Norway: Between engagement and caution
The chapter covers Norway’s political maneuvering of its relations to China, and is part of a larger report in which many European countries and the EU’s China-policies are mapped. Norway seeks to combine engagement and caution in its approach to China, seeking collaboration on issues of mutual interest, while also protecting national security interests and the status of liberal norms internationally. Lacking an updated, comprehensive China strategy, Norwegian authorities have taken several steps to strengthen the coordination around China-related issues, It is, however, difficult to assess the effects of this or get a full picture of what Norway is aiming to achieve in its relations to China.
PODCAST: AI and geopolitics
Major Powers in a Shifting Global Order
How to measure power in international affairs is an eternal matter of debate, especially among political scientists. Many generic approaches have been suggested, among them control over resources; control over actors; and control over events and outcomes,2 and numerous efforts have been made to develop concrete formulas. In China, academic institutions 3 and independent scholars have competed as to how best to measure “comprehensive national power”. All approaches and formulas have something to offer, and all have inherent limitations.
C-suite strategies for responsible AI
Leonard Seabrooke
Leonard Seabrooke is Professor of International Political Economy and Economic Sociology in the Department of Organization at the Copenhagen Busin...
Blog Post | The EU as a diplomatic actor in space
Space diplomacy, defined as ‘processed of dialogue that result in outcomes of cooperation or conflict on a given space issue’, has shielded space from great power conflicts playing out elsewhere – both during the Cold War and in the decades that followed.
Arctic Pressures (ArcPres)
Russia’s reinvasion of Ukraine in 2022 precipitated a challenging new chapter for Arctic political and security dynamics. Going forward, security and governance developments in the region will continu...
Considering ecological security from the perspective of Arctic ecosystemic politics
This brief essay is part of a book forum on Matt McDonald's book (2021) presenting the idea of ecological security. In the essay, I reflect on progress and prospects for Arctic cooperation and governance in order to consider the promise and limitations of McDonald’s ecological security framework. The Arctic is an instructive example for such an exploration. The longstanding post-Cold War cooperation in the Arctic is strongly rooted in an appreciation of the interconnected nature of the Arctic ecosystem, even as the governance mechanisms remain far from what would qualify as an ecological security approach in McDonald’s sense. Nonetheless, I suggest that especially two aspects are instructive from the Arctic example. The first relates to how ecological security would potentially interface with an already quite full landscape of governance practices rooted in ecosystems, and associated power political genealogies and effects. The second point is a reflection on unfolding events, seeking to explore how continued inputs from other forms of security governance could impact on emerging or partial attempts to govern with an ecological security perspective. Here, the status of Arctic cooperative governance after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an illustrative example to consider. Both points can be read as impediments limiting the applicability of the ecological security framework. However, as McDonald argued, impediments are not the same as absolute limits (2021, 192) and potential obstacles are explored here in the spirit of advancing possibilities for ecological security.
The Russia Conference 2023: Russia and the West – a new reality
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The European Union's space diplomacy: Contributing to peaceful co-operation?
The European Union (EU) has become a key player in space, second only to that of the USA. This article discusses what type of diplomatic actor the EU is in space by exploring whether it contributes to peaceful co-operation or if the EU — due to increasing geopolitical competition on Earth — is developing into a traditional realist actor. For this purpose, it applies three analytically distinct models of EU space policies, applicable also to other Global Commons areas. It finds that the EU does not treat space as an area of geopolitical competition. Instead, it contributes to space diplomacy through its focus on regulating and institutionalising space activities. However, rather than being driven by ‘the space flight idea’, the EU is committed to the peaceful development of space mainly for economic, strategic and societal purposes, in line with what one would expect of a liberal institutionalist actor.