The changing geopolitics of northern Europe

The abandoning of the liberal world order by the Trump regime, China’s rise, and Russia’s militarisation all strengthen the possibility that great-power concert is on the rise as an institution of international order.

This has various geopolitical implications for the world’s regions. Noting first how its Arctic part sees separate dynamics from the rest of Northern Europe, this lecture will cover NATO’s faltering role, what remains of US interest, and what Northern European states might do to maintain their favoured multilateral commitments. Special emphasis will be given to the importance of the Russian naval base in Murmansk.

Meet our speaker

Iver B Neumann is Director of The Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Norway and Adjunct Professor at the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History, Oslo University. He was the LSE Montague Burton Professor in International Relations 2012-2017, and is now working on a genealogy of states systems. His overarching research interest is in how polities relate to one another, in pre-history, in history, in imagined worlds, and in principle. He usually draws on Continental social theory to analyse this, and uses empirical examples from Russian foreign policy, Norwegian foreign policy and, increasingly, from archaeology.

Discussants

Federica Bicchi is Associate Professor of International Relations in the Department of International Relations at LSE. Her current research focuses on contemporary trends in European diplomacy, especially in relation to the digitalisation of diplomacy and developments in European foreign policy cooperation. Her theoretical perspective contributes to the “practice turn” in International Relations.

Jennifer Jackson-Preece is Associate Professor in Nationalism, with a joint appointment in both the European Institute and the Department of International Relations at LSE. Her research interests are normative responses to nationalism, ethnic conflict and religious intolerance; human and minority rights; multiculturalism; minorities and migration in Europe.

Chair

Martin Bayly is Associate Professor of International Relations Theory in the Department of International Relations at LSE.

More about this event

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