Cooperation, Stability, and Security in the Arctic? Strategies for Moving Forward

January 31st, 2024

This was the theme of a one-day conference at Massey College, University of Toronto (November 30, 2023). Dr. Elizabeth Riddell-Dixon, Professor Emerita at Western University and Senior Fellow of Massey College, opened the conference with the question: “how can we engage Russia in the shared pursuit of pan-Arctic security, stability, and cooperation, while still holding […]

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Arctic Security, Defence and Human Security

Good Governance and Arctic Security

January 16th, 2024

Emerging security challenges in the Arctic require policies that squarely face changing conditions, strategic and environmental, but preserving the basic stability that still exists in the region must be a clear priority. Relying too heavily on military responses risks exacerbating rather than easing Arctic tensions, and it ignores the post-Cold War reality that vulnerability to […]

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Arctic Security, Armed Conflict, Defence and Human Security

US Strategic Ballistic Missile Defence: Why Canada won’t join it

July 12th, 2023

Two Parliamentary Committees have recently recommended that Canada “reconsider” it’s 2005 decision against joining the US homeland Ballistic Missile Defence system. The Pentagon acknowledges the system has no capacity against Russian and Chinese ballistic missiles, and its operational design means it also has no capability against cruise and hypersonic missiles. With continental security concerns shifting […]

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Arctic Security, Defence and Human Security, Nuclear Disarmament

Strategic Nuclear Patrols and an Arctic Military Code of Conduct

May 24th, 2023

While rising northern tensions clearly challenge notions of the Arctic as a durable zone of peace, current tensions are rooted in fears of a European conflict spilling northward, not in conflict endemic to the Arctic. Two decades of high north military expansion have certainly added to the region’s strategic uncertainty, but even more consequential are […]

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Arctic Security, Defence and Human Security, Nuclear Disarmament

From War Preparation to War Prevention: Submission to DND defence policy update

May 15th, 2023

The Department of National Defence (DND) is updating its 2017 defence policy statement, “Strong, Secure, Engaged” (SSE),  pointing to a changed “geopolitical landscape” in which threats from that time “have intensified and accelerated…at an unprecedented rate.”  Among those rising threats, the Defence Department includes “rapidly accelerating climate change, more sophisticated cyber threats, Russia and China’s […]

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Arctic Security, Defence and Human Security

Doubling Down on a Retentionist Nuclear Posture: NATO’s 2022 Strategic Concept

July 29th, 2022

Nuanced changes to the nuclear weapons elements of NATO’s new Strategic Concept do not alter its substance. Once again, the alliance propagates the dangerous myth that nuclear weapons are the “supreme” source of security, doubles down on the threat of nuclear weapons use in response to conventional attack, continues to insist that alliance security depends […]

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Defence and Human Security, Nuclear Disarmament