Publikasjoner

Adaptation for autonomy? Candidates for EU membership and the CFSP

This paper looks at the specific situation of those European states currently candidates for accession to the European Union. These countries are expected to align their domestic laws and policies with the EU “acquis” to fulfil the admission criteria. Foreign policy is no exception. Indeed, the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy has become an increasingly significant part of the accession conditionality since the countries from south-east Europe embarked on the membership course. Arguably, the obligation to adapt to EU norms in the area of CFSP is stronger for candidates than for existing members of the EU. As a result, candidates might eventually enjoy more foreign policy autonomy once inside the EU than they did before accession. There is a risk that this discrepancy between the requirements of pre-accession adaptation and the relative post-accession autonomy may have a negative impact on integration in the field of foreign policy.

The Russian Far East and Russian Security Policy in the Asia-Pacific Region

Russia's Turn to the East - Domestic Policymaking and Regional Cooperation

This book is open access under a CC BY license. This book explores if and how Russian policies towards the Far East region of the country – and East Asia more broadly – have changed since the onset of the Ukraine crisis and Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Following the 2014 annexation and the subsequent enactment of a sanctions regime against the country, the Kremlin has emphasized the eastern vector in its external relations. But to what extent has Russia’s 'pivot to the East' intensified or changed in nature – domestically and internationally – since the onset of the current crisis in relations with the West? Rather than taking the declared 'pivot' as a fact and exploring the consequences of it, the contributors to this volume explore whether a pivot has indeed happened or if what we see today is the continuation of longer-duration trends, concerns and ambitions.

Statsbygging, sårbare stater og internasjonal krisehandtering

Dette kapitlet går gjennom og skisserer de viktigste utfordringene det internasjonale samfunn står ovenfor i forsøk på krisehandtering i fattige og sårbare stater. Dette betyr at den type krisehandtering som dette kapitelet er opptatt av er knyttet til internasjonale operasjoner i land hvor statsmakt er svært svekket og omstridt. Dette er land som befinner seg i en langvarig politisk, sosial og økonomisk krise. Slike land er ikke kun fattige, men også i tilstand av stor politisk og sosial sårbarhet preget av en eller flere politiske konflikter som har en voldelig karakter. Dettte innebærer at kapitlet vil først diskutere hva det innebærer å være en sårbar stat. Deretter vil ulike konseptuelle posisjoner innenfor debatten om statsbygging, internasjonale intervensjoner og krisehandtering presentert. Dette vil også gi leseren et kort riss av hovedtrekkene i debatten mellom posisjoner som grunnleggende er positive til dagens regime av internasjonale liberale intervensjoner og de som stiller kritiske spørsmål ved selve fundamentet for dette regimet. Kapitlet skisserer deretter utfordringene det internasjonale samfunn står ovenfor gjennom empiriske eksempler fra internasjonale intervensjoner og krisehandtering som på ulike måter griper inn i eller påvirkes av statsbyggingsprosjekter og prosesser.

Den globale flyktningkrisen - de synlige og de usynlige

Den europeiske delen av den globale flyktningkirsen har skapt et nyy geografisk hierarki av synlige og unsynlige flyktninger. De synlige er de som kommer til Europa eller har en mulighet til det. De usynlige er de som ikke har denne muligheten. Dette hierarkiet har store implikasjoner både med tanke på hvilke dimensjoner av den globale flyktningkirsen som synes og hvilke som forblir unsynlige, men også for hvilke typer av politikk som benyttes og hvilke prioriteringer som gjøres

Displacement, belonging, and land rights in Grand Gedeh, Liberia: almost at home abroad?

Conflicts over local land rights between groups considered as “sons of the soil” and newcomers such as refugees can trigger autochthony-inspired violence. However, such conflicts are not always manifested, even when the conditions are in place. The question we explore in this article is whether such conflicts are less likely to emerge if the “other” is from a group with a longstanding bond of interethnic allegiance with the host community. Based on ethnographic data from host–refugee communities in Grand Gedeh, Liberia, we revisit previous attempts to explain economic and social relations between majority and minority groups. Our main finding is that in this part of Africa no prior special status will fundamentally alter the established ways of incorporating strangers into the community.

Wars and Warlords

The debate about war in African studies has gone through a number of important changes. Until the end of the Cold War, African wars were often fueled by super-power competition. After the end of the Cold War most were either solved peacefully or simply collapsed as external support dried up. Some, however, continued, such as the Lord’s Resistance Army war, and new ones emerged. One was the intertwining of civil wars in West Africa’s Mano River Basin. Another was created by the collapse of the Mobutist state in Zaire that drew in a number of neighboring countries. Lately the Sahel is also experiencing a similar trend. During the Cold War, conflict in Africa was often referred to as “war by proxy,” in reference to external factors as important causes of conflict. After the end of the Cold War, much more emphasis has been placed on internal factors, first ethnicity and later the so-called greed and grievance debate. The approach to the warlord concept in African studies is closely tied to these debates. In general terms, a warlord is an individual who has control over an area because this person commands armed forces that are loyal to the warlord. A precise definition of this phenomenon is therefore available. The challenge, however, is that this term almost automatically brings forth powerful images of rape, loot, and plunder committed by heavily armed, thuggish-looking men. Contrary to the relatively sober academic debate about wars and warlords elsewhere in the world, the debate about warlords in Africa has tended to be extremely politicized and used to name and shame specific persons. Until the early 1990s, the warlord concept was used sparsely in African studies, but then it became more prevalent, promoted by debates about the civil wars in the Mano River Basin, where influential scholars such as Paul Collier argued that African civil wars were driven by greed and not grievances. Soon, the warlord label was attached to almost all conflicts on the continent. However, this also led to the emergence of a counterdebate that questioned the validity of greedy warlords as explanatory factors and argued for a multidimensional approach that also took into consideration social, political, and historical factors. The outcome was a much more nuanced but also diverse debate, where many of the most prominent scholars question the usefulness of the warlord concept.

Need to have or nice to have? Nordic cooperation, NATO and the EU in Norway’s foreign and security policy

Nordic-ness and Nordic values clearly are embedded in Norway's conception of its foreign policy role. Nordic cooperation is also important for seeking information about EU policies for non-EU country Norway. While supporting and participating in Nordic Defence Cooperation, Norway's NATO-membership has trumped its relations with the Nordic countries as well as with the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy. A stronger policy of self-interest facilitated by its petroleum economy has also moved Norway further away from traditional Nordic peacekeeping and towards status seeking vis-à-vis key European allies. To what extent may recent global and regional political and strategic developments forge a Nordic «turn» in Norwegian foreign and security policy? What has Nordic cooperation to offer in terms of security and international status for Norway? The Norwegian case suggests that in the field of security and defence, Nordic cooperation is «nice to have» and more important than earlier but not necessary.

The BRICS: The Last Line of Defence for Globalisation?

In the West, the rise of nationalist populism reached a tipping point in 2016 when it generated both the United Kingdom vote for Brexit and the election of Donald Trump as President in the United States of America. In contrast, the BRICS have over this same period invested in strengthening their commitment to the United Nations, global governance and economic globalisation. Although their primary focus has been on inter-BRICS financial, trade and economic cooperation, they opted to focus their 2017 annual Summit on developing strategies to defend global governance, economic globalisation, free trade and collective climate action. How did we get to the point where it seems to be up to the BRICS to play an important role in rescuing globalisation?

The Challenge of Sustaining Peace: Enhancing and Moving Beyond the United Nations' Peacebuilding Architecture