High alert in the low countries: State-sponsored threat awareness in policing the Dutch port and knowledge sectors

Abstract

Abstract The war in Ukraine has made clear that we live in a multipolar world where global powers, being the West, Russia, and China, are in continuous geopolitical conflict with one another. It has brought about old and new state-sponsored threats (SSTs), in particular (online) espionage and spreading disinformation, which are instrumentalized by each of these global powers against one another. It altogether puts the national security and economic interests of many more countries at risk. Being heavily dependent on global powers for trade and knowledge building and sharing, small countries seem to be confronted with their powerlessness in the wake of the increasingly threatening multipolar geopolitics. Simultaneously, some of these small countries accommodate important nodes through which international transport and knowledge flow on which global powers, in turn, depend on. In the Netherlands, the port sector (consisting in this study of the Rotterdam and Amsterdam seaports) and the knowledge sector (consisting of several universities, applied universities, and research institutes) form important international nodes for the global transport and knowledge economy. How does the Netherlands position and secure itself through raising awareness of SSTs coming from the global powers it depends on? Based on a study of SST awareness in Dutch ports and higher education, this contribution delivers a possible answer to that question.