National Risk Assessments: a political vaccine against the next disaster?

Posted by & filed under Beyond the COVID Curve, Governance, Security

The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the political potential of National Risk Assessments (NRAs). The consistent focus of European NRAs on the risk of pandemics while public attention was glued to terrorism demonstrates their relevance to the question of how to prevent and prepare for future disasters – be they natural or man-made. As a basis for critical reflection on this idea, this blog post introduces the emergence of NRAs as a new genre in European security politics.

Risk diagram of selected scenarios, from the Dutch National Risk Profile 2016

Read More

Green & Sustainable Mining: Green-Washing in the Extractive Industries?

Posted by & filed under Energy Transitions and Conflict

What is behind the recent push for mining companies to go green and improve the sustainability of their operations? Since around 2017, several policy reports and a growing number of news articles have highlighted how mining companies are increasingly trying to ensure that their operations are more environmentally sustainable and climate-friendly. Mining companies hope to do this by, for instance, reducing their carbon emissions and switching to renewable energy sources to power their operations. In an industry predicated on the extraction of non-renewable resources, is this just another example of disingenuous industry green-washing? Or does it represent a significant shift that could truly have a positive impact on global environment and climate change goals?

Photo: Pixabay

Read More

COVID-19: Towards a Digital Fragmentation of the Right to Education?

Posted by and & filed under Beyond the COVID Curve

COVID-19 lockdowns have had momentous impact on children’s lives worldwide and in particular on the right to education. Save the Children reports that more than 1.6 billion learners globally have faced school closures due to the pandemic, resulting in at least 10 million children not returning to school.[1] Among key international stakeholders, there appears to be a consensus that the problem is lack of access to remote education.

Photo: Lucas Law via Unsplash

Read More

An Australian Viking has laid down his pen

Posted by & filed under Peace Research

Andrew Mack, known to his friends as Andy, died peacefully in Vancouver on 20 January, just before his 82nd birthday.

A post-conference excursion in Morocco. Photo: Laura Mack

Andy was best known in recent years for his work as the founder and editor of the Human Security Report, with four editions from 2005 to 2013, as well as several shorter Human Security Briefs.

Andy was a firm believer in academic rigor and adopted a narrow concept of human security rather than one that included all good things. He collaborated closely with the Uppsala Conflict Database Project and with PRIO. He sided firmly with Steven Pinker (and co-authored with him) in arguing for an optimistic view of the long-term decline of violence. He produced well-documented critiques on inflated fatality figures in the DRC and elsewhere. ‘It is not surprising that most people believe global violence is increasing. However, most people, including many leading policymakers and scholars, are wrong’, he wrote in Washington Post on 28 December 2005. But he also published novel – and sometimes controversial – interpretations of the data on issues like the apparent increase in global terrorism, the impact of war on health and economic growth, and on sexual violence in war.Read More

Good Reads: Rare Earths and Conflict across Scale

Posted by & filed under Energy Transitions and Conflict

Rare earths metals made a lot of news over the last decade, after most of us spent years forgetting what we once learned their names on the periodic table. Rare earths consist of 17 different metals, from scandium (element 21) down to lutetium (element 71). They are important to a host of high tech and energy technologies, including renewable energy technologies. For instance, neodymium and terbium are used in the production of solar panels and wind turbines. Neodymium is a key input to make the magnets needed for generators in wind turbines and motors in electric cars. These elements are thus vital to firms, states, activists and consumers around the world. Two recent books have a lot teach us about the politics and the conflicts around rare earth metals: Sophia Kalantzakos’ China and the Geopolitics of Rare Earths, and Julie Michelle Klinger’s Rare Earth Frontiers: From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes. Kalantzakos’ book focuses attention on inter-state power politics, with China at the center of rare earths geopolitics. Klinger looks on “frontier” spaces that play host to contentious politics and sometimes violent conflicts between local communities, firms, activists and public sector actors in mining regions – and potential mining regions — around the globe and from the seabed to the moon. Click here for my detailed review of both books!

The Differing Masculinities of Trump and Biden

Posted by & filed under Gender

On January 20th, 2021, Joe Biden will be inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States, marking the end of four tumultuous years. It would be an understatement to say that Donald Trump and Joe Biden are two very different leaders, and we can expect that there will be many changes with how the country is run in the next 4 years. One especially interesting difference is how Trump and Biden embody different ideas and representations of masculinity and what it means to be a man in America today.

Joe Biden with his daughter Ashley Biden while working in the Senate (1980s). Photo: Public Domain

Read More

The United States Must Be Viewed as a Flawed Democracy at Significant Risk of Transitioning into Dictatorship

Posted by & filed under Governance, Regions and Powers

A study of flawed democracies and semi-dictatorships describes a common pattern of events as follows: After having lost an election, the sitting president claims that the election was invalid, whereupon he attempts a coup d’état and his supporters storm the parliament.

A few years ago, this sequence of events would have been unthinkable in any OECD country. Last week, however, it offered a good description of events in the OECD’s most powerful member. Trump attempted to steal the election and his supporters stormed Congress. It may be time to view the United States as on a path to a mixed regime, or what political scientists call an anocracy.

The global superpower that is the United States is now a “burning city upon a hill”, writes Tore Wig. Photo: Ted Eytan / Flickr

But first of all, have we been witnessing an attempted coup in the United States?

Among researchers, the definition of a coup d’état is controversial. The political scientists Jonathan Powell and Clayton Thyne have created the most widely used global data set for coups. In an article published in 2011, they arrived at what they believe to be the essence of the term “attempted coup”: “illegal and overt attempts by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting executive”. In recent days, Trump has attempted pressure election officials to “find” votes and on senators and Mike Pence to declare the election invalid. The only thing that is inconsistent with Powell and Thyne’s definition is that Trump is the sitting president, and his coup attempt or attempted “self-coup” was against the president elect.Read More

Lithium in Zimbabwe: A future boom of doom?

Posted by & filed under Energy Transitions and Conflict

Electric vehicles (EV) sales are on the rise. One of key ingredients for EV batteries is lithium, which is not that easily replaced as a key element in batteries. Thus, the demand in the lightweight mineral will continue to grow – the investment bank UBS estimates it demand will grow eight times by 2030. Considering the current geopolitical tensions and the Chinese dominance in the lithium supply chain, we may ask where all that lithium will be coming from to enable our green energy future.

Read More

The Empire Strikes Back

Posted by & filed under Governance, Regions and Powers

In recent years, nationalist leaders have staked claims on lost territories in order to restore the glory of former empires. Lars-​Erik Cederman believes that this rise in revanchist nationalism poses a threat to geopolitical stability.

The Soviet Union — a “golden age” from the perspective of neo-imperialists (historical map). Credit: iStock / troyek

Imperialism is thought to be a thing of the past. Yet in recent years, populist nationalists have increasingly expressed a strong sense of longing for their states’ imperial past. Russian President Vladimir Putin views the collapse of the Soviet Union as one of the greatest disasters of the 20th century and has begun reclaiming lost territory by annexing Crimea in 2014.

Similarly, in his nostalgia for a grander, imperial Ottoman past, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has revealed an interest in irredentist expansion that includes North Cyprus and Syrian border regions. As a reflection of a deep identity crisis following the loss of the British Empire, the Brexit process may ultimately rekindle the conflict in Northern Ireland and break up the United Kingdom.Read More

A Christmas Message from Afghanistan

Posted by & filed under Peacebuilding, Regions and Powers

For Afghans, Christmas 2020 marked 41 years since the Soviet intervention. Ever since, this poor, mountainous country in Central Asia has been a focus of global attention. Can we now see signs of a peaceful solution?

Afghan rebels in Kunar province in 1985. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

A tweet posted on Christmas Eve by Muska Dastageer, a young Afghan woman with a sound basis for her opinions, could be read as a cry for help:

“As families come together this night, Afghans are away from, fear for and mourn their loved loved ones for the fourth consecutive decade. As a thousand hands from abroad continue to play with our lives, I wish peace to their nations and ask that they please will let us have peace too”.

Dastageer’s Christmas tweet made a deep impression on me. I believe that the roots of Afghanistan’s conflict are local, and that the solution needs to be Afghan. But there are unavoidable questions.

  • Would the conflict have grown to such dimensions without external involvement?
  • Have the Afghan people had a chance to negotiate peace on their own terms?

The uncomfortable answer to both these questions is no.Read More