Introduction
Ever since investments brought about considerable foreign presence within countries’ economies in the early twentieth century, they have given foreign actors potential access to, or control over, assets critical to the national security of host states. Yet, the definition of the types of investments, of assets, and of investors considered to constitute a security problem has evolved continuously, undergoing a considerable expansion in recent decades. Whereas a century ago security-related action was mostly restricted to the wartime seizure of enemy assets, such as mandated by the US Trading With the Enemy Act (TWEA) of 1917, by now even peacetime foreign investment in social media companies might be identified as a security threat by the powerful Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). This entry provides a brief overview of the ways in which foreign investment has been securitized and of the security mechanisms that have been developed to address...
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Further Reading
Esplugues, C. (2018). A more targeted approach to foreign direct investment: The establishment of screening systems on national security grounds. Revista de Direito Internacional, 15(2), 439–466. https://doi.org/10.5102/rdi.v15i2.5365.
Lenihan, A. T. (2018). Balancing power without weapons: State intervention into cross-border mergers and acquisitions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Wehrlé, F., & Pohl, J. (2016). Investment policies related to national security – A survey of country practices (OECD working papers on international investment, 2). https://doi.org/10.1787/5jlwrrf038nx-en
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Friedmann, V. (2023). Securitization of Foreign Investments. In: Romaniuk, S.N., Marton, P.N. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Security Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74319-6_628
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