Publications
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Adaptive Peacebuilding: A New Approach to Sustaining Peace in the 21st Century
This open access book responds to the urgent need to improve how we prevent and resolve conflict. It introduces Adaptive Peacebuilding through evidence-based research from eight case studies across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. It also considers how China and Japan view and practice peacebuilding. The book focuses on how peacebuilders design, implement and evaluate programs to sustain peace, how interactions between external and local actors have facilitated or hindered peacemaking, and how adaptation to complexity and uncertainty occurred in each case study.
Morten Bøås om jihadisme og russisk innblanding i Sahel-regionen
Morten Bøås som gjest i podcasten "statsbøttekottet" Det er tid for innhold fra SPD! I dagens episode av Statsbøttekottet har vi med oss Morten Bøås. Han er seniorforsker ved NUPI. Temaet for episoden er fred og konflikt i Afrika, med spesielt fokus på russisk innblanding i Sahel-regionen. Vi får blant annet vite hva som er spesielt med Sahel, og hva er egentlig jihadisme?
Germany’s Zeitenwende in foreign and security policy: Domestic developments and alliance dynamics after one year
Days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, German Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a Zeitenwende, a historical turning point to which Germany would respond by reforming its foreign and security policies. In a speech in the Federal Parliament (Bundestag) on 27 February 2022, Chancellor Scholz listed five points for the reform agenda: supporting Ukraine (also militarily), sanctioning Russia, increased German contribution to NATO’s eastern flank, investment in more capable armed forces, and decoupling from Russian energy. The third point included a €100 billion special investment fund, so-called Sondervermögen, that would be used to boost Germany’s military capabilities and especially alleviate the most urgent material shortcomings of the armed forces. Given that Germany had been considered a laggard in European defence due to its restrictive approach on military capability – partly because of the historical legacy of guilt for World War II and partly a condition of Germany’s reunification after the Cold War – the announcement of a turning point raised expectations in Euro-Atlantic defence circles.
Governance Through Regime Complexity: What Role for the EU in the African Security Regime Complex?
The international response to armed conflict in Africa often takes the form of a regime complex characterized by institutional proliferation, overlap, unclear hierarchies, and multiple interconnections. At the same time, the course of conflict is hardly predictable. In such an environment, how can component units (institutional fora) of a regime complex effectively govern through complexity? We explore this question by focusing on the EU as an important actor within regime complexes. Building on the regime complexity literature and complexity theory, we identify four conditions. We argue that actors who operate as resource hubs, create complementarity, support system self‐organization, and practice adaptive forms of peacebuilding are best placed to manage regime complexity. Empirically we probe these assumptions in the context of the Sahelian security regime complex and the role the EU is playing in it.
Climate, Peace and Security Fact Sheet: Iraq
Iraq is highly exposed to climate change-related extreme weather events. Droughts, floods, heatwaves and dust storms are negatively affecting the environment, agriculture, water availability, health and other aspects of the everyday lives of Iraq’s population. These climate change impacts undermine development and exacerbate existing vulnerabilities, which, combined with other factors, increases the risk of instability and conflict.
Internet governance and the UN in a multiplex world order era?
Over the last two decades Internet Governance (IG) has emerged as an increasingly complex and fraught field of policymaking involving both states and non-state actors on a multitude of arenas. Facing this complex field, the role of the United Nations (UN) in IG has been both varying and contested. While the UN has been discussing issues related to IG since the 1990s, disagreements on both substantive issues and where discussions ought to take place have intermittently resurfaced and remained relevant, but recent processes and challenges to the status quo asks questions about the direction going forward. In the UN, recently established processes aims to revamp the approach to IG, while the negotiations over a cybercrime convention, and the 2022 ITU plenipotentiary have made the long running contests between western and authoritarian states over this topic more visible. Broader trends and rising tensions globally raises questions not only about the future for the global nature of IG and the role of the UN in this, but also whether decoupling and alliances with like-minded states might become more dominant than global multilateral and multi-stakeholder channels, i.e a trend pointing towards a multiplex field of internet governance.1
Introduction: Is the time nigh for ecological security?
Climate change and the ongoing destruction of the earth's ecosystems have increasingly been depicted as a security issue with the noble but not unproblematic goal engendering an urgent response. These climate and environmental security discourses have been extensively critiqued on both empirical and normative grounds. But is there an ethically defensible and even emancipatory alternative to envisioning the relationship between the environment and security? Matt McDonald in his new book - Ecological Security: Climate Change and the Construction of Security - argues that there is and lays out comprehensive normative framework for doing so. To interrogate McDonald's case for what he calls “Ecological Security”, this forum brings together four leading researchers from Anthropology, Geography, International Relations, and Peace and Sustainability Studies. While all contributors are broadly positive regarding goals of the book, each identifies weaknesses in the approach that move from suggestions on how refine the framework on the one hand to questioning whether the framework risks proving counter-productive on the other.
Adapting the African Standby Force to Africa’s Evolving Security Landscape
Over the last decade Africa has experienced a resurgence of what used to be called rebels. In response a number of new types of operations have evolved.
NATO: A historical moment in the Nordic-Baltic region
Finland’s membership in NATO on April 4th 2023 represent a watershed moment in Baltic and Nordic history. By entering into a formal military alliance with its neighbours, Finland will be part of a united front of deterrence against Russia, reaching from the High North to the Black Sea. The Baltic countries, which always have felt vulnerable and exposed given their geopolitical location, now have a new and capable ally next door. But what are the concrete implications for Nordic-Baltic security and defence? This is the key question discussed in this article.