Christian Schaller

About/Bio

Christian Schaller is a Senior Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin. He has more than twenty years of experience advising the Federal Government, the German Bundestag, and various national and international institutions on international law. Before joining SWP in 2003, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. Christian holds a doctoral degree in law from the University of Heidelberg and is a qualified German lawyer. He has published widely in leading peer-reviewed journals and in edited volumes.

Recently Published

Attacks on Submarine Cables and Pipelines: A Self-Defence Approach Complementary to Law Enforcement

Combating sabotage of submarine cables and pipelines is first and foremost a matter of law enforcement. The problem is that the international law of the sea, as traditionally understood, does not provide coastal States with sufficient authority to effectively respond to sabotage activities beyond their territorial waters (for an in-depth discussion, see here). The European…

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Navigation of Warships in the Taiwan Strait

For many years, the United States has been sending warships through the Taiwan Strait in a corridor it considers to be “international waters”. The transits, which are regularly announced by the US military, are intended to demonstrate US commitment to a “free and open Indo-Pacific” and to “upholding freedom…

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Critical Maritime Infrastructure and the Regime of the EEZ: A Blank Cheque for Saboteurs?

In April 2023, Scandinavian journalists uncovered that Russia was running a large-scale programme to spy on offshore wind farms, submarine cables and pipelines, and other infrastructure in the North and Baltic Seas. Security experts say the activities are likely to prepare the ground for sabotage. Foreign Policy commented: “Russian…

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