Squaring the Circles: How to Understand National Security, Critical Infrastructure, Vital Societal Functions, and the Foreign Ownership Challenge?

This chapter explores the security implications of foreign investments in critical infrastructure and vital societal functions. The authors present their operational understandings of four concepts—national security, critical infrastructure, fundamental needs and functions, as well as foreign investments. They also explore how investments used as a policy tool can be viewed as posing a risk or even a threat to the national security. The chapter also describes the development of foreign investment screening policies in response to the conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine, and the growing tension between the West and China over the global order. It also provides a detailed overview of the role nine actors whose policies are examined in detail in this volume—the EU, Germany, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, the UK, USA, Russia and China—play in the global investment context. Finally, it also provides an overview of Chinese and Russian investments in Europe and discusses two controversial cases: Nord Stream 2 and Huawei.