SWP

Unlike his predecessors, US President Joe Biden made important decisions early in his term to enable better coordination of US Arctic policy. This includes foremost the National Strategy for the Arctic Region that was published later than planned as a result of Russia’s war of aggression, which destroyed the few remaining hopes for cooperation and made the Arctic a security policy issue. Alaska, as the northernmost American state, is naturally at the centre of US Arctic policy, which increasingly also must take Chinese activities into consideration. Most recently, in September 2022, the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) detected Chinese and Russian warships off Alaska. Currently, only one US icebreaker is continuously available in the Arctic theatre with the mis­sion to protect sovereignty in the Arctic Ocean and monitor ice-covered areas. Alaska is also the very same US state that the recent Chinese spy balloon flew over, which was eventually shot down in February 2023. After decades of scant attention, is the Arctic now finally becoming the object of a more engaged US security policy?

EU-Gipfel mit der Gemeinschaft lateinamerikanischer und karibischer Staaten: Politologin Claudia Zilla erklärt, wie verschieden die Interessen sind - und welche Konflikte es gibt.

Die Nahostexpertin Muriel Asseburg wird wegen eines Interviews von der israelischen Botschaft kritisiert. Hier spricht die Wissenschaftlerin über die Hintergründe – und sagt, wie sie zum Apartheidsvorwurf gegen Israel steht.

Der türkische Präsident hat seine Unterstützung für eine Nato-Aufnahme Schwedens an EU-Beitrittsgespräche geknüpft. Wie geht es nun weiter? Drei Experten, drei Meinungen

Climate experts are apprehensive about the approaching Presidency of the United Arab Emirates at this year’s Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). So far, the oil producer has not set a shin­ing example with its climate protection efforts; and Sultan Al Jaber, this year’s COP president, is head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, one of the largest oil con­cerns in the world. To achieve the goal set by the Paris Climate Agreement of seeking to limit the average global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-indus­trial level, the international community is striving for climate neutrality in the second half of this century. For this to happen, global energy systems will have to largely phase out fossil fuels, which, however, remain the dominant energy source. The fact that at present, a complete phase-out of fossil fuels cannot be expected is often lost in cli­mate policy debates; in most countries, it is neither politically desired nor envisaged in long-term climate strategies. However, a speedy and orderly phase-down would have major benefits, such as providing the right investment incentives and support­ing the necessary socioeconomic transformations in fossil-fuel producing countries. Today there is an urgent need to further develop the relevant policy and governance instruments as time is running out.

Nach dem Abschluss des Fit for 55-Pakets wird die Klimapolitik der Europäischen Union (EU) in ihre nächste Phase eintreten. Eine der wichtigsten Entscheidungen wird sein, das übergreifende Emissionsreduktionsziel für 2040 festzulegen, das den Aus­gangs­punkt für die nächste Runde der Überarbeitung aller klimapolitischen Rechts­vorschriften der EU bilden wird. Das Europäische Klimagesetz sieht vor, dass die Europäische Kommission ein Ziel für 2040 vorschlägt, das unter anderem auf einem »projizierte[n] indikative[n] Treibhausgasbudget der Union für den Zeitraum von 2030 bis 2050« basiert. Dieses Budget wiederum stützt sich auf einen Bericht des mit dem EU-Klimagesetz neu geschaffenen Europäischen wissenschaftlichen Beirats zum Klimawandel. Das Kumulieren von Emissionen, die sich aus verschiedenen Minderungs­szenarien er­geben, kann bei der Bewertung der jeweiligen Ambitionsniveaus helfen; dagegen birgt die strikte Ableitung eines EU-Emissionsbudgets aus dem globalen CO2-Budget mehrere Fallstricke. Die Debatte über die Gestaltung der EU-Klimapolitik nach 2030 sollte sich indes nicht zu sehr auf ein »wissenschaftlich angemessenes« Niveau des Ziels für 2040 kon­zentrieren, sondern darauf, wie die Governance-Archi­tektur weiter­entwickelt, die poli­tischen Instrumente gestärkt und die öffentliche Unterstützung für eine ehr­geizige Klimapolitik befördert werden kann.

The summit in Brussels on 17–18 July will mark the end of a long eight-year hiatus in bi‑regional meetings between the European Union (EU) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). Between 1999 and 2015, conferences were held every two or three years. Since the last conference, the international environment and regional contexts on both sides of the Atlantic have changed significantly. Brazil’s return to CELAC and the new Lula government’s efforts to reactivate the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) have given the region a new impetus, which was reflected at the respective summits of the two organisations in Buenos Aires in January and Brasília in May. In June, the European Commission presented a new agenda for the EU’s relations with Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) that clearly shows Europe wants to intensify bi-regional cooperation. This has a chance of succeeding if summit diplomacy is approached in a spirit of renewal – not revival – and combined with substantive thematic cooperation and vibrant bilateral relations.

The SDG Summit will take place on 18–19 September 2023 in New York. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called it the “centrepiece” of the UN’s work this year. Numerous reports for this year’s mid-term review of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs will lament the “lack of political will” to implement the SDGs. This research paper addresses the lack of analysis of country-level politics around the SDGs by assessing the political priorities of local elites in eleven countries. Alongside the specific findings for these countries, we present overarching conclusions on the significance of country-level politics for SDG im­plementation. Analysing political will and considering country-level constraints should be part of the mid-term review and inform the outcome of the summit.

The economic and financial crisis of 2008 disrupted the European Union’s (EU) enlarge­ment policy for the Western Balkans. At least since that time, the region has seen greater involvement by economic actors from non-EU countries such as China, Russia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Their engagement has been most evident in the areas of direct investment, trade and energy security. Investments from these countries can increase the risk of “corrosive capital”, which could have a negative impact on the development of the rule of law and democracy in the Western Balkans. In view of a visibly intensifying rivalry between the EU on the one hand and Russia and China on the other, the question therefore arises as to how the EU can react to and strategically counteract the intensified economic interconnectedness of the West­ern Balkans with these actors.