Regional Security Dialogue – What is the Nordic contribution?

Suzanne DiMaggio is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she focuses on U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East and Asia. She is one of the foremost experts and practitioners of diplomatic dialogues with countries that have limited or no official relations with the United States, especially Iran and North Korea. For over two decades, she has led these track 1.5 and track 2 conversations to help policymakers identify pathways for diplomatic progress on a range of issues, including regional security, nonproliferation, conflict de-escalation and risk reduction, and bilateral relations. She previously was the Vice President of Global Policy Programs at the Asia Society and the Vice President at the United Nations Association of the USA. DiMaggio is the Board Chair and a co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and an Associate Senior Fellow in the Disarmament, Arms Control and Nonproliferation Program at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Jan Eliasson is a Swedish diplomat and, as of 1 June 2017, the Chair of the SIPRI Governing Board. Ambassador Eliasson was Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations from July 2012 to December 2016 and Sweden’s Minister for Foreign Affairs in 2006. Furthermore, he was President of the 60th session of the UN General Assembly in 2005–06; the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Darfur in 2007–08; the first UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, 1992–94; and participated, 1980–86, in the UN mission mediating in the Iran–Iraq War, which was headed by former Prime Minister Olof Palme of Sweden.

Kai Sauer is the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Security Policy at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. Previously, he has worked as Permanent Representative of Finland to the UN in New York (2014–2019) and as Ambassador of Finland to Indonesia, Timor-Leste and ASEAN (2010–2014). Ambassador Sauer has also served as Director at the Unit for UN Affairs of the MFA, as Senior Adviser to the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, President Martti Ahtisaari in UNOSEK and as Director of the Unit for the Western Balkans of the MFA. He holds a Master’s degree in Social Sciences from the University of Tampere and a Doctorate of Humane Letters (h.c.), Northland College, Wisconsin.

Mika Aaltola is the Director of FIIA. Dr Aaltola is also a professor of International Relations at Tallinn University, Estonia, and holds the rank of docent at Tampere University. He has been a visiting fellow at Cambridge University, Sciences Po (CERI), and Johns Hopkins as well as a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota. His areas of expertise include the US global role, dynamics of power politics, and Finnish foreign policy. His latest published monograph is ”Democratic Vulnerability and Autocratic Meddling – The ’Thucydidean Brink’ in Regressive Geopolitical Competition” (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2021).