Mika Aaltola – författare

This book reviews the political significance of COVID-19 in the context of earlier pandemic encounters and scares to understand the ways in which it challenges the existing individual health, domestic order, international health governance actors, and, more fundamentally, the circulation-based modus operandi of the present world order.

It argues that contagious diseases should be regarded as complex open-ended phenomena with various features and are not reducible merely to biology and epidemiology. They are, as such, fundamentally politosomatic, namely that they disrupt, agitate, and trigger large-scale processes because individual somatic-level anxieties stem from individuals’ sensing immediate danger through the networks of their local and global connectedness. The author further argues that pandemics have somatic effects in political expressions that transform the epidemic into national security dramas which should not, for the sake of efficient health governance, be treated as aspects extraneous to the disease itself. The book highlights that when a serious infectious disease spreads, a ''threat'' is very often externalized into a culturally meaningful ''foreign'' entity. Pandemics tend to be territorialized, nationalized, ethnicized, and racialized.

This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of global health and governance, pandemic security, epidemics, history of medicine, geopolitics, international relations, and general readers interested in the COVID-19 pandemic.

This book reviews the political significance of COVID-19 in the context of earlier pandemic encounters and scares to understand the ways in which it challenges the existing individual health, domestic order, international health governance actors, and, more fundamentally, the circulation-based modus operandi of the present world order.

It argues that contagious diseases should be regarded as complex open-ended phenomena with various features and are not reducible merely to biology and epidemiology. They are, as such, fundamentally politosomatic, namely that they disrupt, agitate, and trigger large-scale processes because individual somatic-level anxieties stem from individuals’ sensing immediate danger through the networks of their local and global connectedness. The author further argues that pandemics have somatic effects in political expressions that transform the epidemic into national security dramas which should not, for the sake of efficient health governance, be treated as aspects extraneous to the disease itself. The book highlights that when a serious infectious disease spreads, a ''threat'' is very often externalized into a culturally meaningful ''foreign'' entity. Pandemics tend to be territorialized, nationalized, ethnicized, and racialized.

This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of global health and governance, pandemic security, epidemics, history of medicine, geopolitics, international relations, and general readers interested in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Reactions to pandemics are unlike any other global emergency; with an emphasis on withdrawal and containment of the sight of the infected. Dealing with the historical and conceptual background of diseases in politics and international relations, this volume investigates the global political reaction to pandemic scares.

By evaluating anxiety and the political response to pandemics as a legitimisation of the modern state and its ability to protect its citizens from infectious disease, Understanding the Politics of Pandemic Scares examines the connection between international health governance and the emerging Western liberal world order. The case studies, including SARS, Bird Flu and Swine Flu, provide an understanding of how the world order, global health governance and people’s bodies interact to produce scares and panics. Aaltola introduces an innovative new concept of ‘politosomatics’ based on the relationship that links individual stress, strain, and fear with global circulations of power to evaluate increasingly global bio-political environments in which pandemics exist.

This book will be of interest to students and researchers of International Relations, Global Health, International Public Health and Global Health governance.

Reactions to pandemics are unlike any other global emergency; with an emphasis on withdrawal and containment of the sight of the infected. Dealing with the historical and conceptual background of diseases in politics and international relations, this volume investigates the global political reaction to pandemic scares.

By evaluating anxiety and the political response to pandemics as a legitimisation of the modern state and its ability to protect its citizens from infectious disease, Understanding the Politics of Pandemic Scares examines the connection between international health governance and the emerging Western liberal world order. The case studies, including SARS, Bird Flu and Swine Flu, provide an understanding of how the world order, global health governance and people’s bodies interact to produce scares and panics. Aaltola introduces an innovative new concept of ‘politosomatics’ based on the relationship that links individual stress, strain, and fear with global circulations of power to evaluate increasingly global bio-political environments in which pandemics exist.

This book will be of interest to students and researchers of International Relations, Global Health, International Public Health and Global Health governance.

Starting from the key concept of geo-economics, this book investigates the new power politics and argues that the changing structural features of the contemporary international system are recasting the strategic imperatives of foreign policy practice.

States increasingly practice power politics by economic means. Whether it is about Iran’s nuclear programme or Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Western states prefer economic sanctions to military force. Most rising powers have also become cunning agents of economic statecraft. China, for instance, is using finance, investment and trade as means to gain strategic influence and embed its global rise. Yet the way states use economic power to pursue strategic aims remains an understudied topic in International Political Economy and International Relations. The contributions to this volume assess geo-economics as a form of power politics. They show how power and security are no longer simply coupled to the physical control of territory by military means, but also to commanding and manipulating the economic binds that are decisive in today’s globalised and highly interconnected world. Indeed, as the volume shows, the ability to wield economic power forms an essential means in the foreign policies of major powers. In so doing, the book challenges simplistic accounts of a return to traditional, military-driven geopolitics, while not succumbing to any unfounded idealism based on the supposedly stabilising effects of interdependence on international relations. As such, it advances our understanding of geo-economics as a strategic practice and as an innovative and timely analytical approach.

This book will be of much interest to students of security studies, international political economy, foreign policy and International Relations in general.

Starting from the key concept of geo-economics, this book investigates the new power politics and argues that the changing structural features of the contemporary international system are recasting the strategic imperatives of foreign policy practice.

States increasingly practice power politics by economic means. Whether it is about Iran’s nuclear programme or Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Western states prefer economic sanctions to military force. Most rising powers have also become cunning agents of economic statecraft. China, for instance, is using finance, investment and trade as means to gain strategic influence and embed its global rise. Yet the way states use economic power to pursue strategic aims remains an understudied topic in International Political Economy and International Relations. The contributions to this volume assess geo-economics as a form of power politics. They show how power and security are no longer simply coupled to the physical control of territory by military means, but also to commanding and manipulating the economic binds that are decisive in today’s globalised and highly interconnected world. Indeed, as the volume shows, the ability to wield economic power forms an essential means in the foreign policies of major powers. In so doing, the book challenges simplistic accounts of a return to traditional, military-driven geopolitics, while not succumbing to any unfounded idealism based on the supposedly stabilising effects of interdependence on international relations. As such, it advances our understanding of geo-economics as a strategic practice and as an innovative and timely analytical approach.

This book will be of much interest to students of security studies, international political economy, foreign policy and International Relations in general.

This book investigates complex regressive dynamics in contemporary Western democracies. They include not only severe polarization in domestic politics, but also efforts by external autocratic powers to co-opt the increasingly digitalized political processes in the West. The discussion on democratic vulnerability and regression has rarely been historically and theoretically reflective. The aim is to fill this relative void by drawing on classical sources to inform about the political anxieties and agitations of our present time as the Western world moves towards new critical elections. The key concept of the analysis, a Thucydidean brink, refers to a critical point where the attraction felt towards an outside geopolitical competitor becomes stronger than the political affinity felt towards one’s domestic political opponent. As political polarization, societal decomposition and the collusive tendencies grow in strength, political factions and political candidates in western societiescan be(come) drawn to autocratic actors. Perhaps most alarmingly, the resulting nexus between democracies and autocracies can further intensify mutual regression and form downwards-sloping spirals that are not ultimately under any strategic control. This book draws from the experiences of recent elections in major Western democracies to illustrate the widening and deepening underlying regressive tendency.

Tärkeä ajankohtainen puheenvuoro Venäjän hyökkäyksestä Ukrainaan sekä Euroopan ja erityisesti Suomen ja Pohjolan turvallisuustilanteesta.

Venäjän hyökkäys Ukrainaan 24.2.2022 järisytti koko Eurooppaa ja käänsi hetkessä Suomenkin ulko- ja turvallisuuspoliittisen toimintaympäristön aivan uuteen asentoon. Aiemmin poliittisesti liki mahdottomalta näyttänyt Nato-jäsenyys on toteutumassa niin Suomen kuin Ruotsinkin osalta. Ulkopoliittisen instituutin johtaja Mika Aaltola valottaa kirjassaan tilanteen taustoja sekä Suomen turvallisuuspoliittisia näköaloja ja lähitulevaisuuden toimintavaihtoehtoja Ukrainan, Euroopan, Naton ja läntisen maailman kamppaillessa Venäjän hyökkäyssodan yleisen haasteen alla.

Aaltolan päiväkirjamerkinnöille pohjautuva teos seuraa geopoliittisen dynamiikan, Venäjän kasvavan uhan ja sittemmin presidentti Putinin aloittaman sodan tilanteiden kehitystä ja laajempia vaikutuksia kesäkuusta 2021 heinäkuuhun 2022 asti yhdistäen tilanneseurannan kiihkottomaan ja informatiiviseen tausta-analyysiin ja tulevaisuuden skenaarioiden pohdintaan. Näin kirja tarjoaa Suomen ja Euroopan turvallisuustilanteesta huolestuneelle lukijalle perusteltuja asiantuntijanäkemyksiä uhkaavan ja pelottavan tilanteen ymmärtämiseen ja pyrkii vastaamaan kysymykseen, miten Suomen turvallisuus parhaiten taataan nyt ja tulevaisuudessa.

Mika Aaltola on Ulkopoliittisen instituutin johtaja ja politiikantutkija, joka on perehtynyt erityisesti Yhdysvaltojen sisä- ja ulkopolitiikkaan, suurvaltapolitiikkaan sekä Suomen ulko- ja turvallisuuspolitiikkaan.

Tärkeä ajankohtainen puheenvuoro Venäjän hyökkäyksestä Ukrainaan sekä Euroopan ja erityisesti Suomen ja Pohjolan turvallisuustilanteesta.

Venäjän hyökkäys Ukrainaan 24.2.2022 järisytti koko Eurooppaa ja käänsi hetkessä Suomenkin ulko- ja turvallisuuspoliittisen toimintaympäristön aivan uuteen asentoon. Aiemmin poliittisesti liki mahdottomalta näyttänyt Nato-jäsenyys on toteutumassa niin Suomen kuin Ruotsinkin osalta. Ulkopoliittisen instituutin johtaja Mika Aaltola valottaa kirjassaan tilanteen taustoja sekä Suomen turvallisuuspoliittisia näköaloja ja lähitulevaisuuden toimintavaihtoehtoja Ukrainan, Euroopan, Naton ja läntisen maailman kamppaillessa Venäjän hyökkäyssodan yleisen haasteen alla.

Aaltolan päiväkirjamerkinnöille pohjautuva teos seuraa geopoliittisen dynamiikan, Venäjän kasvavan uhan ja sittemmin presidentti Putinin aloittaman sodan tilanteiden kehitystä ja laajempia vaikutuksia kesäkuusta 2021 heinäkuuhun 2022 asti yhdistäen tilanneseurannan kiihkottomaan ja informatiiviseen tausta-analyysiin ja tulevaisuuden skenaarioiden pohdintaan. Näin kirja tarjoaa Suomen ja Euroopan turvallisuustilanteesta huolestuneelle lukijalle perusteltuja asiantuntijanäkemyksiä uhkaavan ja pelottavan tilanteen ymmärtämiseen ja pyrkii vastaamaan kysymykseen, miten Suomen turvallisuus parhaiten taataan nyt ja tulevaisuudessa.

Mika Aaltola on Ulkopoliittisen instituutin johtaja ja politiikantutkija, joka on perehtynyt erityisesti Yhdysvaltojen sisä- ja ulkopolitiikkaan, suurvaltapolitiikkaan sekä Suomen ulko- ja turvallisuuspolitiikkaan.

Suomi ja Eurooppa geopolitiikan uudella aikakaudella.

Ukrainan sodan myötä geopoliittiset jännitteet ja konfliktit ovat palanneet Eurooppaan. Uudessa todellisuudessa Venäjä on Suomen ainoa geopoliittinen uhka. Turvallisuusympäristömme muutokseen on havahduttava, sillä sen varaan rakennetaan maamme tulevaisuus.

Kansallinen turvallisuus vaatii Suomelta satsauksia Hangosta Jäämerelle ja kirkasta näkemystä niin maan omasta suunnasta kuin sen kansainvälisestä roolista koko Euroopan turvallisuuden vahvistamisessa. Vastaisuudessa Suomen ja Venäjän rajalla korostuu pelotteen merkitys. Ahvenanmaalta Pohjanlahden kautta Ruotsiin ja Norjaan Suomi on puolustuksellisesti kiinni lännessä ja geostrategisesti avainasemassa Kuolan niemimaalta Pietarin porteille, Suomenlahden kapeikkoon ja Itämerelle asti.

Vakauden ylläpito lähialueillamme edellyttää reagoimista myös muihin aikamme haasteisiin. Mika Aaltola korostaa päiväkirjamerkinnöissään, miten tärkeää demokratian lujittaminen on silloin, kun poliittinen keskustelu kärjistyy, ilmasto- ja energiauhat nousevat ja globaali järjestys horjuu. Suomi ja Pohjola on pidettävä suojassa, vakauden saarekkeena yhä epävarmemmalla aikakaudella.

Mika Aaltola on Ulkopoliittisen instituutin johtaja ja politiikantutkija, joka on perehtynyt erityisesti Yhdysvaltojen sisä- ja ulkopolitiikkaan, suurvaltapolitiikkaan sekä Suomen ulko- ja turvallisuuspolitiikkaan.