Publikasjoner
New Political Economy of Energy in Europe. Power to Project, Power to Adapt
This edited collection details and analyses the dramatic changes that the international political economy of energy has undergone in the past decade. This change began with the increasing assertiveness of Russia when the oil price rose above the $100 mark in 2008. This, combined with the rise of shale oil and gas, made the USA all but self-sufficient in terms of fossil fuels. The collapse of the oil price in 2014-15, Saudi Arabia’s new strategy of defending its market share and the increasingly tense and controversial relationship between the West and Russia all worked to further strengthen the geopolitical dimension of energy in Europe. The global result is a world in which geopolitics play a bigger part than ever before; the central question the authors of this volume grapple with is how the EU – and European small states – can deal with this.
French status seeking in a changing world. Taking on the role as the guardian of the liberal order
France has a long history as a traditional European great power. But is this still the case today? The analysis in this article shows how French exceptionalism, often referred to as ‘grandeur’ is still the guiding principle of French foreign policy, but that it is being practised differently today. President Macron may be right in arguing that ‘France is back’, but it is important to note that modern French power projection or status seeking takes place through a set of very different mechanisms. The key argument put forward in this article is that French status is increasingly based on a type of symbolic power, and to understand the mechanisms through which this power is managed, insights from social psychology and Social Identification Theory (SIT) are helpful. SIT points to three different strategies for maintaining a position within a social hierarchy that may also be valid for international politics: social mobility, social competition and social creativity. While France has adopted different types of strategies in earlier periods (social mobility in the immediate post-war years and social competition during the Cold War), the analysis in this article shows that French foreign policy practices are now increasingly being legitimised through the creation of a new narrative. Interestingly, this narrative consists of the current French political leadership’s eagerness to take on the role as ‘the guardian of the liberal order’, which fits nicely with what SIT identify as a strategy of social creativity.
After Crimea: The future of Nordic Defence Cooperation
Nordic Defence Cooperation (NORDEFCO) was originally about cost-effectiveness. The Nordic states sought to work together when training and educating their soldiers, procuring new equipment, and logistically supporting their forces. Faced with a relevantly benign security situation at home, with Russia regarded in principle as a partner, operational military cooperation was primarily about expeditionary operations far from northern Europe. Even if NORDEFCO never became the beacon of Nordic cooperation that some political speeches sought to paint it as, it nonetheless provided the Nordics with a flexible and non-bureaucratic framework through which various forms of defence cooperation could be pursued.
Sceptical diplomacy: Should heads of state bother to talk climate change science with Putin?
This policy brief illustrates how the Russian top leadership discusses climate change and responds to interventions and efforts made by other countries’ leaders and high-level diplomats on the topic of climate change. The policy brief presents one data set examining the distribution of the Kremlin’s attention to the issue and one illustration of Russian participation in international science diplomacy, using the example of the IPCC. The aim is to make recommendations as to how diplomats and politicians can, in order to foster more fruitful diplomatic exchange, better utilize the flexibility of climate change discourse within Russia and Russia/Soviet Union’s longstanding contributions to international climate science.
Kvifor forhandle fred? Ein analyse av forhandlingsstart i den væpna konflikten i Colombia
Konflikten i Colombia har i mange tiår vore tilsynelatande uløyseleg. Trass i mange fredsforsøk har den alltid blussa opp att. I denne artikkelen forsøker eg å forklare starten på forhandlingane i 2012 mellom den colombianske staten og FARC, den største geriljagruppa i landet. Drange hevdar den fundamentale forklaringa på at dei nådde forhandlingsbordet, ligg i den militære svekkinga av FARC på 2000-talet, som gjorde at geriljagruppa gradvis såg det naudsynt, for i det minste å nå nokre av måla sine, å slutte konflikten gjennom forhandlingar. Den nest viktigaste faktoren er endringa i leiarskapet i Colombia, der den nyvalde presidenten Juan Manuel Santos i 2010 såg ei politisk løysing som mogleg og meir attraktiv enn forgjengaren og tok pragmatiske grep for å skape ein levedyktig prosess. Også tredjepartar bidrog til sjølve gjennomføringa av ein trygg og hemmeleg prosess samt til tillit til prosessen. Forhandlingsstart i 2012 vert – ved bruk av structured focused comparison – samanlikna med fredsdialogen i Caguán (1999–2002) mellom dei same partane, der partane ikkje byrja forhandlingar. Case-studiar som denne kan hjelpe oss å forstå dynamikkar bak kvifor væpna aktørar vel ei politisk løysing på ein væpna konflikt. Forhandlingsstart, som Drange analyserer, må ikkje likestillast med fredsavtale eller slutten på konflikten, men kan gje oss viktige svar på kor væpna aktørar sin motivasjon til å forhandle kjem frå, og under kva tilhøve denne motivasjonen kan bringe partane til forhandlingsbordet.
International Cybersecurity: Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
Tikk and Kerttunen inform new entrants and nonparticipating governments of the discussions and outcomes of the UN First Committee Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) and discuss prospects for the 2019/2020 GGE. They explain why the Group will not able to provide answers to practical cybersecurity issues facing the majority of states. The authors call states to critically review their reasons for and expectations towards the UN First Committee dialogue on international cybersecurity.
Predictive peacekeeping: opportunities and challenges
The time is ripe for the development of a UN early warning tool that estimates the likelihood of instability, intercommunity clashes and armed violence in areas in which UN peacekeepers operate. However, this development would require at least some initial collaboration between the UN and the scientific world. Scientists have developed advanced analytical tools to predict armed violence in recent years.1 Yet, these conflict prediction tools still cannot be utilized to their full potential because of a relatively poor quality of conflict data. It is precisely in the area of high quality conflict data that the UN has a strong comparative advantage,2 especially now that the Situational Awareness Geospatial Enterprise (SAGE) system is being implemented. SAGE is a web-based database system that allows UN military, police and civilians in UN peace operations (both UN peacekeeping operations and special political missions) to log incidents, events and activities. The development of SAGE has made it possible to leverage state of the art methodological tools to enable predictive peacekeeping. This policy brief provides background to the recent turn to using data in UN peacekeeping missions, suggestions for what an early warning tool based on SAGE data would look like, and discusses the practical and ethical challenges of such an early warning tool.
Militser inntar regjeringskontorene i Irak
Militslederen Muqtada al-Sadr kom seirende ut fra det nylige valget i Irak, og nå tar han trolig med seg Iran-vennlige militser inn i regjering.
Adaptive Mediation
Traditional state-based and determined-design models are ill-equipped to help mediators manage increasingly dynamic, complex and unpredictable violent conflict systems. In this paper we explore an alternative approach, namely an iterative adaptive mediation process that enables the parties to generate solutions themselves, and that responds more nimbly to the challenges posed by complex conflict dynamics. With Adaptive Mediation, the aim of the mediator is to provide the benefits of external intervention without undermining self-organisation. When this approach is applied to conflict analyses, planning, monitoring and evaluation, the ability of mediation processes to navigate uncertainty and adapt to changing dynamics will be enhanced. In order for more resilient and more self-sustainable agreements to emerge, adaptive mediation requires mediators to apply a lighter touch. This encourages greater interdependence among the parties, and discourage dependence upon the mediator. As a result, utilising an adaptive mediation approach should result in generating peace agreements that are more locally-grounded, that are more self-sustainable and that are better able to withstand set-backs and shocks.
Kinship diplomacy, or diplomats of a kin
Familiarity breeds contempt, or so the idiom goes, and historically there are ample examples of how family-ties and blood kinship have not fostered peaceful cooperation. By contrast, metaphorical kinship has been seen to grease the wheels of diplomacy, creating and sustaining ties between different polities and underpinning a shared diplomatic culture. While metaphorical kinship and family metaphors are certainly central to diplomacy, my main argument in this chapter is that blood kinship, has been underestimated as a cohesive factor in diplomatic interaction. At a general level, I argue that notions and practices of blood kinship, both in consanguine and affinal form, mattered to ‘modern’, Euro-centric and noble-dominated diplomacy from its emergence during the Renaissance to roughly speaking 1919. However, both notions and practices varied and were deployed in different ways at different times, reflecting differing configurations of knowledge and power. In the renaissance, kinship diplomacy could be understood as a leftover from earlier ways of organising social interaction. With consolidating policies in the early modern period, kinship diplomacy became particularly important for families and polities situated in border regions between larger polities. Finally, much of the diplomatic culture often associated with the ‘classical diplomacy’ of the 18th and 19th centuries, was based not only on notions of commonality, but on invoked blood kinship and marriages across boundaries.