Publikasjoner
UN Policing: The Security-Trust Challenge.
The demand for UN police is increasing due to the recognition that functioning local police is a central element of the UN exit strategy. UN policing was never easy, but the combination of an increasing deployment of UN operations in the midst of on-going wars, and the steady increase of UN police tasks without adequate increases in resources or training, has made UN policing even more complicated in recent years. Examining both the security and trust role of police in society, Osland argues that the main challenge for UN police in post-conflict situations is to close the security–trust gap. So far, most of the focus has been on the security aspects. The chapter asks whether the UN is set up to achieve both.
UN Peace Operations, Terrorism, and Violent Extremism
There are practical and financial reasons to give UN peace operations more robust mandates and mitigate and respond to violent extremism and terrorism. But the idea of UN peacekeepers conducting counter-terrorism operations is not without its challenges. Karlsrud argues that UN peace operations neither are, nor will be ready operationally, doctrinally, or politically to take on counter-terrorism tasks. Such a development could jeopardise the legal protection of UN staff; remove the ability of the UN to be an impartial arbiter of the conflict; and strongly undermine the ability for other parts of the UN family to carry out humanitarian work. However, peace operations should, in cooperation with the UN Country Team, strengthen their conflict prevention and early peacebuilding agenda, to remove root causes for radicalisation.
UN Peace Operations and Changes in the Global Order: Evolution, Adaptation, and Resilience
Changes in the global order are contributing to a more pragmatic era of UN peace operations. Peace operations are likely to become less intrusive and more supportive of locally-led solutions. Three overarching themes are identified. First, the degree to which a peace operation contributes to strategic political coherence will become a key measure of its effectiveness. Second, the principle of minimum use of force is likely to remain a defining feature of peace operations. Third, the scope of peace operations mandates may be trimmed down to focus on protection, stability, and politics. Whilst UN peace operations have shown a capacity to continuously adapt to new challenges, they will also remain resiliently identifiable by their enduring principles of peacekeeping.
Africa and UN Peace Operations: Implications for the Future Role of Regional Organisations
Over the last decade and a half, Africa’s peace operations capacity has significantly increased. African states have deployed operations of their own and they now contribute half of all UN peacekeepers. The African Union (AU) and the UN have developed a strategic partnership that plays out at the political, policy, and operational levels, and reflects the reality that neither will deploy peace operations in Africa without close consultations and some form of cooperation with the other. While the UN peacekeeping model is not found to be well-suited to enforcement, counter-terrorism or trans-national operations, the AU, sub-regional organisations and ad hoc regional coalitions have developed capabilities designed to address these challenges. These African capabilities help relieve the pressure on the UN to conduct such operations.
United Nations Peace Operations in a Changing Global Order
This edited volume generates a discussion about UN approaches to peace by studying challenges and opportunities that the organisation is facing in the 21st century. We use some of the findings from the HIPPO report as an inspiration and put both its recommendations and broader UN actions in a wider context. We identify four transformations in the global order and study what implications these have on UN peace operations. The first two transformations emanate from the changing relations between states and reflect the increasingly multipolar character of contemporary global governance. The latter two transformations reflect the changing relations between state and non-state actors. These two broad groups of non-state actors are fundamentally incompatible in their outlook on how and whether the international community should be intervening. That notwithstanding, both groups of non-state actors also force the UN and its member states to rethink the centrality of state-based approaches to security and intervention. In this volume, we identify four transformations in the global order and study their implications on the United Nations peace operations. We ask: - How is the rebalancing of relations between states of the global North and the global South impacting the UN’s decision-making, financing and ability to design operations that go beyond the minimum common denominator; - How is the rise of regional organisations as providers of peace impacting the primacy of UN peace operations and how and whether the UN can remain relevant in this era of partnership and competition; - How have violent extremism and fundamentalist non-state actors changed the nature of international responses and what does this mean for previously advanced longer-term approaches to conflict resolution; - How are demands from non-state actors for greater emphasis on human security impacting the UN’s credibility, and whether, in light of the first three transformations, is the UN even able to prioritise people-centred approaches over state-centred ones. Our core finding is that with the entry of new actors from the global South as important players in the peace arena, we seem to be entering a more pragmatic era of UN peace operations. As contributions to this volume show, there is a greater willingness to innovate and experiment with new forms of conflict management, including more robust interpretations of UN peacekeeping and an increasing reliance on regional actors as providers of peace. At the same time, the UN is facing a classic struggle between the promotion of liberal international norms and realist security concerns. The resolution of this struggle is less clear. The contributors to this volume emphasise the importance of people-centred approaches, conflict sensitivity and longer-term thinking as key aspects to continued relevance of the UN, but their conclusions as to how achievable these are by the UN are not as clear cut.
Conclusions: What Has the EU Achieved, and What Is in the Offing?
This chapter sums up the main findings and looks into challenges the EU will face in the future. This volume examines and addresses several questions dealing with the EU ability to project various types of soft and hard power in EU’s interaction with external energy suppliers and member states and their responses. The second part focuses on the future challenges in the field of energy and is based on examination of some scenarios for development of the global energy system, the EU’s own understanding of future challenges in the field of energy and finally on examination of the WEF assessment of risks and trends that may influence future developments.
Channels of Influence or How Non-Members Can Influence EU Energy Policy
External suppliers of energy interested in access to EU energy market use various instruments to influence the process of energy policy-making and promote their interests. This chapter examines how those external suppliers are present in Brussels, their interests in energy policy, the formal and informal frameworks they operate in as well as various instruments they have at their disposal to influence the process of policy-making in the EU. The focus is on the use of communicative and other instruments employed by Norway, a quasi-EU member through its EEA affiliation, and Russia, the main external supplier of energy to the EU and source of strategic concern, the two countries interested in security of demand facing EU preoccupied with security of supply and diversification of supplies and routes.
Introduction: The EU and the Changing (Geo)Politics of Energy in Europe
This introductory chapter has three purposes. First, it presents the background for this volume originating in a research project on European integration funded by the Research Council of Norway (RCN). Second, it explains why EU energy policy in this context deserves closer scrutiny looking at energy relationships between the EU and external suppliers of energy and the EU and member states. Finally, this chapter gives an overview of the content of this book and explains rationales for the choice of cases presenting how the EU projects its power, how external suppliers Norway, Russia, Algeria and LNG providers have responded and how the member states Germany, Poland and the three Baltic countries interact with the EU when implementing their energy policies.
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.