Publications
Blame it on Russia? The danger of geopolitical takes on Georgia’s far right
This Op Ed argues that framing Georgia’s far right as a unified pro-Russian actor obscures complex local problems.
Utenriks- og sikkerhetspolitiske holdninger i valgåret 2021
What does the public experience as the greatest challenges for Norway? And how should they be handled? Where does the public stand in the question about their affiliation to Europe and the European Union? And what trust do the voters have in the various parties' foreign affairs programs before the general election? NUPI has conducted an opinion poll to answer these questions, and in this report we present the findings from our research.
Differentiated Integration and Europe’s Global Role: A Conceptual Framework
In a time of global challenges, rising geopolitical tensions and a weakening of the traditional trans-Atlantic security community, we can expect pressures for Europe to play a more important role in the world. Various initiatives have been taken to strengthen the role of the European Union (EU), but there are also tendencies towards a more complex European governance structure in the making, characterized by a combination of both EU and non-EU (but still European) initiatives. This introductory article presents a framework for studying a European role that includes initiatives taken within and outside the EU framework, but closely interlinked, indicating that the concept of differentiated integration (DI) may help to clarify Europe’s role in a changing and volatile global context.
Differentiated Defence Integration Under French Leadership
Studies dealing with EU security and defence policy tend to focus exclusively on what is formally included in the Union’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). Other initiatives taken outside this framework are frequently seen potentially undermining the development of EU defence – even when the intention is to strengthen defence capacity. This has been the case with the various initiatives taken within or closely linked to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), as well as the recent French approach involving the European Intervention Initiative (EI2). An alternative perspective is to see these as integrated parts of a more flexible and differentiated European security framework where all these initiatives combined contribute to strengthening European defence capacity. Building on the argument presented in the introduction to this Special Issue, this article argues that France, as a leader in promoting ‘l’Europe de la défense’, has been instrumental in promoting this differentiated approach to European defence integration, especially under the Macron presidency.
Russian Strategic Communication Towards Europe: Goals, Means and Measures
This chapter examines the relationship between Russian strategic objectives and the use of communication measures in Russian policy towards Europe after the 2014 crisis. It provides insights into how Russian understandings of communication/information related challenges have been factored in Russian approaches to Europe.
Performing Nuclear Weapons: How Britain Made Trident Make Sense
This book investigates the UK’s nuclear weapon policy, focusing in particular on how consecutive governments have managed to maintain the Trident weapon system. The question of why states maintain nuclear weapons typically receives short shrift: its security, of course. The international is a perilous place, and nuclear weapons represent the ultimate self-help device. This book seeks to unsettle this complacency by re-conceptualizing nuclear weapon-armed states as nuclear regimes of truth and refocusing on the processes through which governments produce and maintain country-specific discourses that enable their continued possession of nuclear weapons. Illustrating the value of studying nuclear regimes of truth, the book conducts a discourse analysis of the UK’s nuclear weapons policy between 1980 and 2010. In so doing, it documents the sheer imagination and discursive labour required to sustain the positive value of nuclear weapons within British politics, as well as providing grounds for optimism regarding the value of the recent treaty banning nuclear weapons.
The Rankings Game: A Relational Approach to Country Performance Indicators
As the number of international rankings has risen dramatically since the 1990s, a large body of scholarship has emerged to examine and understand them. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of this body of work and to chart out fruitful directions for future research. In short, prior scholarship has been surprisingly quiet on the relations among multiple actors and their economic dimensions at the core of country performance indicator (CPI) activities. To foreground crucial socioeconomic relations, we develop a relational heuristic based upon a sports analogy: the actors involved in the creation and maintenance of CPIs can fruitfully be approached as a complex of players, referees, coaches, and audiences. Such an account helps us better understand how CPIs emerge and are sustained, even when they rely on dodgy data and their effects are perverse. We use nation brand rankings—overlooked in international relations research—as empirical illustration.
The Intercity Origins of Diplomacy: Consuls, Empires, and the Sea
City diplomacy is a fairly new topic in the study of diplomacy, and, many would argue, a fairly recent empirical phenomenon. A counterpoint to this could be to reference how the alleged origin of diplomacy in Greek antiquity was city-centered, as were the earliest forms of Renaissance diplomacy in Italy. In this article we want to probe the connections between cities and diplomacy through problematizing what has counted as diplomacy. Our starting point is that cities have always mattered to what we could analytically refer to as diplomatic practice. Being conscious of the conceptual ambiguities, we are thus not starting from a specific definition of “city diplomacy,” but from a conviction that cities have mattered and continue to matter to the practice of diplomacy.
Russia's Neighborhood Policy and Its Eurasian Client States: No Autocracy Export
Do authoritarian regimes engage in active export of their political systems? Or are they primarily concerned about their geopolitical interests? This article explores these questions by examining Russia's policy towards Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria. In all three de facto states, Moscow is fully able to dictate election outcomes should it desire to, but, we argue, has increasingly refrained from doing so. These client states are unlikely to attempt to escape from Russia’s tutelage; and with its geopolitical interests fully ensured, Russia appears willing to grant them latitude. We then ask whether these findings can be extrapolated to serve as a template for understanding Russia's policy towards its client states more generally, discussing Moscow's reactions to attempted regime change in Armenia and Belarus.
Bennich-Björkman, Li & Sergiy Kurbatov, eds. When the Future Came: The Collapse of the USSR and the Emergence of National Memory in Post-Soviet His...
Perestroika, the fateful years when Mikhail Gorbachev's plans for reforming the Soviet structure ended with the Union’s full collapse, is for many of us still a lived memory. But how is perestroika remembered today in the states that arose from the ashes of the USSR? And what can this tell us about national self-understanding in the Soviet successor states? This is the starting point for Li Bennich-Björkman and Sergiy Kurbatov’s edited volume When the Future Came: The Collapse of the USSR and the Emergence of National Memory in Post-Soviet History Textbooks. The volume consists of four case studies of history textbooks currently in use in secondary schools and universities in four of the former union republics – Russia, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine – and a close reading of how these cover perestroika as part of the new "national" history.