analyst at HCSS.

Hugo van Manen holds a Master’s degree (MSc) in International Public Management and Policy from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam and a Bachelor’s degree in International Studies from Leiden University. Prior to joining HCSS, Hugo worked as a consultant at Ecorys, where he was involved in several EU-commissioned projects within the field of civil protection, including the International Forum to Advance First Responder Innovation, DRIVER+, and DG ECHO’s peer review program.

Paul Verhagen is a data analyst at HCSS, and holds a Master’s degree in Environment and Resource Management from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree at Amsterdam University College majoring in theoretical physics and philosophy. Paul has attended exchange programs in Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai. Prior to joining HCSS, Paul interned at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs where he worked on global cyber capacity.

At HCSS, Paul focuses primarily on data visualization and analysis, as well as translating data analysis into concrete recommendations for clients. His areas of expertise include quantitative research methods such as text mining, social network analysis and geo-political risk models, as well as the broader geodynamics of China and the region. For his Master's thesis Paul developed a quantitative discourse methodology that allowed for the mapping of fragmentation in regime complexes.

Photo sources

Cover : Shutterstock

Interregnum: Flickr / Misko

Analyzing the Future: Our Methodology: Flickr / Stiller Beobachter

Interstate Military Competition: © Kremlin

The Return of Political Warfare: © Kremlin

Vertical Tensions: Pixabay

The Future of NATO: Wikimedia Commons / State Department photo / Public Domain

The State of the Union: Wikimedia Commons / Nikolay Doychinov

The Role of Middle Powers: © PR UN, New York

Political Violence in the European Periphery: Visualhunt / alisdare1 (CC BY-SA 3.0)

International Order in the European Periphery: Wikimedia Commons / Georges Jansoone (JoJan) (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Arms Control and Regimes: Wikimedia Commons / Jorge Láscar

Migration and Security: Flickr / Guardia Costiera

The Crime-Terrorism Nexus: Wikimedia / Aaron Tang

Geo-dynamic Trends in the International System: © NASA

The Netherlands and Partnerships in a Multipolar World: iStock

The Social Contract in a Modern World: Olivier Ortelpa (CC BY 2.0) via Wikimedia Commons

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Translation into English of the original Dutch version of ‘Interregnum’
VVH business translations, Utrecht

Technical realisation & design

Textcetera, The Hague