Autonomy or integration? Small-state responses to a changing European security landscape
Is there a pattern in how small European states, inside and outside of the EU, adapt and adjust to EU foreign and security policy? This article introduces a Forum in Global Affairs, discussing how small states are responding to a changing European security landscape. We assess selected European small states’ room for manoeuvre within various fields under the EU external action, and within EU institutional structures more broadly – as part of everyday diplomatic interactions in Brussels and in the context of the rotating EU presidency. As the European integration process enters a new phase, possibly marked by a trend of more differentiated integration and flexibility of individual attachments, small states will continue to face the choice between formal autonomy and integration, and between de facto hesitance and adaptability. With Brexit, the remaining large member states may become more influential, but small states will collectively have a majority of the votes and total population. Perhaps the coming era of European integration will become the era of small states?
South Sudan: A Political Economy Analysis
This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the current state of South Sudan. A main argument is that its political economy is fundamentally atypical: achieving independence in 2011 and dissolving into renewed civil war in 2013, South Sudan is suffering the crisis of a weak, neo-patrimonial guerrilla government, with fragmented military-political systems that stretch across its extensive borderlands. This report locates the current crisis within a longer and deeper context, and explores the power dynamics and centrifugal destructive forces that drive patterns of extractive, violent governance. These forces underpin today’s economic and state collapse, civil war, famine, the flight of its people, and their local tactics of survival.
Transatlantic Troubles and the EU’s Pivot Toward Asia
The G20 Summit in Hamburg demonstrated that the geopolitical landscape is rapidly changing. The U.S. is no longer the only leader—it has to share the scene with China, Europe, and Russia, among others. In light of the changing landscape, the EU and China have begun to redefine their relationship. For years, Europe has sought to find the best way to adjust to the rise of China and growth in Asia. A key factor in the EU’s ties to China was always its relationship with the United States. However, President Donald Trump has brought new uncertainties to the transatlantic alliance. How will this affect the European “Pivot to Asia?”
Brexit, EU, EØS og Noreg - eit Europa i endring
Kva er konsekvensane av dei store endringane i Europa? Korleis vil små statar klare å tilpasse seg desse endringane?
Internasjonal intervensjon og lokal politikk: Innsikt frå Aceh
Fabio Scarpello gjestar NUPI for å presetere boka "International Interventions and Local Politics: Fragmented States and the Politics of Scale".
EUs strategi for Sentral-Asia: Partnarskap for berekraftig utvikling
Korleis kan EU bidra til at landa i Sentral-Asia held fram med å utvikle seg i rett retning?
Den ukrainske energimarknaden er i endring: korleis lykkast i ein ny geopolitisk setting?
NUPI og NUCC inviterer leiande ekspertar til å dele sitt syn på den siste utviklinga på den ukrainske energimarknaden.
Digitale Sabotasjeangrep mot Norsk Petroleumssektor (DISP)
I dette prosjektet arbeider forskerne med å kartlegge trusselbildet og den historiske bruken av digitale våpen mot kritisk infrastruktur, samt redegjør for problematikk og uklarheter i...
Russia’s Return as True Europe, 1991–2017
Since the reign of Peter the Great, Russia has identified itself in opposition to Europe. In the late 1980s, Michael Gorbachev and associates forged a liberal representation of Europe and initiated a Western-oriented foreign policy. Against this westernizing or liberal representation of Europe stood what was at first a makeshift group of old Communists and right-wing nationalists, who put forward an alternative representation that began to congeal around the idea that the quintessentially Russian trait was to have a strong state. This article traces how this latter position consolidated into a full-fledged xenophobic nationalist representation of Europe, which marginalized first other forms of nationalism and then, particularly since 2013, liberal representations of Europe. The official Russian stance is now that Russia itself is True Europe, a conservative great power that guards Europe’s true Christian heritage against the False Europe of decadence and depravity to its west.