Nikolas Busse was born in 1969 in Switzerland and studied political science at Freie Universität Berlin. He obtained his PhD in 1998 with a dissertation on security policy in Southeast Asia. He joined the political staff of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. There he concentrated on security policy and the development of the European Union.
Since 2007 he is correspondent for issues concernig the NATO and EU in Brussels.