Publications
Preface - Russia's turn to the East
Pictures can sometimes be more revealing than words. If you ever sit down and look at a night-time satellite picture of the Earth, you will find that there are still huge areas on our planet that are not lit up by human activities and cities. One of the largest ‘dark spots’ in the Northern Hemisphere is found in the Russian Far East, or Pacific Russia. Here are enormous territories rich in natural resources like petroleum, minerals, forests and water – but these vast reaches are sparsely populated, and lack connective infrastructure. A closer look at the satellite image will reveal a tiny thread of light, almost like an umbilical cord, linking the Far Eastern part of Russia with the European part. This is the Trans-Siberian Railway that connects the Eastern and Western parts of Russia. The same satellite picture shows few traces of networking with the territories of the immediate neighbourhood – the brightly lit, heavily populated, urbanized and dynamic Asian economies of China, Japan and the Republic of Korea. It is hardly surprising that Russia has intensified its efforts at closer integration with these Asian neighbours, economically and politically. For Russia, this pivot to Asia represents huge opportunities, but it also entails significant economic, administrative, technological, cultural and strategic challenges. The contributors to this book examine the nature, speed and direction of the long-term structural shift. Rather than taking the declared ‘pivot’ as a fact and exploring the likely consequences, the authors ask whether there has in fact been such a new pivot – or if what we see today is a continuation of longer-duration trends, concerns and ambitions. The authors explore the relationship between integration and disintegration, examining whether Russia’s turn to the East has intensified or changed in nature – domestically and internationally – since the onset of the current crisis in relations with the West. In turning to the East, is Russia also turning away from the West? This project is a result of collaboration involving scholars from Norway, Russia, Korea and the UK, and has been supported financially by the Korea Foundation and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In preparing this book, we have also benefited from our involvement in the project ‘Developing Asia Pacific’s Last Frontier: Fostering International Cooperation in the Development of Russia’s Far East and Siberia’, working with partners in Russia, Japan, China and Singapore.
Budsjettknuten. Utviklingspolitikken kan skygge for utenrikspolitikken.
Vi lever i en tid med store geopolitiske omskiftninger og økt usikkerhet. Flere land er nå i ferd med å gjennomgå og justere sin utenrikspolitikk. I tider med usikkerhet kan det være hensiktsmessig å øke handlefriheten. UtenriksministerIne Eriksen Søreide har antydet at hennes førsteprioritet er sikkerhet, nærområdene, transatlantiske forhold og Europa. Å prioritere er ikke lett. Det handler om å koble visjoner med ressurser og oppmerksomhet. Trolig ligger den viktigste skranken prosaisk nok i den hjemlige budsjettstrukturen. See full text
Norge trenger en Kina-strategi
(Available in Norwegian only): Hva slags Kina-politikk er vi tjent med? spør Ulf Sverdrup i denne DN-kronikken.
Cyber-weapons in International Politics : Possible sabotage against the Norwegian petroleum sector
The use of digital weapons is a rising global problem. Society is rapidly becoming more digitalized – and thereby more vulnerable to attacks. These vulnerabilities are increasingly abused by states and other international actors: Information is stolen, and sabotage occurs. Politically motivated digital attacks against petroleum-sector infrastructure represent one such threat, but this has not attracted as much attention by politicians and business leaders as other security challenges in the sector. In an international crisis, Norwegian oil and gas deliveries to Europe could be attacked on a scale far exceeding what the private and public sectors experience on a daily basis. Such attacks could be aimed at stopping or hindering the physical delivery of petroleum, with direct economic, security and political implications beyond the digital domain.This report examines the issue of digital sabotage of the Norwegian petroleum sector by placing the issue in a geopolitical context, by examining previous cases, and by investigating the current security setup in the petroleum sector.
Globalization of intellectual property rights
Recent decades have witnessed a strong globalization process. This has been so for international trade and international capital markets, but also in the field of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs). IPRs were formerly in the domains of nation states. International treaties have dictated convergence in IPR institutions across the world. This paper gives a short overview of these developments. Incentives for IPRs are stronger for more innovative countries. Therefore, innovative countries traditionally had stronger IPR than less innovative countries. A negotiated global treatment (like the TRIPS agreement) is likely to be a compromise between the needs in innovative and less innovative countries. Such agreements may therefore be complemented with additional agreements among innovative countries. The European Patent Office (EPO), and the planned European unitary patent are examples. IPRs are also incorporated into new preferential trade agreements. Many believe that this trend will result in convergence of stronger IPRs across countries, to the benefit of innovative countries, but at the cost of less innovative countries.
Implications of stabilisation mandates for the use of force in UN peace operations
When United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced that he will commission a review of UN peace operations during the June 2014 UN Security Council debate on ‘New trends in UN peacekeeping operations’, the main reasons he gave for why such a review was needed, was that UN peacekeeping is now routinely deployed in the midst of ongoing conflicts and, as a result has had to become more robust.[1] This trend has been exemplified by three recent UN peacekeeping mandates, namely the addition of the Forced Intervention Brigade (FIB) to the UN Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), and the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA). These three missions have been deployed amidst ongoing conflict and they have robust mandates that allow them to use force in order to achieve the missions’ mandate. What sets them apart from other UN peacekeeping missions, however, is that they have all been specifically designated as ‘stabilisation’ missions. Only one other UN peacekeeping mission has had ‘stabilisation’ in its name before, and that is the UN Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). This use of the word ‘stabilisation’ in the mandates and names of these UN peacekeeping mandates seems to signal a clear departure from previous practice. What does ‘stabilisation’ mean in a UN peacekeeping context, i.e. what is the difference between a UN mission that has ‘stabilisation’ in its name and one that does not? And what are the implications for UN peacekeeping doctrine, and specifically its practices around the use of force, of this new trend towards UN stabilisation missions? In this chapter Cedric de Coning considers what stabilisation could mean in the UN peacekeeping context by analysing the mandates of MONUSCO, MINUSMA and MINUSCA, so as to identify what is different in these stabilisation mandates from other UN peacekeeping mandates. He then considers the implications of stabilisation mandates for UN peacekeeping doctrine, including especially the principles and practices around the use of force in UN peacekeeping.
Adaptive peacebuilding
International peacebuilding is experiencing a pragmatic turn. The era of liberal idealism is waning, and in its place new approaches to peacebuilding are emerging. This article identifies one such emerging approach, gives it a name—adaptive peacebuilding—and explores what it may be able to offer peacebuilding once it is more fully developed. It builds on the knowledge generated in the fields of complexity, resilience and local ownership, and may help inform the implementation of the emerging UN concept of sustaining peace. It is an alternative to the determined-design neo-liberal approach that has dominated peacebuilding over the past three decades. It represents an approach where peacebuilders, working closely together with the communities and people affected by conflict, actively engage in structured processes to sustain peace by using an inductive methodology of iterative learning and adaptation. The adaptive peacebuilding approach embraces uncertainty, focuses on processes rather than end-states, and invests in the resilience of local and national institutions to promote change.
Japan and Norway: Elevated Economic, Geopolitical and Gender Equality Cooperation on the Horizon
Op-ed: Bilateral ties between Tokyo and Oslo are set to converge, with multiple areas for cooperation.
Hvem utgjør en terrorist?
Etter 11. september har stadig flere ikke-statlige grupper fått merkelappen terrorister. I Myanmar ser vi hvor mye vold det begrepet kan legitimere.