Graduated from École normale supérieure, Sciences-Po Paris and École nationale d’administration (ENA), he has a Master degree in History.

A senior civil servant, he was adviser to the French Minister of Economy and Finance, investigator at the Court of Auditors and Head of Department at Strategic Planning Commissariat (Prime Minister’s Office). He served as head of a special mission on international issues for the French government. He has led several missions for international organizations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Algeria, Ukraine, Montenegro, Egypt, Serbia, Haiti, Morocco, Bahrein and Jordan.

Nicolas wrote three official reports for the French government:.

He was the co-founder, former chairman and CEO of Initiative for the Development of French Expertise Abroad in Europe and Worldwide (IDEFIE) (2009-2015). He has been member of the board, CFO, and then executive president of Aspen Institute France (2010-2015).

On January 22nd 2022, he has been appointed non-resident senior fellow at Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).

Chairman of the Center for Studies and Research on Political Decision (CERAP) and the editor of the review Le Banquet (1992-2015), he is guest professor at Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA, Sciences-Po) and Institut catholique de Paris, invited professor at foreign universities and guest speaker at many leading international conferences on security and international issues.

His pieces and lectures are mostly focusing on political risk analysis, European security issues, Ukraine, Russia, NATO, disinformation warfare, Middle-East, US foreign policy, Human Rights and corruption.

He is the author of 23 books, including Political Philosophy; The World in 2030. The Rule and the Disorder and France Needs Others. His latest, Our War. Crime and Oblivion: Reframing Strategic Thinking, is a reference strategy book on the Russian war on Ukraine. He also authored more than one thousand scientific papers and op-eds. He regularly appears on TV and radio talk-shows in France and abroad.

He founded in June 2021 the foreign policy and security policy blog Tenzer Strategics that has thousands of subscribers worldwide, among them many presidents, prime ministers, ministers, MPs, CEOs, and senior civil and military officials.