Indian foreign policy and contemporary security challenges

India is fast emerging as an important player in regional and international arenas. However, it continues to be beset by a number of security challenges, both internally and externally. On the assumption that India's foreign policy has evolved in step with its domestic politics, this article briefly surveys the evolution of Indian domestic politics and foreign policy before discussing some of the domestic and international (including regional) security challenges India faces today. The article concludes that although economic diplomacy does at present serve India well in projecting power internationally, achieving great power status in the future will rest on the resolution of key political and security challenges.     

China's energy security

As the Chinese energy deficit increases at rates equal to or exceeding its economic growth, energy security raises an alarm among its policy-makers and the international community. This article asks whether China faces any threat to its energy security; and whether China's worldwide quest for energy is a threat to the regional and international stability. The main argument is that while China faces serious challenges in meeting its rising energy demand, its efforts to do so have been primarily domestically focused. In its foreign energy policy, China has behaved like a normal player in the international energy market, buying as much oil as it can and investing in as many places as it can afford. It is unlikely that the country is willing to seek overseas energy supplies at the expense of a peaceful regional and international environment which is a necessary condition for its continuing economic development.     

Climate change and security: examining China's challenges in a warming world

The environment is increasingly affected by global climate change. While the causes of climate change are generated across the globe, the impacts of climate change will be highly variable at the local level. An increased scientific understanding of the potential impacts that climate change may have within China has raised new concern among China's leaders. Given that China's domestic realities inform its international policy choices, understanding how climate change may affect its population and natural resources is critical to global climate stabilization efforts. This article examines how the impacts of climate change on China, and China's response, will drive security challenges domestically, as well as in the greater Asian region and around the world. It shows that the impact of climate change on China will be significant and may have sizable adverse economic implications, particularly on vulnerable east coast economic centers. Water scarcity is a problem that already challenges China's leadership and one that will be exacerbated under projected climate impacts. In addition, the country faces the risk of international retaliation should it fail to undertake serious greenhouse gas mitigation actions. Yet China is not without options, and is already well poised to become a leader in the low-carbon technology revolution.     

After Westgate: opportunities and challenges in the war against Al‐Shabaab

The attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, in September 2013 intensified international scrutiny of the war against Harakat Al‐Shabaab Mujahideen (Movement of the Warrior Youth). This article analyses the current state of affairs with reference to the three principal sets of actors in this war: Al‐Shabaab, the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and its international partners, and the various actors currently involved in building the Somali Federal Government's security forces. It argues that although the newly reconfigured Al‐Shabaab poses a major tactical threat in Somalia and across the wider Horn of Africa, the movement is becoming a less important actor in Somalia's national politics. As Al‐Shabaab loses territory and its popularity among Somalis continues to dwindle, other clan‐ and region‐based actors will become more salient as national debates over federalism, the decentralization of governance mechanisms beyond Mogadishu and the place of clannism will occupy centre stage. As a consequence, AMISOM's principal roles should gradually shift from degrading Al‐Shabaab towards a broader stabilization agenda: encouraging a national consensus over how to build effective governance structures; developing an effective set of Somali National Security Forces; and ensuring that the Federal Government delivers services and effective governance to its citizens, especially beyond Mogadishu in the settlements recently captured from Al‐Shabaab. As it stands, however, AMISOM is not prepared to carry out these activities. More worryingly, nor is the Somali Federal Government.     

Climate and energy security policies and measures: synergies and conflicts

Concerns about climate and energy security are leading to increased government intervention in the energy sector, in particular as they relate to the choice of energy supply options. While many of these options will improve both energy and climate security, many measures will benefit one while harming the other. This raises an important question for governments and energy planners: how can conflicts between climate and energy security be resolved? This article outlines some of the barriers and problems that may arise as governments and companies try to address climate and energy security concerns simultaneously in various energy supply areas. It concludes by arguing against choosing one objective over the other, and by outlining steps that can be taken to help resolve conflicts between the two agendas.     

Integration and Europe's Defense Industry

The European Union's influence on defense industry mailers has increased in recent years. This is plaiting because the Treaty of Rome permits member stales to maintain armaments production and trade issues at the national level. The argument presented in this paper is that the predominant theories of European integration cannot adequately explain this shift in policymaking from the national to the regional level. Reactive spillover combines an appreciation of international environmental pressures with the concept of spillover.     

Iran's Role in Europe's Energy Security: An Assessment

European leaders are increasingly conscious of their heavy dependence on energy supplies from Russia. In an attempt to articulate a strategy to improve energy security, the European Commission issued an EU Energy Security and Solidarity Action Plan in November 2008. This essay examines Europe's energy vulnerability and the role Iran can play in diversifying the EU energy supplies. I argue that a rapprochement with Iran aimed at greater utilization of its oil and gas reserves would contribute to Europe's (and the world's) energy security.     

Localization in Europe's Periphery: Tourism Development in Sardinia

As a part of the south Italian Mezzogiorno the island of Sardinia is one of the most peripheral and least favoured regions in the European Union (EU). This article deals with the strategies that have been pursued to restructure the Sardinian economy during the post-war period. In particular, focus is on experiences with local tourism development. After a sketch of the key features of Sardinia, the fruitless top-down strategies of the Italian government to industrialize the island are discussed. After that, the efforts of local parties to promote tourism that builds upon locality-specific assets are analysed. Furthermore, the effects of this localized approach for Sardinia have been generally positive. Moreover, the growing interest among tourists for Sardinia's natural and cultural heritage offers perspectives for bottom-up tourism development as well. Here, however, it is important to balance the short-run benefits of tourism with the possible costs of long-term environmental and socio-cultural degradation. For the future development of Sardinia, therefore, 'eco-tourism' might be an additional tool worth considering in the island's present localized tourism strategy.     

Sovereign wealth funds: dangers and opportunities

Soaring oil prices since the early 2000s have led to a historic transformation of wealth from consuming regions to major oil exporters. In recent years many of these exporters have set up oil funds to utilize their massive and growing oil revenues. These funds are divided into two categories—stabilizing and saving. Their large investments in western markets have raised concerns that they might be driven by political and strategic interests rather than commercial ones. This article examines oil funds in the Persian Gulf, Norway and Russia. It discusses US and European proposals to regulate oil funds' investments. The article examines the International Monetary Fund's efforts to forge a consensus on a ‘code of conduct’ that would guide the relationship between oil funds and the recipient markets. The analysis argues against excessive regulation.     

Arena symposium: equal opportunities

The Internet is a hospitable medium for distance learning. Some geography educators fear that distance education confronts the discipline with a moral dilemma, however. One, in particular, acknowledges some of the advantages of distance learning, but contends that it cannot convey the sense of place that is 'the essence of what it means to be a geographer'. This paper is concerned with the morality of distance learning. In particular, it considers educators' obligations to deliver quality education, and to make it as widely accessible as possible. The paper stresses that the key distinction between distance learning and traditional resident instruction is not the mode of delivery, nor is it the distances in time and space that separate students and teachers. Rather, it is that distance learners are a qualitatively different, older population, with different educational needs from traditional on-campus undergraduates and graduate students. The paper argues that geography educators have a moral obligation to serve lifelong learners, an obligation that should take precedence over our allegiance to conventional notions about what constitutes the essence of our field.     

The transformation and future prospects of Europe's defence industry

Europe's defence industry has evolved by transforming itself from a collection of nationally oriented firms to one dominated by two giants. Stimuli external and internal to the European Union (EU) are responsible for this development. After describing the evolution of this sector since the end of the Cold War, the authors present four factors that played key roles: developments within the United States' defence industry; the impact of technology and defence economics; general economic restructuring within the EU together with nascent defence industrial policy; and progress towards the creation of a European Security and Defence Policy. While the evolution required all four factors, the EU played a critical and under–appreciated economic and political role in the changes that have transformed the European defence industry, and is now positioned to continue to shape this process.     

Correcting Europe's political economy: The virtuous eclecticism of Georg Ludwig Schmid

The article provides an analysis of Georg Ludwig Schmid's ‘Reflexions sur l’Agriculture’, which was published as the first essay in the first issue of the publications of the Oeconomical Society of Berne, founded in 1759. Schmid connected the agricultural improvement movement of the time to the logic of international power competition that caused the 7 Years’ War and wished to preserve political economy as agronomy for the cause of peace and virtuous economic progress. In his essay on commerce and luxury, he devised a patriotic political economy based on the notion of a marche naturelle, or a natural progress of opulence, which enabled statesmen and political economists to separate the productive from the pathological features of economic development, healthy and necessary growth from luxury. Adam Smith deployed a similar model in the Wealth of Nations but argued that Europe's retrograde development was so fundamental and comprehensive that it made it impossible to use this kind of natural progress model on its own as a meaningful guide for comprehensive economic and political reform.