The German government’s 2011 abstention from the United Nations Security Council vote on military intervention in Libya raised questions about Germany’s role in the international system. By abstaining, Germany broke with its Western allies and aligned itself with four of the BRICS countries: Brazil, Russia, India and China. Its ‘non-Western’ act unleashed a debate on the future of German foreign policy. This contribution aims to provide an understanding of Germany’s new foreign policy.
The Arctic, so exquisitely remote, seems at times to drift beyond the reach of global politics. In this frigid expanse, the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum standing as a rare bridge, kept its most formidable of rivals—Russia and the US—together, compelling the two to cooperate even as they continued to lock horns elsewhere. It seemed almost too good to be true. The enduring East-West peace once held in the Arctic has come under unaccustomed strain due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, disrupting governance, research and economic activity while challenging decades of practical and operational cooperation across the region’s vast landscapes and seascapes spanning the northern reaches of North America, Europe and Asia.
