Publications
The role of the UN Security Council in cybersecurity: international peace and security in the digital age
At the 75th anniversary of the United Nations, the UN Security Council is faced with difficult questions about its efficacy, relevance and legitimacy. The leading powers and the permanent members (P5) of the Security Council – China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA – are drawn into a heavy contest over the world order. Power lines are (to be) drawn in an increasingly digital, interconnected and multi-stakeholder society. So far, despite the language from heads of states, global media houses and from leaders of international organizations including NATO and the UN, none of the P5 countries have brought cyber to the UNSC. Other countries – for instance, Lithuania and the Netherlands – have considered introducing cybersecurity issues in the Council, but no action has followed. One of the most recent members-elect, Estonia, has pledged to take the issue up. To stay relevant and act up on its responsibility for international peace and security, the Security Council will have to establish itself vis-à-vis cyber issues. The goal of this chapter is to examine why and how. To what extent do questions pertaining to digital threats and cybersecurity fall within the mandate of the Council and what could it address given the politically tense times among the P5.
Putin’s Ancien Régime
After 20 years with Vladimir Putin in power, Putin’s Russia is becoming an ancien régime. The gap between Russia’s aspirations for a significant global role, and its ability and capacity to sustain such a role (always a challenge for Russia’ rulers), is now growing. Putin has not learned from history and from his predecessors. Russia continues to try to punch above its weight, with attempts to destabilize by creating new geopolitical “realities,” as in the case of Crimea. At home, the population is dissatisfied, and the regime is under pressure to come up with new solutions to old problems.
Lack of Modern Connectors: The Challenge of Moving Marines from Ship-to-Shore or Intratheater in a New Warfighting Environment
As the Marine Corps retools its force design to fit roles and missions in an era of great power competition, it will always have to consider how the force will reach the battlefield. In a crisis, the U.S. Marine Corps currently has few options to get equipment en masse to where it is needed. The Navy/Marine Corps team must start looking at allied capability as the interim solution not only in the European theater, but also in the Indo-Pacific Theater to augment current capability shortcomings.
Digital Technologies, Services and the Fourth Industrial Revolution
The increasingly rapid uptake of digital technologies is launching the global economy into the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ and the next transformative wave of globalisation. Trade in merchandise is in long-run relative decline; trade in services, especially e services, is on a long-term relative upward trend - and associated cross-border data flows are growing exponentially. These structural shifts, and their impacts on competitiveness, are set to intensify. The G20 must assert a leadership role by signalling best practice policy and regulatory settings, including sustained openness to international trade, investment and data flows, so every nation can reap the productivity gains of the digital age. This Working Paper has been prepared as background for a short Policy Brief for the 2020 THINK20 Taskforce 1: Trade and Investment.
Governing the Arctic: The Russian State Commission for Arctic Development and the Forging of a New Domestic Arctic Policy Agenda
After a period of relative neglect in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Arctic is back on the agenda of the Russian authorities. To ensure efficient coordination and implementation of its Arctic strategy, the government in 2015 established a State Commission for Arctic Development. It was to serve as a platform for coordinating the implementation of the government’s ambitious plans for the Arctic, for exchange of information among Arctic actors, and for ironing out interagency and interregional conflicts. Based on a case study of the State Commission for Arctic Development, this article has a twofold goal. First, it explores the current Russian domestic Arctic agenda, mapping key actors and priorities and examining the results achieved so far. Second, it discusses what this case study may tell us the about policy formulation and implementation in Russia today. We find that while the government’s renewed focus on the Arctic Zone has yielded some impressive results, the State Commission has been at best a mixed success. The case study demonstrates how, in the context of authoritarian modernization, the Russian government struggles to come up with effective and efficient institutions for Arctic governance. Moreover, the widespread image of a Russian governance model based on a strictly hierarchic "power vertical" must be modified. Russia’s Arctic policy agenda is characterized by infighting and bureaucratic obstructionism: even when Putin intervenes personally, achieving the desired goals can prove difficult.
Meningsfull,menneskelig, kontroll?
Denne rapproten tar for seg konseptet «meningsfull menneskelig kontroll» som har dukket opp som det førende temaet i debatten rundt autonomi og våpensystemer. For å belyse spørsmålet om hva menneskelig kontroll er, hvordan det bør forstås og hvordan man kan «sikre» det må vi tenke nytt rundt forholdet mellom mennesker og maskiner. Ikke bare se maskiner som vertøy som mennesker kan bruke av fri vilje, men snarere se på autonome systemer i sin helhet der de gjensidige relasjonene mellom mennesker og maskin former hverandre og gir opphav til nye måter å tenke og handle på. Altså at både mennesker og maskiner forandres i møte mellom dem. Gitt en slik vinkling åpner man også for muligheten for å belyse dagens debatt om autonomi og kontroll på nye måter. Ikke minst at den utøvende fasen av en operasjon, liv og død-avgjørelser, er et for snevert nedslagsfelt hvis vi skal forstå hva kontroll er og hvordan det utøves. Vikitgheten av dette blir illustrert via en gjennomgang av prosessene og praksisene rundt militær targeting. En prosess der militæret definerer mål og beslutter operasjoner. Gjennom denne illustrasjonen ser man at beslutningstaking ikke bare er ett valg gjort på et bestemt tidspunkt, som avgjørelsen om å sende et missil mot et bestemt mål, men noe som er avledet av en rekke valg gjort over tid. Dette åpner opp for å se på beslutningstaking og dermed også kontroll som et resultat av en rekke praksiser og prosesser, distribuert over flere faser, mellom diverse elementer, der noen valg blir foretrukket fremfor andre. Et slikt fokus setter søkelys på de mer sammensatte og komplekse teknologiske systemene for datainnhenting, analyse og lagring, som spiller en nøkkelrolle i utformingen av valg og beslutninger, men som ofte blir neglisjert. Hvis vi bedre forstår hvordan disse systemene fungerer, hvordan de produserer kunnskap, hva de legger vekt på og hva de utelater, kan vi øke vår forståelse av kontroll og bedre «sikre» de etiske, legale og strategisk-politiske sider ved økende autonomisering av militære teknologier.
COVID-19 and the African Union. Challenges, prospects and side-effects
The African Union is coordinating the effort to contain the spread of COVID-19 in Africa, but the measures introduced are also significantly disrupting the reforms, programmes and operations of the AU.
Political Legitimacy in Contemporary Russia ‘from Below’: ‘Pro-Putin’ Stances, the Normative Split and Imagining Two Russias
This paper explores how urban Russians perceive, negotiate, challenge and reaffirm the political configuration of the country and leadership in terms of the ‘imagined nation’. Based on around 100 interviews in three Russian cities, three main pillars appear to prop up the imagined ‘pro-Putin’ social contract: (i) the belief that ‘delegating’ all power into the hands of the President is the best way to discipline and mould state and society; (ii) the acceptance of Putin’s carefully crafted image as a ‘real man’, juxtaposed against negative views of the Russian ‘national character’; (iii) the internalization of a pro-Putin mythology on a ‘government of saviors’ that delivers normality and redeems a ‘once-ruined’ nation. The paper shows that those who reject these pillars do so due to differing views on what constitutes ‘normality’ in politics. This normative split is examined over a number of issues, leading to a discussion of internal orientalism and the limited success of state media agitation in winning over the skeptical.
Renewable energy and geopolitics: A review
This article reviews the literature on the geopolitics of renewable energy. It finds that while the roots of this literature can be traced back to the 1970s and 1980s, most of it has been published from 2010 onwards. The following aggregate conclusions are extracted from the literature: renewable energy has many advantages over fossil fuels for international security and peace; however, renewable energy is thought to exacerbate security risks and geopolitical tensions related to critical materials and cybersecurity; former hydrocarbon exporters will likely be the greatest losers from the energy transition. Many of the reviewed publications share some weaknesses: a failure to define “geopolitics”; an unwarranted assumption that very little has been published in the field previously; limited use of established forecasting, scenario-building or foresight methodologies; a lack of recognition of the complexity of the field; a lack of theorisation. Most authors do not distinguish between the geopolitical risks associated with different types of renewable energy, and only a few distinguish clearly between the geopolitics of the transitional phase and the geopolitics of a post-energy transition world. A disproportionately large part of the literature is dedicated to critical materials and cybersecurity, while only a small part concerns the decline of former fossil fuel powers. Among those publications that do discuss the decline of fossil fuels, there is also an over-focus on oil producers and a lack of attention to the countries that rely heavily on coal, for example Australia, China, Germany, Indonesia, Poland and the United States.
Assessing the Effectiveness of the United Nations Integrated Multidimensional Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA)
The Central African Republic is emerging from a long history of slave raiding and trading, French concessionary colonialism, and authoritarian political rule. In December 2012, tensions escalated into civil war characterised by sexual and gender-based violence and near-gen- ocidal fighting. The United Nations Security Council authorised the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) to deploy in September 2014, under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. The Mission has the most complex of all current peacekeeping mandates. Of the three primary tasks in MINUSCA’s original mandate: (1) protecting civilians, (2) overseeing a political transition, and (3) extending state authority, the operation has fulfilled the second task, and is effectively working toward achieving the first and third. The Mission has helped to avert wide-scale killings and possible genocide, mitigate sexual violence, monitor human rights, protect vital humanitarian aid delivery, enable the development of female participation and leadership, build state capacity (especially in policing and justice), and enable democratic elections. In a creative, “bottom-up” approach to peace, the 15,000 members of MINUSCA have helped to establish dozens of local peace and reconciliation committees. Regional powers and MINUSCA have complemented this approach with a “top-down,” high-level, peace process that resulted in the landmark February 2019 Peace Accord. Several groups, however, con- tinue to spoil the peace. Armed groups control 75-80% of this lush, resource-rich, and land-locked country. The political economy of the conflict tends toward strengthening armed groups and spoilers. MINUSCA remains unpopular among many Central Africans. Dis- and misinformation about the upcoming 2020-21 elections and COVID-19 continue to under-mine progress. MINUSCA is helping to stabilise – providing a vital service to the country, region, and world – but it will be difficult to fully implement its mandate and depart a peaceful and prosperous Central Africa anytime soon.