How should the countries in the Baltic Sea region and their allies meet the strategic challenges posed by an openly aggressive and expansionist Russia? NATO and the nonaligned states in the region are now more concerned about an external threat than they have been since the end of the Cold War. Russia has been probing air space, maritime boundaries, and even land borders from the Baltic republics to Sweden. Russia's undermining of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea worries former Soviet republics with Russian minority populations, nonaligned Sweden and Finland are enhancing their cooperation with NATO, and the Trump presidency has created some doubt about America's willingness to follow through on NATO's collective defense commitment. Ann-Sofie Dahl brings together an international group of experts to examine Baltic security issues on a state-by-state basis and to contemplate what is needed to deter Russia in the region. The contributors analyze ways to strengthen regional cooperation, and to ensure that security in the region stays at the top of the agenda at a time of many competing strategic perspectives in the transatlantic community. This book will be of great interest to foreign policy and defense practitioners in the US and Europe as well as scholars and students of international relations.

How should the countries in the Baltic Sea region and their allies meet the strategic challenges posed by an openly aggressive and expansionist Russia? NATO and the nonaligned states in the region are now more concerned about an external threat than they have been since the end of the Cold War. Russia has been probing air space, maritime boundaries, and even land borders from the Baltic republics to Sweden. Russia's undermining of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea worries former Soviet republics with Russian minority populations, nonaligned Sweden and Finland are enhancing their cooperation with NATO, and the Trump presidency has created some doubt about America's willingness to follow through on NATO's collective defense commitment. Ann-Sofie Dahl brings together an international group of experts to examine Baltic security issues on a state-by-state basis and to contemplate what is needed to deter Russia in the region. The contributors analyze ways to strengthen regional cooperation, and to ensure that security in the region stays at the top of the agenda at a time of many competing strategic perspectives in the transatlantic community. This book will be of great interest to foreign policy and defense practitioners in the US and Europe as well as scholars and students of international relations.

This book takes a comprehensive approach to security in the Nordic-Baltic region, studying how this region is affected by developments in the international system. The advent of the new millennium coincided with the return of the High North to the world stage. A number of factors have contributed to the increased international interest for the northern part of Europe: climate change resulting in ice melting in Greenland and the Arctic, and new resources and shipping routes opening up across the polar basin foremost among them. The world is no longer "unipolar" and not yet "multipolar," but perhaps "post-unipolar", indicating a period of flux and of declining US unipolar hegemony. Drawing together contributions from key thinkers in the field, Northern Security and Global Politics explores how this situation has affected the Nordic-Baltic area by addressing two broad sets of questions. First, it examines what impact declining unipolarity - with a geopolitical shift to Asia, a reduced role for Europe in United States policy, and a more assertive Russia - will have on regional Nordic-Baltic security. Second, it takes a closer look at how the regional actors respond to these changes in their strategic environment. This book will be of much interest to students of Nordic and Baltic politics, international security, foreign policy and IR.

In this book, the author analyzes the role that the Nordic-Baltic region has played in US strategy in the 60 years since the end of World War II. How has the US viewed the strategic and political situation in the Nordic?-?and from the end of the Cold War, the Nordic-Baltic?-?region? What role will the region play in future US policy, as this becomes increasingly preoccupied with problems far from the shores of the Baltic Sea? Nowhere is the transformation of the international system more striking than in the destiny of the three Baltic countries?-?Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania?-?locked up behind the Iron Curtain as Soviet Republics after World War II, and sovereign members of the Western defense alliance half a century later. It was actually there, in this northernmost corner of Europe, that the design of the entire international system was determined after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The new Nordic-Baltic region emerged as key to the stability of a much wider?-?global?-?area. Ann-Sofie Dahl is Associate Professor of Political Science. She received her Ph.D. at Lund University, Sweden in 1987. In the US, she has held research positions at Princeton University (1985-1986), Georgetown University (1986-1992), and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (2000-2001 and 2007-2008). Dr Dahl is also affiliated with the Swedish Institute for International Affairs (Stockholm, Sweden), and the Center for Politiske Studier, CEPOS (Copenhagen, Denmark).