Research Project
Russia's strategic approaches to Europe: Addressing the puzzle through policy relevant research
In an increasingly unpredictable world, a changing Russia continues to be a critical actor in nearly all key international processes, including North Korea, Iran, Syria, and – most importantly from a Norwegian perspective – in European and Norwegian security. Ever since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 relations between Europe and Russia are arguably tenser than at any point since the end of cold war. How is this situation perceived on both sides?
We try to find answers to this within this project, and we are in particularly interested in the escalatory effects that may emerge between parties that have set perceptions about the other’s hostile intent and simultaneously perceive their own intentions as transparent and benign. This situation calls for new thinking, intellectual rigour, and policy relevant research. The project is designed to create significant synergies by working with, building on, and drawing insights from relevant academic research projects at NUPI. It will anchor and develop the study of Russia as a factor and actor in Norway’s strategic environment and generate timely and relevant knowledge for national, regional and trans-Atlantic policymaking communities. Norwegian research on Russian strategic outlook is compartmentalized and lacks the broader, cross-cutting overlook this project will offer. It will boost Norwegian research on the strategic aspects of Russian policymaking and situate relations between Norway and Russia in a broader strategic context. We believe that the project will be able to provide solid, research-based input to national and international policymaking communities – and present a Norwegian reading of situation. Norway has long experience in dealing with Russia-related risks without compromising its national security. This knowledge could be utilized as an important national contribution to the process of formulating a ‘smarter’ common policy platform on Russia in NATO.
The annual output of this will be three co-financed academic articles/chapters, three policy briefs with a complementary ‘brown bag’ seminar in the Ministry of Defence, as well as one roundtable at NUPI to facilitate the synergies between academic research and policy that the project envisages. The project will enable researchers on Russia and European security to integrate their academic activity with a consistent policy relevant outlook, and will produce a set of inquiries that speak directly to the Ministry of Defence’s Russia-related specific criteria every year throughout the project period. The inquiries for 2018 will be:
- A data -driven exploration of Russia’s evolving understanding of the main security actors in Europe. See "corporaexplorer: An R package for dynamic exploration of text collections".
- A study of how recent Norwegian defence policy moves impact on the formulation of Russian policies toward Norway. See "Norway and Russia in the Arctic: New Cold War Contamination?", and "How the New Cold War travelled North (Part I and Part II)"
- A study of horizontal spill overs within NATO and their potential impact on Russo-Norwegian relations. See "The Risks of Being an Ally".
For NUPI, this project will build up under our strategic, long-term commitment to research on Russian foreign and security policy.
Project Manager
Participants
New publications
corporaexplorer: An R package for dynamic exploration of text collections
This article presents the 'corporaexplorer' open source software. 'corporaexplorer' is an R package that uses the Shiny GUI (graphical user interface) framework for dynamic exploration of text collections. The package is designed for use with a wide range of text collections. The intended primary audience are qualitatively oriented researchers in the social sciences and humanities who rely on close reading of textual documents as part of their academic activity. However, the package should also be useful for those doing quantitative textual research and wishing to have convenient access to the texts under study. Main elements in the interactive apps: 1) Input: The ability to filter the corpus and/or highlight documents, based on search patterns (in main text or metadata, including date range). 2) Corpus visualisation: An interactive heat-map of the corpus, based on the search input (calendar heat-map or heat-map where each tile represents one document, optionally grouped by metadata properties). 3) Document visualisation and display: Easy navigation to and within full-text documents with pattern matches highlighted. 4) Document retrieval: Extraction of subsets of the corpus in a format suitable for close reading. While collecting and preparing the text collections to be explored requires some familiarity with R programming, using the Shiny apps for exploring and extracting documents from the corpus should be fairly intuitive also for those with no programming knowledge, once the apps have been set up by a collaborator.
How the New Cold War travelled North (Part I) Norwegian and Russian narratives
The standoff between Russia and the West over Ukraine has already obstructed cooperation across a range of issues. Could it also affect state interaction between Norway and Russia in the Arctic—an area and a relationship long characterized by a culture of compromise and cooperation? In two policy briefs we examine changes in how Russia and Norway have approached each other in the Arctic in the period 2012–2016. This first brief presents the development of official Norwegian and Russian narratives on the relations between the two countries in the Arctic. Such narratives stipulate logical paths for action. Showing how Norwegian and Russian policies have changed in line with these narratives, we conclude that what some refer to as “the New Cold War” is indeed spreading to the Arctic.
How the New Cold War travelled North (Part II) Interaction between Norway and Russia
This policy brief examines changing Russian and Norwegian approaches to each other in the period 2012–2016, and discusses how the “New Cold War” spread to the North. This is an intriguing question, since both parties had initially stated that, despite the overall worsening of Russia–West relations following the crises in Ukraine, the North should be protected as a space for peaceful interaction. To address this question, watching and tracking the changing patterns of Russian exercises and military modernization is not enough; understanding the rise in tensions requires studying the effects of the interactions underway between the parties in this region. Three interaction effects need to be taken into consideration in explaining why the tense relations following the conflict in Ukraine spread to the low-tension Northern theatre. In this, we stress the interactive dynamics that ensues when two parties start to view each other as threats, interpreting new moves by the other as expressions of hostile intent. Further, we explain the observed New Cold War “contamination” with reference to domestic policy agendas and practices of decision-making. On both the Norwegian and the Russian sides, the new military posturing in the North, now interpreted as part of a growing conflict, has emerged partly as a side-effect of implementing what actually were longstanding national goals.
Norway and Russia in the Arctic: New Cold War Contamination?
The standoff between Russia and the West over Ukraine has already obstructed cooperation across a range of issues. Could it also affect state interaction between Norway and Russia in the Arctic—an area and a relationship long characterized by a culture of compromise and/or cooperation? Here we start from the theoretical premise that states are not pre-constituted political entities, but are constantly in the making. How Russia views its own role and how it views other actors in the Arctic changes over time, calling for differing approaches. That holds true for Norway as well. To clarify the premises for interaction between Russia and Norway in the Arctic, we scrutinize changes in official discourse on Self and Other in the Arctic on both sides in the period 2012 to 2016, to establish what kind of policy mode—“realist,” “institutionalist,” or “diplomatic management”—has underlain the two countries’ official discourse in that period. Has Norway continued to pursue “balancing” policies undertaken in the realist mode with those in the diplomatic management mode? Which modes have characterized Russia’s approach toward Norway? Finding that realist-mode policies increasingly dominate on both sides, in the conclusion we discuss how the changing mode of the one state affects that of the other, and why a New Cold War is now spreading to the Arctic.
The risks of being an ally
States join security alliances to increase their level of security vis-à-vis neighbours that may pose a threat. The deterrence logic that was the main rationale for joining NATO in 1949 still represents the cornerstone of Norway’s security policy. However, belonging to a military alliance can also pose challenges. This policy brief focuses on some possible negative spillover effects that could emerge from being member of a military alliance. The focus here is on current challenges within NATO, and the possible implications for Norway. First, we present a broader conceptual framework. What are the internal and external challenges facing NATO? How do NATO and its members deal with them? We then proceed to the implications for Norway. Due to structural factors that shape relations in Norway’s strategic environment – including the location of Russian strategic bases close to the border, and the clear asymmetry in capabilities – negative developments in other regions and theatres may influence Norwegian security directly. We argue that, in order to minimize the likelihood of negative trends spilling over to Norway’s strategic neighbourhood, it is important to communicate the special features of this neighbourhood clearly to other members of the alliance. Further, to facilitate intra-alliance trust and cohesion, Norway should also emphasize NATO’s internal, shared value-base, in order to make the alliance better prepared to meet external security challenges.