From Spatiality to Flows

1. From Spatiality to Flows Dr. Mika Aaltola Programme Director, The Finnish Institute of International Affairs, Finland Professor, University of Tallinn, Estonia 1

2. “[t]o enable economic growth and commerce, America, working in conjunction with allies and partners around the world, will seek to protect freedom of access throughout the global commons […]. Global security and prosperity are increasingly dependent on the free flow of goods shipped by air or sea […]. The United States will continue to lead global efforts with capable allies and partners to assure access to and use of the global commons, both by strengthening international norms of responsible behaviour and by maintaining relevant and interoperable military capabilities.“Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership (2012) United States Department of Defense 2

3. Operation ATALANTA • UNSC Resolutions 1816, 1838, 1848, 1846, 1851 • Council of Europe Joint Action 2008/851/CFSP • 20+ European Countries, Dozen ships • US Combined Task Force 151, NATO Operation Ocean Shield, China, India, Japan… • Transit Corridor • Maritime Security Centre – Horn of Africa • Risk assessment, navigation news, advice on protection

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6. Future Crisis Management? …From a comprehensive agenda of social transformation towards a more limited goal of securing resilient critical flows and infrastructures

7. Global Flows • Flow as “purposeful, repetitive, programmable sequence of exchange and interaction between physically disjointed positions held by social actors” (Castells, 1996). • Global flows are disjunctive and chaotic; they “follow increasingly nonisomorphic paths” and the “sheer speed, scale, and volume of […] of flows are now so great that the disjunctures have become central to the politics of global culture” (Appadurai, 2000).

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11. Global Maritime Flows

12. Global Airmobility Flows

13. Global Cyber Flows

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17. Human dimension: Drones? • U.S. military: drone program • To detect “patterns of life” (pattern of life assessment) • Inter-domain technologies to understand the adversary fully embedded in local civilian communities • Monitoring flow-like practice relevant information (e.g. 15 hours) • Provide unique fingerprint of the community: “[…] networked sensors are able to form a pattern of life in order to compare normal pattern with activities that are out of ordinary” (Shortland, 2012).

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19. Communities of Practice (CoP) • Focusing on human agency and activity • Based on ontology of doing (vs. spatiality) • Bundling of discourse and materiality (artifacts, technology and systems) • Clarifies complexity and enables the identification ‘of the actual and possible’

20. Conditions for Redefining the Boundaries of Practice • Trigger conditions (yes/no): • Capability • Opportunity • Vicinity/Access to Flow • Effective governance • International blind spot • Lack of coercive power • War economy • Bounty utility • Perception of injustice • Presence of ideological legitimation • Standard of living gap • Existence key knowhow owners /knowledge champions • Recognized pattern of life

21. Communities of Practice Mapping (CPM) Protection Sustainment Disruption Co-option

22. Global Flow Communities (GFC) The main community of practice is comprised by the human know-how and intertwining interdomain material technologies that maintain a global flow • Sticky in the sense that they are continuous , standardized, and patterned: • GFCs are “purposeful, repetitive, programmable, sequence of exchange and interaction between physically disjointed positions held by social actors” (Castells 1996, 412) • GFCs are geographically global, dispersed, and transnational. • GFCs are supported by long histories. • GFCs are relatively resilient. • GFCs have developed means of coping with reoccurring disruptions.

23. Disruption Communities of Practise (DCP): New practices create new vulnerabilities. They create opportunities to disrupt the global flows. • DCPs learn to co-opt the flow practices for their own benefit • DCPs have outlier-status: • self-aware and have developed strategic rationale for their disruptive actions • e.g. Somali pirate groups: justification as ‘tax collection’ for the perceived injustices that Somalia had endured • Successful DCPs can attract other actors to join the efforts; • can also act as a model for similar innovations by other possible DCPs (criminal and political)

24. Security Communities of Global Commons (SCGC) Coalition beneficiaries have a vested interest in plugging the vulnerabilities and in securing the flows. • Difficulty for SCGCs derives from the complexity and transnational nature of the global flows. • SCGC can use international institutions and regimes to regulate the GFCs so as to create better standards and allow for more resilience. • SCGC can join forces with private actors – e.g. security and insurance companies – to strengthen the GFCs. • SCGC can use military means which integrate inter-domain technologies in securing the main arteries of global interdependency. • Effective securing of the global flows requires constant mapping of the relevant and outlier communities of practice (CPMs), and the evolving global flow communities (GFCs)

25. Communities of Practice (CoP): Characteristic scales Analytic framework based on multidimensional knowledge mining approach. Focus on (1) mapping comprehensively what is already knowledge; (2) finding information gaps and signs of knowledge blank spots; (3) filtering of redundant knowledge • State of CoP: Established / Embryonic • Technological sophistication of CoP: Know-how in one / Many domains • Networked nature of CoP: Open / Closed • Geographical spread of CoP: Localized / Regional / Global • Proximity points to the GFC: Many, Few, None • Compositional intensity of CoP: Diffuse / Concentrated • Transformational ability of CoP: Innovative / Rigid • Vulnerability of CoP: High / Low • Disruptive and exploitative capability of CoP: Advanced / Rudimentary • The nature of (background) knowledge of CoP: Sticky and Non-transferrable / Flexible and Transferrable