Publikasjoner

The UK withdrawal from the EU - Legal implications for Norway as party to the EEA Agreement

By leaving the European Union, the United Kingdom withdraws from all EU international commitments. The disentanglement of the UK from the EU, Brexit, will thus affect third states and organisations with which the EU entertains relations. Norway will be no exception, particularly in view of the many agreements the country has concluded with the EU, covering a wide range of areas and entailing a high degree of integration with the Union’s legal order, the EEA being the most important of these agreements.

Studiet av Japans sikkerhetspolitikk: 3. generasjons forklaring på stabilitet og endring etter den kalde krigen

Consequences of integrating foreign policy and development policy

There has in recent years been a clear trend among OECD countries to integrate their development and foreign policies. This paper has two parts. Part one reviews how some key donor countries have approached such integration, and examines what we know about their effects on the overall coherence and effectiveness of development and foreign policy. The working paper finds that there is a clear knowledge gap on the consequences of integrating development and foreign policy.

The G20: Inclusivity and Legitimacy - a Nordic Perspective

At a time of geopolitical uncertainty and strong interdependencies there is a need for more effective global governance. The G20 provides a positive force but there are well founded concerns with regard to its legitimacy and the risk of securing “club goods” at the expense of international institutions such as the UN. In particular, many countries from the southern hemisphere feel excluded from this elite group and continue to expresses their worries but they are not the only ones. The Nordic countries, among them Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland, constitute an economically powerful group of states that has been denied any membership so far. So what is the Nordic perspective towards the G20, and how can the Nordics contribute best to this forum of the largest industrial and emerging states?

Wielding influence in a new governance architecture: Norway, the G20 and the 2030 Agenda

The G20 is by dint of its membership – the 20 largest economies in the world – an important decision-making body. Moreover, the challenges currently facing established inter-governmental organi- zations (IGOs) arguably make the G20 even more important. The G20 is perceived as agile, e ective and powerful whereas established IGOs – such as the UN and the World Bank - appear to be bogged down by overly bureaucratic rules, organizational inertia, and a lack of resources to ful l their mandates. This was on display when the G20 convened in Washington DC during the global nancial crisis, and its swift actions, in all likelihood, prevented a more severe glo- bal crisis. For Norway, the power of the G20 as an arena for shaping global gov- ernance represents both a challenge and an opportunity. It is a chal- lenge because Norway has for the last half-century invested heavily in multilateral institutions both as an end in itself, and as a means to embed Norwegian interest within multilateral rules. This was made clear in the government ́s recent White Paper “Veivalg i Utenriks- og Sikkerhetspolitikken.” The G20 may pose a challenge if its seen to undermine the credibility of multilateral institutions with regard to uphold established rules. This in turn, may reduce Norway ́s ability to in uence global governance through these multilateral institutions. It is an opportunity to the degree that the G20 can strengthen global governance on key areas of importance for Norway, such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The G20 also rep- resents an underexplored channel for wielding in uence on other issues, which requires a different type of strategy than the one pur- sued vis a vis multilateral institutions.

Female heroes in a man's world: The construction of female heroes in Kyrgyzstan's symbolic nation-building

This article explores how Kurmanzhan Datka and other female heroes fit into the heavily male-dominated narrative traditionally promoted by Kyrgyz nation-builders. From a reading of state-approved secondary school history textbooks, the article traces the construction of female heroes and discusses how this construction contributes to the gender dimension of Kyrgyz nation-building: What values do these female symbols appear to represent? Which roles have they been assigned in the process of Kyrgyz nation-building? And what consequences may this have for the reproduction of hegemonic gender conceptions?

Plug and Play: Multinational Rotation Contributions for UN Peacekeeping Operations

In 2016, Norway spearheaded the provision of multinational rotation contribution (MRC) of a C-130 transport plane, together with Belgium, Denmark, Portugal, and Sweden, lasting from January 2016 to December 2018. According to Hervé Ladsous, then Under Secretary-General (USG) for UN peacekeeping operations, speaking at the UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial in London on 8 September 2016, MRCs can be seen as a new and innovative partnership aimed at providing a predictable supply of niche capabilities to UN peace operations. This report studies early lessons from the C-130 MRC and argues that for some key capabilities, MRCs can complement traditional force generation for UN peacekeeping operations. For member states, the ‘plug-and-play’ characteristic can lower the threshold and increase the incentives for contribution; for the UN, they can enable predictable and cost-effective supply of niche capabilities in key areas. However, MRCs are not applicable to all capabilities, and require flexibility and the ability to reform among all concerned parties.

Å kommunisere en konflikt – aktører i RTs dekning av situasjonen i Ukraina i februar–mars 2014

(Fulltekstartikkel kun på norsk): This article analyses the Russian public diplomacy news organization RT’s coverage of the situation in Ukraine in February–March 2014, the period that culminated with the annexation of Crimea. It finds that enemy images were drawn of the West/USA and of Ukrainian radicals, whereas the liberal opposition and in part the new Ukrainian government were subjected to «symbolic annihilation» – that is they were not represented at all, only indirectly in depictions of the enemy image of the other actors. Locating these portrayals in the theoretical literature on «strategic narratives», the author interprets them as attempts at achieving consensus around Russia’s own perspectives on international affairs, which include the promotion of a world order in which the USA is no longer a hegemon and Russia is respected as a great power.

Upholding the NATO cyber pledge Cyber Deterrence and Resilience: Dilemmas in NATO defence and security politics

This Policy Brief clarifies the key concepts of traditional deterrence and explores how these apply to cyber deterrence for the NATO alliance. Firstly a range of problems inherent to cyberspace itself and to the translation of existing deterrence models to this domain are identified. Secondly a range of alternative and complementary approaches to deterrence are proposes that can assist in developing a new framework for conceptualizing NATO Alliance cyber deterrence. A rethinking cyber deterrence as a condition of success or failure is argued for: cyber deterrence must be reframed as an ongoing process, utilizing national and Alliance resources from multiple domains as a means to establish deterrence and resilience. It is argued that traditional models of deterrence, drawn from the nuclear and conventional deterrence thinking of many decades’ standing, are inadequate for addressing the challenge of deterring cyber threats in the 21st century. The dynamism of the environment, the range of threats, the multiplicity of state and non-state actors, and the technical challenges of attribution – all require a reorientation of deterrence posture and practice. This reconceptualization must focus on cyberspace itself in an intensification of attention to its idiosyncrasies, but should also be open to a relaxation of orthodoxy in its incorporation of new outlooks and ideas, some of which may strain the established boundaries of deterrence theory. Full text Policy Brief online version: http://www.nupi.no/en/About-NUPI/Projects-centres-and-programmes/Cyber-Security-Centre/Upholding-the-NATO-cyber-pledge

The Rebalance to Asia Under Trump

Attempts to predict the future shape of President Donald Trump’s defence policy in the Asia-Pacific are a challenge, at best. Nevertheless, Patrick Cullen argues that, in contrast to early assumptions that he would initiate a more isolationist defence policy and break with the previous administration’s Rebalance to Asia policy, Trump is more likely to adopt a hawkish – if unpredictable – enforcement of the policy’s key defence objectives. Gauging whether the Trump administration will bring either change from, or continuity with, the military component of the Rebalance to Asia policy will require keeping an eye on each of the policy’s subcategories.