Publikasjoner
The Geopolitics of the Middle East
USAs tilbaketrekking fra Midtøsten – lenge varslet – har fått Saudi Arabia og andre araberland til å søke flere partnere for å redusere sin sårbarhet og utvide sitt handlingsrom. Den geopolitiske delelinjen mellom øst og vest beveger seg nå vestover, fra Iran til Saudi Arabia. Den nye avtalen mellom disse tradisjonelle fiendene og Kina har et stort potensial til å snu regionen fra konflikt til samarbeid. Brief-en diskuterer det nye geopolitiske landskapet og dets implikasjoner for krig og fred i Midtøsten.
Norway’s Climate Policy: Don’t Think of the Elephant!
All Norwegian governments in the twenty-first century, left and right, have made climate action an important element of their diplomacy and domestic policy, while recently some political parties have even made climate neutrality and decarbonisation the core of their electoral campaign messages. Norway has played the role of an advocate for international climate action, for instance of rainforest protection. Moreover, government incentives such as tax levies have been instrumental in the spectacular expansion of electric vehicles. However, despite the self-promoted image of a climate policy champion abroad, Norway’s efforts to cut domestic greenhouse gas emissions have been modest since signing the Kyoto Protocol in December 1997. Norway is exporting oil and gas that cause massive emissions, but the significance of the fossil fuel sector for the country makes it difficult to find alternatives and seriously consider rapid phase out. That said, a debate on the future of the oil and gas sector is ongoing. Whilst Norway’s point of departure in an imminent transition is rather favourable, the lack of progress is due to insufficient political leadership and vision. Norwegian decision makers need to be bold in their choice of whether the transition’s main goal should be managing decline in the oil and gas sector or managing climate-related economic risks. Meanwhile, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the EU’s decision for a drastic reduction in dependence on Russian fossil fuels, the lifetime of Norway’s oil and gas production could well be extended by a decade or more. It is not unreasonable to expect that the last molecule of fossil methane burned in Europe before it switches to hydrogen and biogas—is going to come from Norway.
USAs demokratiske krise og dets utenrikspolitiske konsekvenser
Under og etter andre verdenskrig konstruerte USA en internasjonal orden som USA selv skulle lede. Denne til dels liberale verdensordenen (avhengig av hvor i verden man befant seg under Den kalde krigen) gagnet USA økonomisk og sikkerhetsmessig. Dette var det tverrpolitisk enighet om, en enighet som ble forsterket av måten slutten på den kalde krigen ble tolket på i USA: Den amerikanske modellen hadde beseiret kommunismen, og liberalt, kapitalistisk demokrati var, som Francis Fukuyama så berømt skrev, enden på verdens ideologiske historie.
Public resistance in Russia: Mobilizational opportunities and the effect of protest on public attitudes
Ever since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 the level of resistance against the Putin regime and the general protest potential in Russian society have been in the limelight. The decade preceding the invasion had witnessed the highest number of mass protests in modern Russian history. This Policy Brief explores one of the most successful of these regional protest movements, the Shiyes movement. How was the movement able to grow, sustain itself, and diffuse under Putin’s authoritarian regime? And what can this tell us about the protest potential in today’s Russia?
Whose Revisionism, Which International Order? Social Structure and Its Discontents
Mens skillet mellom status quo og revisjonistiske stater er godt etablert i internasjonale relasjoner, har forskere først i nyere tid begynt å foredle selve konseptet revisjonisme, og understreket at revisjonisme kommer i forskjellige former. En rekke typologier er introdusert for å fange opp dette mangfoldet. I denne artikkelen kritiserer vi disse typologiene, fremhever hvor mange av disse verkene fjerner den regelstyrte og kontekstuelle naturen til det som teller som revisjonisme. Ved å bygge på en forståelse av internasjonale ordener som sosiale strukturer, hevder vi at den revisjonistiske karakteren til statlig oppførsel bare kan bestemmes med referanse til forestillingen om de legitime mål og midler som er gjeldende i en bestemt internasjonal orden. Dette får oss til å skille mellom tre typer revisjonisme: konkurranserevisjonisme som er grenseoverskridende for det legitime midler; kreativ revisjonisme som går på tvers av de legitime målene; og revolusjonær revisjonisme som er overskridende legitime mål og midler. Vi understreker videre at det å fastslå den revisjonistiske karakteren av statlig oppførsel alltid innebærer tolkning og vurdering. Bekymringen for analytisk presisjon formidlet av utviklingen av forskjellige typologier av revisjonisme må derfor følges av en like bevisst bekymring for revisjonismens politikk – både i teori og praksis.
Asia-Arctic Diplomacy a Decade Later: What has changed?
Ten years ago, five Asian states – China, India, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea – joined the Arctic Council as observers. This article discusses how the Asia-Arctic Five’s policies policies and priorities have evolved over the past decade and what their hopes are for the incoming Norwegian chairmanship of the Council.
Solving Europe’s Defense Dilemma: Overcoming the Challenges to European Defense Cooperation
Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine has led to a transformational moment for European defense. However, Europe has a dilemma: it is spending more on defense but cooperating less—all despite three decades of political initiatives designed to improve European defense cooperation.
Ad-hoc initiatives are shaking up African security
The growing threat of violent extremist groups and how these groups operate across borders has stimulated the emergence of a new type of security arrangement in Africa. These Ad-hoc arrangements are providing greater accountability and flexibility than more established security agreements, write Cedric de Coning and Andrew E. Yaw Tchie.
Disposable rebels: US military assistance to insurgents in the Syrian war
During the Syrian War, the US and other Western countries trained, equipped and paid Syrian rebels to fight the government and, later, root out the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). When states use armed groups to attain foreign policy objectives, control is a key concern. The US sought to enforce such control over providers and recipients of lethal military assistance in the period from 2013–18. We investigate the parallel CIA and Department of Defence assistance programmes . We challenge theoretical assumptions related to the application of the principal-agent model to explain the dynamics of foreign assistance to rebels. We argue that, in the US strategy to control rebels, co-ordinating the providers and dividing the recipients of security assistance were essential conditions. Meanwhile, the delays in recruitment, the limitations on the number of soldiers trained, the short supply of weapons and the strict regulation of the actions carried out by the rebels all reduced the efficacy of the assistance. This way of instrumentalising security assistance helped the US and its Western allies to crush ISIL while avoiding a collapse in Damascus. However, this happened at the expense of rebel cohesion, autonomy, and legitimacy.
Why Terrorism Researchers Should Care about Criminal Responsibility
Criminal responsibility is a basic principle in holding individuals to account for criminal actions. Making exemptions to criminal responsibility when individuals cannot be held responsible for their actions is equally central, and most countries have frameworks allowing for such exemptions for reasons of serious mental health problems. However, despite the recent years’ enormous interests in the possible links between individual ‘mental health’ and involvement in terrorism, the issue of criminal responsibility has apparently so far not been the subject of much interest in the field of terrorism research. This Research Note makes the simple point that criminal responsibility should be of particular interest to terrorism researchers, for two main reasons: the centrality of (political, religious, ideological) motivations for defining a crime as terrorism-related and the sometimes-difficult boundary-setting between such motivations and (psychotic) delusions; and the political nature of terrorism-related crimes.