Dr Michael Nest has expertise in political and social issues around mining. He is also an anti-corruption expert and formerly worked for the Independent Commission Against Corruption in Sydney, Australia. He has recently focused on building capacity to prevent corruption in community development programmes, including a research paper on corruption in local-level development schemes funded by mineral revenues.  Michael is the author of Coltan (Polity Press, 2011), which is about the changing global supply chain for the mineral ‘coltan’ (or tantalum), the new US legislation focused on conflict minerals, and China’s emerging role in the market for this mineral. In 2012 and 2014, Michael advised African governments on the new certification mechanism for tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold being established to prevent conflict minerals from Central Africa entering the supply chain.  His latest co-authored book, Still a Pygmy: the unique struggle of one man’s fight to save his identity from extinction (Finch, 2015) is the first memoir by a Pygmy ever published.

In this interview, Dr. Nest discusses the political, environmental, ethical and social issues surrounding the mining of columbite–tantalite (coltan).

Q. In the past, arguably very few had heard of coltan. Yet in the past two decades it has entered into discussions in the UN and featured in several international media outlets’ reports. What is coltan and what is it used for?

Coltan is the nickname for the mineral ‘tantalite’.  When processed, the mineral tantalite is called tantalum – so tantalum is the metal.

Coltan – or properly speaking, the metal ‘tantalum’ – has a wide application.  About two-thirds of coltan is used in a device called a ‘capacitor’.  Capacitors are found in electronic products, especially consumer electronic products such as mobile phones, laptops, gaming platforms, and ipads, and are used to store and regulate the flow of electricity from the source of power (such as a battery) to the working parts of the device.  Capacitors have a crucial role in ensuring there is no power surge or fluctuations to the device that could disable or break it.  Coltan is also used for special alloys (mixtures of different metals), in memory chips for electronic consumer goods, and special coatings (such as on camera lenses).

Q. In which parts of the world is coltan mined?

Coltan comes from three sources: as a by-product of tin slag (20% of supply) – ‘slag’ is the waste material that sits in dumps around historic tin mines; recycling (30% of supply); and mines (50% of supply).

Coltan is extracted from tin slag in Brazil, Malaysia and Thailand.  Coltan that comes from recycled scrap materials is extracted at metal recycling plants in many countries around the world.

In terms of mines producing coltan/tantalite, these are found around the world.  In 2016, according to the US Geological Survey, the biggest producers of coltan are Rwanda, D.R. Congo, Brazil, China, and Australia (in this order), although historically Canada and Ethiopia have also been significant producers, and Australia was the largest producer until the global financial crisis in 2008.  There are lower levels of mine production in Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe.  Tantalite deposits have been identified and are being explored in Canada, Colombia, Egypt, Greenland, Madagascar, Namibia, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe.

Q. There has been some literature examining the relationship between coltan extraction and violence with a fair amount of discussion focused on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). What role did coltan play in the DRC’s war?

The allegation made by activist organisations focused on reducing conflict in the D.R. Congo is that profits from coltan mining were a primary source of funding for armed militias waging war against the government.  These militias, so the argument goes, used coltan profits to buy weapons and food, which allowed them to wage war.  Militias in the DRC are notorious for their attacks on civilian populations, so the argument was not just that coltan profits perpetuated conflict against the government, but also that these profits were a chief cause of massacres of civilians, systemic rape and widespread destruction of property of civilians who live in Eastern DRC where coltan mines are located.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, activist organisations – as well as some media, academics and the UN – made connections between coltan profits and conflict in Eastern DRC, and focused overwhelmingly on coltan and not other minerals.  Many journalists continue to portray coltan as a major cause of conflict, although other commentators have now backed away from such simplistic claims and talk more broadly about ‘conflict minerals’ and acknowledge that conflict in the DRC occurs for a complex range of reasons.

Conflict in Eastern DRC occurs for multiple reasons, including:

• Local level struggles by powerful individuals for political domination
• Competition for land for agricultural purposes
• Ethnic rivalry
• For control of natural resources, especially minerals
• To protect land from outsiders seeking to exploit it (e.g., miners and loggers)
• Poor men waging war as a means of making a living through theft and looting

There were also broader factors around national-level conflict over the past 20 years that have drawn in local level actors and created incentives for war, including: military campaigns in DRC territory by the Rwandan and Ugandan armies (supposed by their local Congolese allies) focused on security concerns regarding opponents of their respective governments; defensive military campaigns by the DRC armed forces and government-allied local forces against the Rwandans and Ugandans and their proxies in the DRC, including retribution against civilian populations when they have regained territory; and armed groups with regional political agendas that oppose the DRC national government.  Fighting over mineral deposits was a minor element in all of these conflicts (a UN estimate of 1,500 local-level conflicts in the early 2000s was that fighting over natural resources accounted for only 8% of all conflicts), and conflict over coltan deposits was even less significant.

As I argue in my book Coltan (Polity 2011), some armed groups did, however, profit from coltan and undoubtedly these profits were used to buy weapons, food and other material used to wage war.  These profits were gained in four ways: armed groups stole coltan stocks from mine sites and mining companies’ depots; armed groups directly controlled production of coltan by controlling mines themselves; armed groups taxed the trade of coltan into and out of territory they controlled (as they did for other minerals and goods); and armed groups became directly involved in the export of coltan from Central Africa to the buyers on the international minerals market.  Calculating profits made from coltan is difficult, but I estimate that the total amount made by the Rwandan army from coltan in 1999 was approximately US$62m; by the Rwandan army and its Congolese-based ally (the RCD-Goma) in 2000 approximately US$10m; and by all armed groups in 2008 approximately US$11.8m.  Note that the high total in 1999 was largely because the price of coltan on the international market boomed that year and in 2000.

In sum, the war in the DRC was never just about minerals, and was certainly never just about coltan (gold, tin and tungsten were also importance sources of mineral revenue in the 2000s).  Tracing the role of coltan in war in the DRC, however, can tell us a lot about the connections between natural resources and conflict generally and research into these connections have helped broaden our understanding of the relationships between these natural resources and war.

Q. Were any Western corporations responsible for indirectly financing armed groups during the war in the DRC through purchasing coltan from the country?

During the wars between 1998 and 2003 companies from many different countries were involved in the coltan trade, including Western corporations.  The UN’s Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and other Forms of Wealth in the D. R. Congo (April 2001) identified scores of private trading, brokerage, banking and transportation firms that participated in the illegal exploitation of natural resources from the DRC by trading or importing coltan from the DRC.

While almost none of these transactions were directly with armed groups (with the probable exception of some transactions involving Rwandan and Congolese firms), foreign firms were an important element of the coltan commodity chain that enabled armed groups in the DRC to profit from the production and export of illegally mined coltan to the rest of the world.

Because of the conflicted and dangerous conditions in Eastern DRC at the time, few foreign companies sent representatives into the country.  Instead, smaller Congolese or Rwandan trading firms bought and transported coltan into Rwanda, from where international minerals trading companies then imported it.  The UN identified twenty-seven firms from the following countries that imported coltan from the DRC via Rwanda: Rwanda (2 firms), Malaysia (1 firm), Germany (3 firms), Belgium (10 firms), Switzerland (1 firm), Netherlands (4 firms), UK (2 firms), Kenya (1 firm), India (1 firms), Pakistan (1 firm), and Russia (1 firm).  These firms sold the coltan they imported on to other minerals trading firms, or they sold it directly to processing plants.

Three big minerals processing plants bought much of the coltan that was exported via Rwanda during the early phase of the Congo Wars: Cabot from Canada, HC Starck from Germany and Ningxia Non-Ferrous Metals Smelter from China.  After 2001, Cabot and HC Starck released statements saying they no longer bought Congolese coltan.

Several airlines were involved in flying coltan out of Rwanda to second destinations, including Alliance Express (then 49% owned by South African Airways and 51% owned by the Rwandan government), Kencargo International (20% owned by Martinair), Airflo, Astral Aviation, and Martinair Holland, as well as the former Swissair and Sabena before these airlines collapsed.

The UN’s final report into the illegal exploitation of natural resources in the DRC (published October 2002), recommended placing financial sanctions on 29 companies from Belgium, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC itself, that were identified as being involved in the illegal coltan trade.  The same report identified businesses from OECD countries that the UN considered to be in violation of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, including from the UK, USA, Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany.  Firms from non-OECD countries that were also identified as having violated these guidelines were from Malaysia, China, Hong Kong, South Africa, and St Kitts.  The UN did not recommend sanctions on these OECD and non-OECD firms.  Rather, it brought attention to the firms’ breaches of these guidelines, presumably with a view to the companies then being reported to the national reporting contact point for such breaches in the relevant OECD country.

Q. In addition to the human rights issues attached to the coltan industry, is the mining process itself environmentally harmful?

Yes, there are environmental harms associated with coltan mining.  In the DRC, coltan mining overwhelmingly uses artisanal and small-scale (and occasionally medium scale) methods, although the harms these methods cause to the environment are not distinctive in that there is nothing specific about mining coltan that creates a different kind of harm to, for example, tin or tungsten.  Compare this to gold, where there are harms associated with the use of mercury.

 

In the DRC when a coltan deposit is found, miners rush in to exploit the site, regardless of whether it is on agricultural land or in a national park, and the mining destroys the potential for the land to be used for grazing or cropping, or as a biological reserve for fauna and flora.  Like other artisanal mining of minerals, artisanal coltan mining involves stripping forest and bush cover, then any topsoil, and digging pits to a depth of about 6m to get access to the ore deposit.  Water, provided through a pump system where a generator can be used, or by diverting a creek or river if a generator is not available, is used to soften the earth and rock, to break it up, and then to separate mineral ore from soil and to wash away the soil.  Water use is a major factor in the environmental harm caused by mining.

As I outlined in my book Coltan on pp.49-50, specific environmental effects of artisanal coltan mining include the following:

• Forest clearance to expose soil for mining;
• Cutting of timber to build worker camps;
• Cutting of firewood;
• Removing the bark from trees to make panning trays to wash coltan;
• Pollution of streams by silt from washing process;
• Diversion of streams from their original course;
• Cutting lianas to make baskets to carry coltan;
• Hunting animals, including for food, ivory and other body parts;
• Animals injured after escaping snares;
• Disturbance of fauna due to people resident in, and moving through, reserves;
• Reduced population of invertebrates and reduced photosynthesis in aquatic plants due to silting of streams;
• Reduced fish stocks in lakes and rivers affected by silt pollution;
• Erosion, including landslides, of unprotected ground during rains;
• Ecological changes due to loss of key species, such as elephants;
• Long-term changes in watershed due to rapid run-off in deforested areas;

There have been some studies that document these impacts.  A study of mining communities in the Kahuzi Biéga National Park in 1999 found that they ate elephants, gorillas, chimpanzees, buffalo, and antelope – all poached from the park.  However, a subsequent report in 2001 found that tortoises, birds, small antelope, and monkeys were being eaten because all the big animals had been killed.

Q. Do you feel that there are any plausible ways for companies to be certain that the coltan they use in manufacturing their products is not from a conflict zone or unethically produced?

A company can improve certainty around the origins of any coltan used in its products, if it sources metals directly through a smelter that has an exclusive long-term contract with a coltan producer in a country such as Brazil, China, or Mozambique.  In such smelters, supply from these producers is so consistent there is virtually no likelihood of it being ‘contaminated’ by ore from other destinations.  The conflict-free smelter programme, which works with over 200 smelters, has safeguards in place to verify the origins of minerals processed by its members.  While there is always a chance that these consignments of minerals could be mixed with ore from militia-controlled mines in the D.R. Congo, this would be fairly unlikely as the reputation of the smelter (and the programme) is at stake and there is considerable due diligence around the provenance of minerals.

The challenge of sourcing ethically produced coltan is complicated when companies are buying components, especially components manufactured from yet other components, to manufacture their final goods, e.g., electronic items.  It is impracticable for an end-manufacturer to check the origin of all the metals that are used in all components – because literally thousands of components may be involved – and unrealistic to think that companies are able to do this.  The best they can do, is try to identify component manufacturers that have declared they will abide by ethical standards for sourcing minerals and have systems in place this claim to be verified – and of course end-product manufacturers should insist on seeing evidence of such checks.

It is important that all D.R. Congo coltan is not seen as being a ‘conflict mineral’, in a way that become common after the US Government first passed its conflict minerals Dodd-Frank legislation in 2010.  Civilian Congolese producers of coltan should be allowed to sell their product on the world market, and such production and trade is one of the few economic opportunities available to many Congolese.  The emphasis in terms of due diligence around ethical production of coltan should be on determining if coltan comes from conflict zones and is produced by armed groups, rather than if it comes from the DRC itself – this is an important distinction.  There are various schemes in place, or being established, in the DRC to ensure civilian-produced coltan is traced through to export.  The most well-known of these is the industry traceability and due diligence programme for coltan, tin and tungsten, which is managed by the International Tin Research Institute.

Q. As you mention, there have been a range of international efforts that have endeavoured to address the ethics surrounding coltan mining. Overall, do you feel that current efforts are succeeding or falling short?

Efforts have brought attention to ongoing violence and instability in the DRC, which is a good thing.  The problem is that the focus of activists, and even government initiatives such as the US Dodd-Frank legislation, has often been solely on conflict minerals as a cause of violence rather than a range of factors.  Thus, while there is heightened attention, there is also a simplified narrative being propagated that is detrimental to understanding the causes and consequences of the conflicts.

There is no doubt that international efforts have had an effect on the mining industry in DRC, but also Rwanda.  The passing of US legislation and consequence temporary embargo by the DRC government in late 2011 on any exports of conflict minerals, severely curtailed mining and trading of these minerals in eastern provinces (it was business as usual for mining in other provinces, such as Katanga).  This showed that international efforts can definitely have an impact (presumably President Kabila of the DRC felt that he had to impose the embargo to appear to be doing something about the conflict minerals trade).  New OECD regulations, the conflict-free smelter program and the International Tin Research Institute’s ‘tag and bag’ scheme for tin and coltan in Rwanda and some mines in DRC are also closing opportunities for ‘laundering’ conflict minerals through civilian-controlled supply chains, while also guaranteeing opportunities for civilian-produced and traded minerals.

There are criticisms of these schemes, especially ITRI’s tracking scheme which is expensive for participants, and regional governments and officials feel they are excluded from its data or operations.  Nevertheless, in a complex and difficult political and economic environment, the combination of regional and international efforts have resulted in more mines and more mineral transactions coming under civilian control, and therefore generated economic opportunities for Congolese civilians.  This said, anti-government militias and the DRC army are still involved in some mining and trading of the 3Ts and gold.

The big question is whether current political tensions around President Kabila’s possible election to a third term, will cause the ITRI scheme to be suspended, see renewed militias activity in Eastern provinces, and a resumption of widespread smuggling of minerals out of Eastern Congo into Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.

Q. Do you think China will complement the efforts of Western organizations and the DRC’s own efforts at cracking down on the conflict mineral trade or will China’s status as the world’s largest coltan refiner make matters more difficult?

To answer this question properly, we have to pull apart the idea of ‘China’.  The Chinese government may have some interest in protecting its international reputation by participating in or publicly supporting international government initiatives to control the production and trade of conflict minerals.  This might include passing some minimal regulation on its own industry (possibly that it has no intention of enforcing).  It will have no interest in supporting activist initiatives, as it will not to want to fuel or strengthen independent civil society, let alone one that might actually have influence over aspects of international commerce.  The Chinese minerals industry, on the other hand, is aware of its strong and growing position in the global mining and minerals sector – a sector that the Chinese government itself sees as strategic.  Without pressure from its own government to desist from importing, smelting or otherwise trading in conflict minerals, the Chinese minerals industry will see no reason to change the current situation.  Some Chinese consumer product manufacturers, especially in the electronics sector, will be aware of the potential for boycotts by Western consumers to damage their sales and reputation, but Western consumers are not significant for some electronics manufacturers.  Asian (especially Chinese), African and Latin American consumers will be far more important, and awareness or concern by these consumers about conflict minerals is low.  In sum, while Chinese actors may be interested in some international efforts to regulate the trade of certain products, conflict minerals will be low on the list of priorities and there is unlikely to be any Chinese effort in this regard.

Q. Looking to the future, what impact do you feel Donald Trump’s presidency may have on talking the problem of conflict minerals?

Trump made it clear during his campaign that he is in favour of minimal regulation for business and that the US should be more isolationist in terms of spending less time and effort worrying about global affairs.  Given that responses to conflict minerals are based around additional regulations for business (regulations that everyone agrees have a cost in terms of compliance), which also represent an effort by OECD governments to shape conflict minerals production and trade in Central Africa, a Trump administration is highly unlikely to have much, if any, interest in such initiatives.  US business groups have already contested the regulations of the Dodd-Frank Act, and they will see a Trump presidency as creating another opportunity to exert pressure and have the regulations pared back or abolished.  A Trump administration is also likely to cut funding for USAID projects focused on capacity building for Central African governments to regulate production and trade of the mining industry.

The True Finns Party have surged to the forefront of Finnish politics and fundamentally turned the nation’s political discourse in a more nationalist direction. What are the causes of this rise in Finnish populism?

The populist Finns Party, formerly known in English as the True Finns party (Finnish: Perussomalaiset), rushed to the surface of Finnish politics in the 2011 parliamentary election, snatching a remarkable 19 per cent of the vote. Its charismatic leader Timo Soini positioned himself on the side of the ordinary man and against corrupt elites. Referring to ethno nationalism and Christian social values, Soini emphasized Finnishness and the need to protect the national culture from being contaminated by immigrants and other foreign influences. The Party’s surge to the forefront of Finnish politics has fundamentally turned the political discourse in Finland towards a more nationalist direction. In order to gain a fuller understanding of the drivers behind this growth of Finnish populism, it is necessary to examine Finland’s recent history.

A sense of suffering

Traditionally, Finnish society was split on a double axis: urban and rural, landowners and peasants. Through history, it was the bloodiest area in the Nordic region. The Finnish national identity, including a sense of common suffering, was at least partly defined by being locked between powerful and often aggressive neighbours, Sweden and Russia, who repeatedly took turns in dominating Suomi, the Finnish heartland. Nationalistic movements grew strong in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and, though it was rather a by-product of the Bolshevik revolution, Finland finally won its independence in 1917. Authoritarian movements soon emerged; for example, the nationalist Lapua movement. Nationalist sentiments were growing fast in the interwar years, but this was also a period of internal conflict, spurring into a full-blown Civil War between authoritarian Nationalists and Social Democratic groups.

Surviving under constant threat from its eastern neighbour, Finland aligned with Germany for a period in the Second World War. Tensions on the Finnish–Soviet border also grew leading up to the Second World War, breaking into the Winter War between the two in autumn 1939. After showing surprising fighting resilience, Finland had still lost 12 per cent of their land in the war in Karelia. When the Germans invaded Russia in 1941, the Finns fought alongside them, in what is referred to as the Continuation War, in an attempt to regain lost territories in Karelia. They were beaten back by the Soviets once again three years later and devastated by repeated conflicts. Over the course of these repeated and prolonged conflicts a militaristic mentality developed in Finland, still evident in contemporary life.

Finland emerged humbled from the war, surely with a sense of suffering but also one of perseverance. The country was not only in dire straits economically but also firmly within the sphere of strategic influence of the Soviet Union. Finnish diplomacy revolved around appeasing their powerful eastern neighbour. The geopolitical balancing act, of constructing a Nordic liberal marked orientated welfare state while appeasing the Soviets, paid off, and Finland became a prosperous Nordic state. Crisis, however, hit once again in 1990 when the Scandinavian banking crisis coincided with loss of markets in the East when the Soviet Union dissolved in the wake of collapse of communism.

Still, Finland emerged from the crisis with a growing self-confidence in international affairs, not only by joining the EU but also by adopting the Euro and seeking a core position with the EU. Finland was a homogeneous country with a low level of immigration. Right-wing nationalist populist politics were thus not prominent in the latter half of the twentieth century. Still, agrarian populist versions existed since the 1960s with a noteworthy support. Right-wing populist parties like those that emerged in Denmark and Norway did not, however, gain much popular support until after the Euro crisis hit in 2009.

The Finnish Agrarian Party

Although nationalist extreme-right politics similar to those on the European continent only became prominent in Finland with the surge of the True Finns party in the new millennium, agrarian populism had been present in Finnish politics ever since the beginning of the 1960s. The Finnish Agrarian Party (Suomen Maasedun Puolue – SMP) established in 1959 was founded in opposition to the urban elite and claimed to speak on behalf of the common man in rural Finland, those that they referred to as the ‘forgotten people’ (unohdetun kansa) in town and country, against the detached ruling class in the urban south.

The SMP exploited the centre-periphery divide in Finland. Its greatest electoral success came in 1970, 1972 and in 1983 when the party won approximately a tenth of the vote each time. Their main appeal was with rural workers and the unemployed, who felt alienated in the fast moving post-war society. In a rapid social structural change, Finland was transformed from being predominantly agricultural to a high-tech communication-based society. The SMP ran into serious financial difficulty and a new nationalist populist party, the True Finns Party, absorbed its remains in 1995. In 2011, the party’s English name was shortened to the Finns Party.

Timo Soini and the True Finns

In 1997 the charismatic Timo Soini took the helm of the True Finns Party. Soon, the party found increased support, rising from 1.6 per cent in the 2003 parliamentary election to 4.1 per cent in 2007. It was, though, only in wake of the international financial crisis, that the party surged, winning 19.1 per cent of the vote in the 2011 parliamentary election and becoming the third largest party in the country, behind only the right-of-centre conservative National Coalition Party (NCP) and the Social Democrats (SDP). This was also referred to as the ‘change election’ or the ‘big bomb’, when Finnish politics, to a significant degree, came to revolve around the Finns Party and its populist politics.

The party had increased its vote five fold since the 2007 election, adding full 15 percentage points, which was the biggest ever increase of a party between elections in the Eduskunta, the Finnish Parliament. Its initial rise had, however, started two years earlier, in the European Parliament election of 2009, when the True Finns grabbed 9.8 per cent of the vote. In 2015 the party saw only limited decline in its support, clearly reaffirming its strong position in Finnish politics, and entering coalition government for the first time.

Previously, the True Finns had been widely dismissed as a joke, a harmless protest movement, and a nuisance on the fringe of Finnish politics. Their discourse was aggressive and rude and the media mostly only saw entertainment value in them. After the 2011 election, however, it had surely become a force to be reckoned with. During the election campaign, they had clashed with the mainstream parties and called for ending of the one-truth cosy consensus politics of the established three parties. The Finns Party had now become a forceful channel for the underclass.

Contrarily to most similar parties elsewhere, the Finns Party accepted being branded as populist. Soini, however, refused to accept that his party was extreme-right. Contrary to the progressive parties of Denmark and Norway, the Finnish populists never flirted with neo-liberal economic policies. Rather, the Finns Party inherited the centrist economic policy of the SMP. Its right wing populism was thus never socio-economic, but rather socio-cultural.

Three themes emerged as the main political platform of the Finns Party:

• First to resurrect the ‘forgotten people’, the ordinary man, to prominence and speaking in their name against the elite;
• second, to fight against immigration and multiculturalism;
• thirdly, to stem the Europeanization of Finland.

The forgotten people

Finland has been historically prone to polarization; for example between East/West; Socialism/Nationalism; Urban-rich/Rural-poor; Cosmopolitan/Local. Building on the SMP’s politics, the Finns Party kept exploiting the centre-periphery divide, effectively exchanging the agrarian focused populism for a more general cultural divide based on a more ethno-nationalist program. Timo Soini, for example, adopted the phrase of the ‘forgotten people’, which refers to the underprivileged ordinary man, which, he argued, the political elite had neglected.

The political elite was continuously presented as corrupt and arrogant, having suppressed the ordinary blue-collar man. Positioning themselves against the urban Helsinki-based cosmopolitan political elite consolidated around the south coast, the Finns Party representatives claimed to speak in the name of the ‘forgotten people’, mainly working in rural areas.

Drawing on traditional Christian values the ‘forgotten people’ were discursively depicted as pure and morally superior to the privileged elite. This sort of moralist stance was widely found in the party’s 2011 election manifesto, including claims of basing their politics on ‘honesty’, ‘fairness’, ‘humaneness’, ‘equality’, ‘respect for work and entrepreneurship’ and ‘spiritual’ concerns.

The Finns Party was also staunchly socially-conservative on matters such as religion, morality, crime, corruption, law and order. It is thus more authoritarian than libertarian. They are surely anti-elite, but not anti-system. Indeed, it firmly supports the Finnish state, its institutions and democratic processes, including keeping the relatively strong powers of the president to name but one example.

Finnish ethno-nationalism

Timo Soini and his followers have offered a clear ethno-nationalist focus, strongly emphasising Finnish national cultural heritage. It was suspicious of Swedish influence, dismissive of the indigenous Sami’s heritage in Suomi – often referred to as Lapps in English – and outright suppressive in regard to the small gypsy population. In a classical populist ‘us’ versus ‘them’ style a running theme of the Finns Party’s disourse was to emphasise Finnishness by distinguishing Finns from others.

The Finns Party promoted patriotism, strength and the unselfishness of the Finnish people and argued that the Finnish miracle should be taught in school in an heroic depiction; that is, how this poor and peripheral country suppressed by expansionist and powerful neighbours was, through internal strength and endurance, able to fight their way from under their oppressors to become a globally recognised nation of progress and wealth.

More radical and outright xenophobic factions have also thrived within the party. Jussi Halla-aho, who became perhaps Finland’s most forceful critic of immigration and multiculturalism, led the anti-immigrant faction. He has referred to Islam as a ‘totalitarian fascist ideology’ and for example wrote on his blog in 2008 that, ‘since rapes will increase in any case [with inflow of immigrants], the appropriate people should be raped: in other words, green-leftist do-gooders and their supporters’ He went on to write that prophet Muhammad was a paedophile and that Islam as a religion sanctified paedophilia.

Many similar examples exist. A well-known party representative, Olli Immonen, for example, posted on Facebook that he was ‘dreaming of a strong, brave nation that will defeat this nightmare called multiculturalism. This ugly bubble that our enemies live in, will soon enough burst into a million little’.

Many other prominent populist and extreme-right associations also existed in Finland, some including semi-fascist groupings. Indeed, a few MP’s of the Finns Party belonged to the xenophobic organisation Suomen Sisu. In early 2016, in wake of the refugee crisis hitting Europe, mainly from Syria, a group calling themselves Soldiers of Odin took to patrolling the street of several Finnish towns. Dressed in black jackets, decorated with Viking symbolism and the Finnish flag, they claimed to be protecting native Finns from potential violent acts of the foreigners.

Riding the Euro-crisis

Finns Party’s rise was helped significantly by their opposition to the EU and the European Central Bank, who seemed powerless in dealing with the Euro-crisis. They depicted the EU as unworkable and claiming that democracy cannot work in the context of supranational EU governance, and that it favoured elites over ordinary citizens in the European countries. There was a clear demand for a EU critical party, a void the Finns Party was happy to fill because the mainstream parties then held a pro-EU stance.

Leading up to the 2011 elections he Finns Party turned opposition to bailouts for debt-ridden Euro countries into their main issue. That also helped in securing good results in European Parliament elections in 2014, after which they joined the radical-right European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR) in the EP.

After coming into government in 2015 the Finns Party found diminished support in opinion polls. Still, their influence had steadily grown and they had found much greater acceptance than before. They clearly led in the growing anti-EU discourse in the country. Soon, many of the previously pro-EU mainstream parties began to adopt their anti-EU rhetoric, and some, subsequently, also became increasingly anti-immigrant.

Eirikur Bergmann is Professor of Politics at Bifrost University in Iceland and Visiting Professor at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. He is furthermore Director of the Centre for European Studies in Iceland. Professor Bergmann writes mainly on Nationalism, Populism, European Integration, Icelandic Politics and on Participatory Democracy. He has also written two novels which are published in Icelandic.

China’s increased involvement in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping in Africa reflects a broader trend of the country taking a more proactive approach to foreign policy.

In December 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping stated that “[China] will proactively push forward the construction of a global network of partners and will proactively push for political solutions for international hot issues and difficult problems”. While this policy began under the presidency of Hu Jintao, the level of Chinese involvement has grown rapidly under the Xi administration. China’s increased involvement in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping is one clear example of this proactive policy. In 2015, President Xi promised to make 8,000 troops available to the UN, and he also offered to help train 2,000 peacekeepers from other countries.

China is now among the world’s top 12 largest contributors of troops, and of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, China is now the biggest contributor of peacekeepers. Most of China’s increased activity in peacekeeping in 2017 took place in Africa. China had more than 2,400 Chinese troops take part in seven UN peacekeeping missions across the continent –most notably in Mali and South Sudan. China has a long history of providing military assistance to Africa, and the continent remains the destination for much of China’s military assistance today. A notable development has been the training and support of African peacekeepers. For example, China provided military assistance to Burundian and Ugandan peacekeepers in Somalia in 2008. China has also made offers to equip African peacekeepers.

The drivers behind China’s increased peacekeeping involvement

There are many commonly suggested reasons for China’s increased involvement in peacekeeping in Africa which include: protecting China’s assets and diaspora across the continent, giving Chinese troops combat experience and increasing Chinese soft power in the region. While there may be an element of truth to each, most of these possible drivers fail to apply to all cases of Chinese involvement in peacekeeping in Africa. For example, in Mali, where Chinese peacekeepers were part of a UN mission which started in 2013, China has a relatively small economic footprint and there is only a small Chinese community in the west African country. What is clear is that China’s involvement in peacekeeping in Africa is part of a national branding strategy which is aimed at both global and domestic audiences. This strategy is deployed through two interlinking national narratives – that of the responsible great power and the leader of the developing world.

The expanding role of Chinese peacekeeping in Africa aligns with China’s foreign policy goal to project itself as a responsible great power. Becoming a responsible great power is part of China’s stated policy of a “peaceful development,” which is China’s attempt to reduce fears that China will challenge Western dominance of the current system of global governance. Playing a greater role in peacekeeping is part of this role and is a clear example of China’s attempts to increase its involvement in global affairs within the current system and often in partnership with established actors.

In Africa, China’s attempts to project itself as a responsible great power meets another of China’s national narratives – that of China as the leader of the developing world, a nation that stands in brotherhood with other developing states. Within this narrative, China’s actions in Africa are undertaken in the spirit of South-South cooperation whereby African states are equal partners within the process and are encouraged to find their own paths to solving issues. In terms of Chinese peacekeeping in Africa, this narrative has affected how China shapes its overall security approach in three ways.

First, as a developing state itself, China is aware that due to a lack of capacity in their economic systems, developing states are more open to structural shocks, which affects the production of food and water. In Africa, China has adopted a comprehensive, integrated security approach to its peacekeeping missions that moves beyond just traditional security. This has meant that China’s peacekeeping missions also focus on non-traditional security threats, such as water and food insecurity, to build peace in an area of conflict. China often sends technicians and engineers to help rebuild water and agricultural infrastructures, as water and food insecurity plays a part in the overall development of a conflict.

Second, China also focuses on the long-term economic development of African states in conflict, as poverty is seen as another major driver of conflict. China has increased investment and development aid in African states, which brings much needed jobs and infrastructure projects to the continent. In particular, the One Belt One Road initiative attempts to improve African transport infrastructures by integrating markets across the continent and with the rest of the world. This could lead to greater economic development by reducing poverty and, therefore, conflict.

Finally, the spirit of South-South cooperation requires China to support other states in finding solutions to their problems. For this reason, China supports African-led responses to conflict in the region, including African Union–led peacekeeping missions, which tend to be undermanned, under-trained, and under-resourced. China offers training, equipment and financial aid to the African Union (AU), as well as to other regional bodies. China has also worked with other actors to support their efforts in building capacity among African states to send peacekeepers. For instance, China supported the EU training program for Malian troops. Beyond providing material support for African regional bodies in peacekeeping, China has also looked to these bodies to be the final decision makers in determining military interventions on the continent. This has given African regional bodies greater ownership of these missions, which should, in theory, increase the possibility of these missions succeeding in their objectives.

Conclusion

While there may be more material drivers behind China’s increased involvement in peacekeeping in Africa, these two national narratives – that of the responsible great power and the leader of the developing world – have shaped how China develops its role within peacekeeping, creating limitations to China’s actions. These narratives will therefore shape China’s role in peacekeeping in Africa in the future.

Dr. Niall Duggan is a lecturer in international relations at the Department of Government and Politics at University College Cork. He is also the director of the MSc International Public Policy & Diplomacy. His latest publications include ‘The People’s Republic of China and European Union Security Cooperation in Africa: Sino-EU Security Cooperation in Mali and the Gulf of Aden’. International Journal of China Studies, and’China’s New Intervention Policy: China’s Peacekeeping Mission to Mali’ in: Chris Alden, Abiodun Alao, Zhang Chun, Laura Barber (eds). China and Africa: Building Peace and Security Cooperation on the Continent. Basingstoke: Palgr

This article was originally published on openSecurity’s monthly Sustainable Security column on 25th April 2014. Every month, a rotating network of experts from Oxford Research Group’s Sustainable Security programme explore pertinent issues of global and regional insecurity.

If the past 12 months have taught us anything it is that, despite the predictions of many, the potential for conflict between the major powers is still one of the defining characteristics of world politics. From the tensions between Japan and China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands (with the United States waiting in the wings as ever) to the proxy confrontation between Russia and the US over the future of Ukraine (with its European allies desperately trying not to be forgotten in the diplomatic chest-beating), crisis diplomacy and inter-state rivalry are back on the global agenda.

One of the legacies of the “war on terror” years is that the focus of most organisations and analysts working on the concept of sustainable security—an approach to policy-making which downplays the reaction to immediate symptoms of insecurity in favour of addressing the factors that underlie them—has been on terrorism, insurgency and “non-traditional” security issues. Of late the large-scale trends of climate change and the division of the world between a global elite and a non-elite, combined with resource scarcity and the challenge of paramilitarism, have absorbed most of the focus of those concerned with conflict prevention.

Yet recent events suggest that the sustainable-security framework which NGOs, scholars and policy-makers increasingly deploy in their analyses and prescriptions needs equally to be applied to the traditional “high politics” of relations between the great powers–from geopolitical flashpoints and the politics of crisis diplomacy to the seemingly old-fashioned world of strategic-arms-control negotiations.

The long shadow of Vienna

Although security analysts have spent much of the past two decades concerned with “small” wars and counter-terrorism, inter-state rivalry and great-power politics never went away. Even in Syria, where the brutality of urban-guerrilla warfare and competition between paramilitary factions appear to be defining characteristics, the competing desires of regional and global powers have played a major part in the nature and longevity of the fighting. Moreover, the only serious attempts to end the war have been the multilateral negotiations in which Washington and Moscow have been key players.

Major powers descending on a capital city to sort out—among themselves—the fate of vulnerable individuals caught in cycles of violence is a trope reminiscent of the Concert of Europe meetings in Vienna in 1853 and 1855 on the “eastern question” or even Paris in 1860 on the Syrian revolution. But it is not the only sign that great-power politics is back. So too is the concern over “flashpoints” and the traditional response of crisis diplomacy.

In the East China Sea, Japan and China have been jostling over the remote rocks of what the Japanese call the Senkaku and the Chinese the Diaoyu islands. Those predicting unparalleled eastern economic prosperity in the “Asian century” have become increasingly concerned over the downward spiral in relations between these two north-east Asian (and at least to some extent global) heavyweights.

The announcement of an air-defence identification zone over the islands late last year by China’s increasingly assertive regime, led by Xi Jinping, met an undiplomatic and extremely defensive response from the Abe government in Japan. Tokyo of course looked to its major military ally, the US, to join it in talking tough to Beijing, leading to a tense stalemate in which Japan is scrambling F-15 fighter jets from the Naha airbase in Okinawa almost daily.

If this was not enough of a gold-plated gift to those keen to make historical analogies with the great-power rivalry and security-dilemma dynamics of 1914 and the outbreak of the first world war, the increasing tensions between Russia and the west over influence in Ukraine have created a European crisis to rival the brinkmanship in north-east Asia.

The drama in Ukraine has prompted much talk of a renewed cold war. Moscow’s effective annexation of Crimea, its 40,000 troops along the border and mid-April’s four-way crisis talks among Ukraine, Russia, the US and the EU all reinforce the idea that old-fashioned “power politics” is alive and well.

These two developments, involving two members of the BRICS coalition of rising (or in Russia’s case re-emerging) powers, come against the backdrop of a predicted global power transition and “rise of the rest”. One need not entirely accept Robert Kagan’s argument about the “return of history” to appreciate the importance of new centres of power challenging Washington’s dominance—in economic, diplomatic and, perhaps eventually, even military terms.

Echoing their voting behaviour at the UN Security Council on the intervention in Libya in 2011, all Russia’s BRICS counterparts abstained from the recent UN General Assembly vote denouncing the Crimea referendum (Russia voted against). And when the Australian foreign minister announced that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, might be banned from the G20 summit in Brisbane in November, the foreign ministers of the BRICS released a dissenting statement.

All this makes predictions of a world without inter-state rivalry—even a “nonpolar” world—more than a little premature. The task then is to think through what a sustainable-security approach can highlight, as diagnosis and prescription, for the seemingly inescapable world of great-power politics.

Militarisation, flashpoints, brinkmanship

A number of drivers of global insecurity stand out. First, the specific nature of great-power politics can create the conditions for crisis and instability. (And of course one could argue that the distinction between great and lesser powers itself helps to marginalise the views of most of the world’s population and is therefore a driver of insecurity.)

In his classic 1977 work on the social foundations of international order, the late international-relations scholar Hedley Bull argued that a degree of order could be provided by the great powers, but only if these states balanced their “special rights” with the concomitant “special responsibility” to manage their relations with each other peacefully and avoid crises. The art of great-power management appears lost on the current leaders in Beijing, Tokyo, Moscow and Washington—and this makes for dangerous times.

The drama in Ukraine has prompted much talk of a renewed cold war.

Secondly, existing work on sustainable security already provides some clear guidance on the drivers of inter-state insecurity through a focus on militarisation. Trends in arms transfers and spending are worrying when combined with a move away from a western-dominated world.

Recent research from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute concluded: “The increase in military spending in emerging and developing countries continues unabated.” Although global spending on arms fell by 1.9 per cent in real terms last year, China and Russia’s spending increased by 7.4 and 4.8 per cent respectively and the US, Russia and China were three of the five largest spenders. Not only are the leaderships of the major powers neglecting their great-power responsibilities—they are also upping their spending on the means to turn a crisis into deadly warfare.

Such spending raises the stakes in any crisis situation and makes such crises more likely by diminishing trust and souring diplomatic relations. There is little doubt that the controversial US missile-defence and Prompt Global Strike programmes have helped give the Russians the impression of being backed into a corner and made the already difficult Sino-Japanese relationship even more fraught.

Broadening the sustainable-security approach

And what policy priorities follow if these underlying drivers of insecurity are to be addressed? The first is demilitarisation, beyond the human-security/small-arms agenda.

In recent years significant gains have been made in the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of former combatants in war zones and on security-sector reform, as well as the eventual conclusion of the Arms Trade Treaty. The same cannot however be said of large-scale strategic weaponry. The Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty risks being seriously undermined by the glacial progress of the P5 states in living up to their article VI obligations on disarmament. And the chances of serious headway on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty or the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty are slim at best.

The ultimately futile trend towards trying to achieve security via superiority in strategic conventional weapons (as well as armed drones), rather than the much harder task of trust-building, is only making matters worse. A renewed effort to negotiate long-term, sustainable, strategic arms control is needed to reverse this trend, no matter how difficult immediate progress will be.

The second priority is to move beyond crisis diplomacy in the major interactions between the great powers. By definition reactive rather than preventive, this can only ever provide limited opportunities to address the root causes of mistrust and insecurity between states.

While a far from perfect arrangement—questions of justice were frequently overlooked in a quest instead for “order”—the regular meetings of the Concert of Europe powers throughout most of the 19th century could provide some inspiration. This arrangement did have a clear sense of the purpose of being a great power: it was not just a privileged position in the hierarchy of states but carried a responsibility to manage relations with other major powers in ways that avoided, where possible, the downward spiral of military brinkmanship. This unavoidably involves a willingness to consider the world from the position of one’s adversary and to take seriously the perceptions and worldviews of one’s peers, even when disagreeing with them.

Yet breaking the moulds of entrenched diplomatic practice will not be easy. As the diplomat-turned-scholar E.H. Carr remarked over 70 years ago, “The bureaucrat, perhaps more explicitly than any other class of the community, is bound up with the existing order, the maintenance of tradition, and the acceptance of precedence as the ‘safe’ criterion of action.” The task seems so enormous as to be overwhelming.

But if policy-makers, analysts and civil-society actors are to come up with ways of reversing the trend towards an increasingly competitive, militarised and crisis-driven inter-state order, thinking through the implications of a sustainable-security approach to great-power politics is the most useful path to follow.

Benjamin Zala is a Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Leicester, UK and an Advisor to the Sustainable Security Programme at the Oxford Research Group. He is on Twitter at @DrBeeZee