The Swedish handover of accession documents is expected to take place at a ceremony in Washington later today and Sweden will immediately become NATO’s 32nd member. A good day, then, to hark back to our event one year ago that saw us looking northwards for our ‘High North’ conference.
Academic experts, politicians & business leaders attended St Andrews SCGA conference event, among them SCoGA’s own Phillips O’Brien, Professor of Strategic Studies, University of St Andrews, and Juliet Kaarbo, Professor of Foreign Policy, Politics & International Relations, University of Edinburgh.
In the video below, Phillips O’Brien talks about how the Russia-Ukraine war has changed European security in many areas, and Juliet Kaarbo touches on how the conference aimed to be somewhat distinct from traditional London-based think-tank events.
Professor Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, Professor of International Security at Loughborough University talks on increasing knowledge of current thinking on the Arctic post Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; Minna Ålander, a research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs observes that this was an important initiative looking to establish further connections between Scotland and Nordic countries at a time of great flux in European security; Paal Sigurd Hilde, Associate Professor, Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies observes that attendees are from very diverse backgrounds, looking at things like business strategy and cultural perspectives, interesting in going beyond ‘hard-core’ security and International Relations perspectives.
In closing, Phillips O’Brien goes on to explain how issues pertaining to governance of the ‘high north’ cross many boundaries, from environment to sustainability through to how NATO will protect waters, and that the University of St Andrews, notwithstanding its comparatively small size, is extremely well-placed in terms of expertise to host such a conference.
We went on to produce an ‘Insight’ document entitled ‘Implications of the Russo-Ukraine war for security in the ‘wider north’ of Europe.’ which can be downloaded here below.
Lastly you can listen to Philipps and Minna on our Podcast here.
SCGA Co-Director Phillips O’Brien speaks with Minna Ålander of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs on the implications of the Russo-Ukraine War for the Security in the “Wider North” of Europe.
