Stein D. Tønnesson has been the director of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo since 2001. An historian by training, he currently leads the institute’s Eastern Mediterranean project while pursuing several small scale projects on terrorism, regional stability in the Middle East and energy security and maritime conflict in Asia. Dr. Tonnesson has worked as Professor of of Human Development Studies at the University of Oslo and has also been a senior research fellow at the Nordic Institute for Asia Studies in Copenhagen...Read More

The philosophical and political quest for peace between nation states dates back as far as Immanuel Kant’s hugely influential 1795 essay Perpetual Peace. However, over the last two centuries dramatically destructive wars have again and again undermined the Kantian ideal.

Throughout that time historians and political scientists have attempted to delineate what causes conflict and one recurrent theme is that conflict stems from international disputes over access to and control of resources.

With one of the planet’s most important resources – fossil fuels – increasingly scarce, this month’s Comment Visions talks to an expert on the history of armed conflict and asks whether the energy crisis threatens global security.

Dr Stein Tonnesson is Director of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo, Norway. A historian whose PhD research focused on the causes of the 1945 Vietnamese revolution, he sees the increasing scarcity of fossil fuels as a potential catalyst of insecurity in the global arena. Warning that nations pursuing narrow national solutions to the crisis based on their own self interest will ‘envenomate the international climate’ he is nevertheless hopeful that co-operation at a global level is possible.

Citing this year’s Copenhagen summit as a crucial starting point for this co-ordinated approach to the security dimension of the energy crisis, Dr Tonnesson provides a fascinating insight into how global needs must take priority over national interests and warns that unless that happens armed conflict is possible.

Monday: 05:15, 07:45, 15:45
Tuesday: 22:45*, 03:15
Wednesday: 11:15, 14:15, 18:45
Thursday: 05:15, 15:15, 17:45, 19:45
Friday: 11:45, 17:15, 04:15
Saturday: 09:15, 15:45, 18:45
Sunday: 09:15, 13:45, 23:15

*Starts Tuesday 22:45, all times CET.

Only broadcast in the first week of each month.