China's Arctic Policy and Engagement: Review and Prospects

The Arctic is experiencing greatly accelerated change under the influence of climate change, economic globalization, and world power shifts. After China became an official observer state of the Arctic Council in 2013, its involvement in Arctic affairs has grown increasingly and intensively. It has been particularly prominent in three areas: science, economics, and governance. When China became an observer state, few people could have predicted the extent to which the world would change over the next decade. At that time, China did not stand out so much from the other four new observer countries in Asia (Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and India). Features such as Japan's close scientific cooperation with Arctic countries, South Korea's shipbuilding skills, and Singapore's important shipping position are why they have been granted observer status.A year later, however, a series of black swan events occurred, starting with the Crimean crisis in 2014. Like dominoes, the world landscape has since shifted dramatically. In 2016, Britain announced its departure from the European Union, while Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. After then U.S. secretary of state Mike Pompeo delivered an infamous speech at the ministerial meeting in 2019 warning China and Russia against "aggressive behavior," the Arctic Council closed for the first time without issuing a joint statement.1 In the speech, Pompeo used metaphorical and parallel questions to warn about China's presence in the Arctic, such as "Do we want the Arctic Ocean to transform into a new South China Sea, fraught with militarization and competing territorial claims?"2 However, this situation cannot happen because China has no legal right to claim any territorial sovereignty in the Arctic. Moreover, the only territorial dispute in the Arctic-over the small island Hans Island between Canada and Denmark (via Greenland)-was peacefully settled with an agreement.-3 When Covid-19 arrived, China was the first to respond with a strict epidemic prevention policy, but the country also entered a three-year self-imposed quarantine that slowed communication with the international community. At the same time, however, China has further deepened cooperation with Russia. In February 2022, after meeting at the Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin issued a joint statement that announced their intention to develop a "polycentric world order."4 The world now is a very different place than it was in 2013.China released its official white paper on Arctic policy in 2018.5 The white paper marked the culmination of a five-year period of gradual outreach and initial involvement in the Arctic governance arena as an Arctic Council observer state. Therefore, its release announced the beginning of the first year of the country's full participation in Arctic affairs in a mature and steady manner, guided by defined objectives and principles. This essay reviews China's involvement in Arctic affairs, using the white paper as a blueprint. Following a discussion of China's Arctic identity, the subsequent two sections concentrate on Arctic science and technology development and international cooperation in polar science. The essay then concludes by commenting on the implications of the current Russia-Ukraine conflict for Arctic governance and China's position and prospects in the region.

India's Space Program in the Emerging New World Order and Its Relevance in South East Asia

Year 2020 will be a watershed in world politics given the continuing repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic. The outbreak of this pandemic and its impact seem to suggest the arrival of a new world order. The role of China in the outbreak of this disease has been a subject of discussion, although the World Health Organization (WHO) has given it a clean chit. However, the Western world continues to suspect China's role in the outbreak. This suspicion has drawn a new fault line between the US and China. This new world order, which will be built on a struggle for dominance in international affairs, will have two major poles, with leadership held by two countries: the US (current superpower) and China (emerging superpower). Cold War power politics will resurface, with Asia as the epicenter. Bipolarity concept will arise again in world politics. Ideas like D-10, G-7 extension, Quad grouping and Five Eyes networking seem to bolster this bipolarity idea. Given this background, this paper seeks to examine the relevance of India's space program in South East Asia. South East Asia, which is a part of the Indo-Pacific, is going to witness new developments of this new world order. In this light, the aim of this paper is to gain a better understanding of India's space program and its potential applications in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) area.

Southeast Asia. Negotiating governance on non-traditional security in Southeast Asia and beyond By Mely Caballero-Anthony, New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. Pp. 319. Notes, Bibliography, Index

[...]a few years ago, NTS looked to be a rather mundane field of study, particularly in East Asia and Southeast Asia, where traditional security perspectives have overly dominated academic debates as a result of long-standing territorial disputes and a strict attachment to Westphalian norms of noninterference and respect for national sovereignty. Security governance processes are examined in detail in a number of NTS crises that have confronted the region, namely health (chap. 3), environmental security (chap. 4), migration (chap. 5), humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations (chap. 6), nuclear energy (chap. 7) and food security (chap. 8). [...]the book seems primarily to focus on less contentious NTS arenas while it would have been interesting to see whether security governance processes are also surfacing in areas such as terrorism and maritime security, which generally speaking are more sensitive to individual sovereignty.

Europe’s Secessionist Movements and Covid-19

For three European states in particular, the Covid-19 pandemic has served to catalyze pre-existing territorial disputes. While the United Kingdom, Spain, and Belgium have all had very different responses to the pandemic, in all three cases the actions of central and regional government have put existing structures of regional autonomy under strain. In Spain, the pandemic response has become intertwined with the Catalan independence debate (especially in disputes between pro-independence parties), and elsewhere in the country it has cemented co-operative relationships between moderate nationalists and the statewide left. In Belgium, the pandemic has accentuated territorial disputes and further complicated government formation. And in the UK diverging responses to the pandemic have helped boost nationalist movements in the devolved nations;particularly the cause of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and their ambitions to create an independent Scottish state. While the year has been highly significant for secessionist movements in all three states, only in the UK does a decisive shift towards state-breakup seem to have occurred. The article argues that whether or not a secessionist movement benefits from the pandemic is highly contingent on contextual factors, including the performance of state-level governments in responding to the pandemic and the relative autonomy of regional governments during the response.