Publications
Reflex to turn: the rise of turn-talk in International Relations
The field of International Relations (IR) is being spun around by a seemingly endless number of ‘turns’. Existing analyses of turning are few in number and predominantly concerned with the most prominent recent turns. By excavating the forgotten history of IR’s earliest turns from the 1980s and tracing the evolution of turn-talk over time, this article reveals a crucial yet overlooked internalist driver behind the phenomenon: the rise of reflexivity. Rather than emerging in the 21st century, turn-talk began at the end of the 1980s as a series of turns away from positivism and towards reflexivity. Cumulatively, this first wave of turns would denaturalise IR’s state-centric ontology while enshrining reflexivity as a canonical good among critical scholars. By the mid-1990s, however, these metatheoretical critiques of positivism had produced a substantial backlash. Charged with fostering an esoteric deconstructivism, a new generation of reflexivists set out to demonstrate the feasibility of post-positivist empirical research. As a result, IR’s turning also took on a different form from the 2000s: whereas the first wave of turns had mounted an epistemological and methodological attack against the positivist mainstream, the second wave set about bringing new ontological objects under the scrutiny of reflexivist scholars. This shift from anti-positivist to mostly intra-reflexivist turning was facilitated by the institutionalisation of critical IR as a major subfield of the discipline. It is the privileged position of reflexivity among critical IR scholars that is the condition of possibility for endless turning, accentuated by mounting pressures to demonstrate novelty in an increasingly competitive environment.
A Shared Commitment: African-Nordic Peace and Security Cooperation
Over the past decade, the Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden – have strengthened their relationship with African states and societies by supporting the African Peace and Security Archi- tecture and promoting African involvement in conflict prevention, media- tion, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding efforts. This report offers an over- view of the partnership between African and Nordic countries in peace and security from 2012 to 2021. It features original case studies on Nordic country cooperation with African actors and institutions, across an array of efforts, including support to peace processes, building capacity and training for inclusive conflict management, contributing to peace opera- tions, and advancing gender equality, climate adaptation and resilience. It also includes perspectives on cross-cutting themes such as women, peace and security, youth, countering violent extremism, and partnership with the African Union. The report aims to be a resource for the policy commu- nity, mapping African-Nordic cooperation, in pursuit of peace and security in Africa.
Climate Change and Arctic Security, Multi-Actor, Diverse and Distributed Assets and Modalities
Climate and Environmental Change (CEC) is driving highly variable operational environments for Allies and adversaries alike. While technology is often touted as the determinant for strategic advantage, this is not necessarily true in the Arctic where whoever has the most knowledge possesses more strategic options and can apply the knowledge to achieve strategic dominance short of open conflict. Rapidly acquiring precise knowledge while limiting our adversaries acquisition requires that we understand their patterns of obtaining information and comprehension. Failure to understand their patterns results in an inability to detect or mitigate adversarial activity. Futures planning attempts to do this, in part, but lacks the precision and rigor to provide concrete outputs that can be used tactically. By adding a framework that looks at multiple actors, distributed assets, and modalities, this lack can be overcome.
Energy justice and energy democracy: Separated twins, rival concepts or just buzzwords?
Many new concepts have emerged to better capture socio-technical change in energy systems from a normative perspective. Two of the most visible, popularized, and politically charged are Energy Justice and Energy Democracy, but it is the tension between them that has drawn recent controversy. Instead of arguing for the superiority of one over the other, this paper's aim is to demonstrate their differential contribution and areas of productive overlap using both quantitative and qualitative measures. It presents the results of the systematic review of 495 articles on Energy Democracy and Energy Justice in the Web of Science database, with attention to the geographical focus, scale, technology, and social groups dominant in both literatures. We find that both the concepts and literatures employing them are very closely related, almost like twins. The key difference is the failure of the Energy Democracy literature to engage with questions of energy poverty and distributional (in)justice. For Energy Justice, we find that despite lip service paid to, for example, the Global South, normative research in energy transitions sphere remains highly Western-centric. We highlight, too, that both terms are most often used as buzzwords and that this undermines knowledge building and the radical potential for change which is inherent in the two concepts and their applications.
The Evolution of US Military Presence on NATO’s Eastern Flank: Reassuring Allies, Deterring Russia, and Managing Escalation
Concurrent with increasing Russian revanchism and aggression from 2014, the US approach to military presence on NATO’s Eastern flank has evolved. Overall, the development could be perceived as change in rationale from reassurance of allies to deterrence of Russia by punishment and, in recent years, deterrence by denial. This has resulted in altered structures for presence, resulting in changes of dispositions on the ground that has contributed to increasing the credibility of NATO’s deterrence doctrine. The rhetorical offensiveness of U.S. strategic communication has also become more powerful and exercise activity scaled up. This indicates a change in US perception of escalating activity. There is persistent bipartisan agreement on the continuation of US deep-engagement in Europe, with similar perceptions in the US military-leadership. This underpins the theory of an “institutionalized practice” of military presence and Great Power Persistence. The enhanced credibility of US-NATO deterrence on the Eastern flank lowers the likelihood of fait accompli-scenarios. This has security implications for countries located elsewhere that Russia may wish to challenge, both conventionally and through Hybrid means.
Climate, Peace and Security Fact Sheet: Somalia
Somalia experienced its worst drought on record from 2021 to 2023, with an unprecedented five consecutive failed rainy seasons that displaced hundreds of thousands of people, undermined livelihoods and raised the spectre of famine in some areas. From August 2022, clan militias and the Somali armed forces launched operations against al-Shabab in some of the most drought-affected regions. As climate change and conflict continue apace in Somalia, the need for robust analyses and responses to climate-related security risks has never been greater.
Messaging Soleimani's killing: the communication vulnerabilities of authoritarian states
The capacity of authoritarian states to manipulate narratives and undermine the authority of western democracies is increasingly emphasized in International Relations research. Far less scrutiny has been paid to the ways in which the media environment creates communication vulnerabilities for these same repressive states. We address this research gap through a case-study of Persian-language commentary on the targeted assassination of Qasem Soleimani—a crescendo in the conflict between Iran and the United States. We examine how commentators on the two popular satellite channels interpreted Soleimani's killing and subsequent developments, and specifically, whether they rallied around the Iranian flag. The research method employed is qualitative media content analysis. The investigation reveals that the Islamic Republic did not benefit from a significant surge in patriotism among Iranian commentators; in fact, some openly applauded the attack. It was only when President Trump threatened to bomb Iranian cultural sites that the commentators rallied around the flag. The Islamic Republic faced a two-front narrative battle as communication attacks from within the national community intensified the information war with the US. The article concludes that authoritarian states are at a disadvantage when they require communication strategies beyond disinformation and distortion.
On safer ground? The emergence and evolution of ‘Global Britain’
Why did Theresa May’s government introduce the narrative about ‘Global Britain’, and how did this narrative evolve and manifest itself in UK foreign policy discourse in the ensuing years? We make the case that Brexit distressed the United Kingdom’s foreign policy identity, and that the ‘Global Britain’ narrative emerged as a means to consolidate that identity—at a time marked by uncertainty and political turmoil. Scholarship on ontological security has theorized how states employ narratives to restore and stabilize their identities when they become ontologically insecure. It has not sufficiently addressed how these narratives evolve, and the conditions under which they come to resonate with key audiences. We suggest that identity consolidating narratives are more effective when they are anchored in familiar spaces and contexts—what we here call ‘home turfs’. We show how filling ‘Global Britain’ with content constituted a process of moving from existential anxiety about the country’s future role, to anchoring UK foreign policy in and around such ‘home turfs’. Tracing the emergence and evolution of the ‘Global Britain’ narrative in official UK discourse, we find that ‘Global Britain’ gradually homed in on two secure narrative bases: first, security and defence; and second, the Anglosphere and Euro-Atlantic.
Militærmaktens plass etter Ukraina
(This op-ed is in Norwegian only): Et nytt Europa som formes etter Ukrainas seier, krever politisk mot og vilje hos europeiske ledere – samt betydelig militærmakt, skriver Karsten Friis.