The illegal invasion of the sovereign state of Ukraine by the Russian Federation has been met with an unprecedented level of coordinated sanctions imposed on Russian assets and individuals, as well as with arms transfers to Ukraine. This was not unexpected though. As President Biden said, ‘we prepared extensively and carefully. We spent months building coalitions of other freedom-loving nations […] to confront Putin’. Ukraine’s resilience and resistance has also been underestimated by Russia. The strongest political and materialsupport to Ukraine has come from Western countries. However, these countries can also be defined in terms of their strong connection to the global maritime order (from the US to the UK, and from Japan to Australia) and their dominance thereof. Whereas this has not translated into an effective use of naval power in support of Ukraine’s defence, I argue that seapower and its collective leverage in this war shall be understood more comprehensively, which requires to account for its civilian dimension.
Read Full Article »
