Every year, DIIS carries out a number of defence and security studies. Among other things, the focus is on cyber threats, hybrid actors, climate and conflict, as well as challenges to global cooperation.
The Kurdish forces provide boots on the ground in the framework of Operation Inherent Resolve. But the strong backing of the Kurds presents a number of challenges and difficult balancing acts for Western and regional actors.
Greenland has subsurface uranium deposits potentially so large, that the self-governing island can join the club of uranium suppliers. But legislation is not in place, and the process is halted because of the upcoming elections on 28 November.
In the shadow of the Arab Spring, Syrian civil war, conflicts in Egypt and Libya, one of the most serious conflicts in the Middle East evolved in Iraq leading to the establishing of a caliphate in areas stretching from the borders to Iraqi Kurdistan and beyond Al-Raqqah in Syria. The group behind the caliphate, Islamic State, is one of the most powerful and brutal groups seen in the modern Middle East now, threatening the Middle East system of states as well as Western interest inside and outside the region. How can the Arab Middle East and/or EU confront the Islamic State?
On May 28, states parties at the Eighth Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) issued a consensus document. The most contentious part dealt with the issue of a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East, raising the question: can the region really be free of WMD?
In 2013 Greenland’s parliament lifted the so-called zero-tolerance policy by a narrow majority, thus opening up Greenland’s vast uranium reserves for extraction. The genesis of the zero-tolerance policy is however, unclear. This demonstrates the Kingdom must articulate a clearly defined policy for uranium production and trade.
Recently the question of whether it makes political, moral and strategic sense to negotiate with the Pakistani Taliban was debated fiercely in Pakistani media. Despite widespread skepticism there are good reasons for the Pakistani government to keep pursuing a durable peace deal with the Taliban.