Geopolitics of the global commons: securitisation of spaces and resources not subject to state jurisdiction

Abstract

Since the end of the Cold War, large spaces not subject to state jurisdiction under the concept of global commons have entered the security considerations of NATO’s central powers. Thinktanks, international development agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and international organisations have been dealing in reports and official documents with various initiatives on a global scale to implement actions for the projection, control and denial of access to the global commons. These initiatives, which also include the sovereign spaces of developing and peripheral countries, particularly regions with a rich endowment of natural resources such as land, water, forests, fish fauna and biodiversity, are evidence of a clear process of growing strategic interest, which at the same time is coupled with preexisting dynamics of securitisation of the environment, both of which could potentially legitimise the ius ad bellum. Today, the projection of power over the global commons takes on a structural, indirect, asymmetric, dispersed, soft and discrete mode. This subject is of vital importance for National Defence, as it is evidence of the new character that hegemonic competition has acquired in the 21st century.