Center
Norwegian Centre for Geopolitics
Head of Center for Geopolitics
Events
The Centre will strengthen knowledge about international power relations and the positions of the major powers, and how this affects Norway's interests and politics.
The world is in a period of sharp intensification of political and economic rivalry. Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine is an expression of this, but political and economic tensions between the US and China have also increased. The rivalry now takes place under different conditions than in previous historical periods. There is a different distribution of power and geographical focal points, intertwined global investments and trade relations, several institutional players and rapid technological changes.
- PLEASE VISIT THE CENTRE'S MAIN PAGE FOR NEWS, EVENTS AND PUBLICATIONS FROM ALL PARTNERS.
The rivalry will have a strong impact on Norway. Therefore, we must prepare foreign policy responses and strategies based on new forms of geopolitical analysis.
The Centre is led by NUPI's Ole Jacob Sending and is a partnership with the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, UiT – The Arctic University of Norway and the University of Oslo.
Together, the Centre combines country-specific expertise on USA, China, the EU and Russia, regional expertise on the Arctic, Asia, Africa, Europe and America, and expertise on key themes such as security, multilateralism, growth and innovation, and energy and sustainability.
The Norwegian Centre for Geopolitics is financed by the Research Council of Norway.
EVENTS
- USA after the election: Consequences for the Nordics and the geopolitical landscape, at Sentralen, Oslo, 14 November 2024.
- The New Superpower: India's Role in the Arctic, at Youngs, Oslo, 10 October 2024
- Arctic Security Conference 2024, at Litteraturhuset, 12 - 13 September 2024.
- Evolving Linkages Between Indo-Pacific and European Security: Challenges and Their Dynamics at NUPI, 13 September 2024.
- The South Caucasus after 2022: Domestic developments and geopolitical challenges at NUPI, Oslo, 13 September 2024.
- USA, Kina og fremtiden at Sentralen, Oslo, 10 June 2024, 09:00 AM.
- International order and strategy in a new geopolitical era at Sentralen, Oslo, 4 June 2024, 08:30 AM - 12:00 AM. Sign up here.
- Global China and Infrastructure Power, The techno-politics of the ‘China Model’ of development at the University of Oslo, 29 February 2024, 10:15 AM – 11:45 AM.
- The election in Russia - what is it about? A panel conversation about the election in Russia, UiT the Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, 29 February 2024, 18.00 - 19.30.
- Launch of the Centre held on 26 October 2023 (in Norwegian):
PUBLICATIONS
- OP-ED: Fish and geopolitics (in Norwegian), in Framsenteret, by Professor Alf Håkon Hoel, UiT the Arctic University of Norway, Norwegian Centre for Geopolitics, Institute of Marine Research. January 2025.
- OPINION: India's Arctic imperative in The Hindu, by Abhjit Singh and Andreas Østhagen (Fridtjof Nansen Institute), 16 April 2024
- OPINION: Is it time for 'developing' China to start funding UN climate aid? in South China Morning Post, by Gørild Heggelund and Iselin Stensdal, Fridtjof Nansen Institute, 4 February 2024
- OP-ED: China - fish and geopolitics, in Framsenteret, by Professor Alf Håkon Hoel, UiT the Arctic University of Norway, 4 September 2023
OTHER ACTIVITY
- PODCAST: Hva vil Donald Trump med Europa? (Aftenpodden, 18 September 2024)
- PODCAST: How to Become a Hegemon with Daniel Nexon and Ole Jacob Sending:
Articles
Government allocates NOK 45 million to Geopolitics Research Centre led by NUPI
New publications
The World Bank in Ukraine – lessons and challenges after 2022
The World Bank holds a central role in the international civilian support structure and has mobilised over $90 billion for Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. The pace and volume of the the fund mobilisation is unprecedented, requiring new mechanisms and structures, and raises technical and political challenges as the bank manages its apolitical mandate amid war between two of its shareholders. This brief explores the bank’s role in Ukraine and the trade-offs this entails, highlighting lessons and concerns identified by the actors themselves, including sustainability questions tied to scope of support, trust fund organisation, and ownership and legitimacy of the World Bank programmes. The analysis draws on grey literature and interviews with staff and Norwegian aid stakeholders, including the Nansen programme.
The World Bank in Ukraine – lessons and challenges after 2022
The World Bank holds a central role in the international civilian support structure and has mobilised over $90 billion for Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. The pace and volume of the the fund mobilisation is unprecedented, requiring new mechanisms and structures, and raises technical and political challenges as the bank manages its apolitical mandate amid war between two of its shareholders. This brief explores the bank’s role in Ukraine and the trade-offs this entails, highlighting lessons and concerns identified by the actors themselves, including sustainability questions tied to scope of support, trust fund organisation, and ownership and legitimacy of the World Bank programmes. The analysis draws on grey literature and interviews with staff and Norwegian aid stakeholders, including the Nansen programme.
Comrade, Customer, Client, or Critic? European States’ Engagements with China’s Belt and Road Initiative
Why do some European states embrace China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), while others keep it at arm’s length or actively oppose it? States like Greece and Hungary have welcomed BRI investments as a political counterweight to Brussels, while Germany and others have remained skeptical, despite their economic ties to China. To capture the variation in how states respond to the BRI, we draw on theories of incomplete contracts and relational contracting, which foreground recipient states’ agency in negotiating with a more powerful counterpart. Here, what shapes the engagement is the character of the relations between the parties rather than the content of the contracts. We propose four ideal-typical relations of Comrade, Client, Customer, and Critic, each associated with distinct policy behaviors and underlying drivers, to assess how the BRI interacts with domestic politics and historical and existing relations. We argue that the BRI does not necessarily change existing alignments, but rather that it may reinforce or be adapted to them—and that such changes are contingent on domestic and institutional recalibrations. The proposed ideal-typical patterns help us understand the different, specific trajectories that emerge in the four studied cases—Greece, Poland, Hungary, and Germany—and how they are mediated by domestic politics. Further, the ideal-typical relations proposed here can help us assess the political and economic significance of the BRI while also contributing to broader debates about possible changes in China’s global position and the building blocks of an emerging international order.
The Political Effects of China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Context, Competition, and Infrastructure Politics
In this special issue, the authors identify three contextual dimensions that are particularly important for understanding the political effects of the Belt Road Initiative (BRI). First, bilateral relations and domestic politics: how a country’s history of interactions with China, and the particularities of its domestic politics, affects how the BRI is received, negotiated, and politicized. Second, the politics of international goods substitution: the BRI does not operate in a vacuum but in an ecology of competing providers of infrastructures and related international goods. The effects of any given investment will depend on what alternatives are available to recipient states. Third, symbolic and ideational contexts. Beyond its material dimensions, the BRI can function as an identity or status marker—for China, for recipient states, and for adversaries—in ways that may carry independent political consequences. Engaging with these three contextual dimensions, the authors argue, is key to moving beyond abstraction or insulation, and toward a fuller picture of the political effects of the BRI. The contributions to this special issue all investigate how these contextual dimensions of the BRI condition its political effects across regions and issue areas. Thereby, they seek to bridge the gap between macro-level accounts of China’s rise, and the more fine-grained studies of BRI projects. In this introduction, the authors first review the evolution of research on the BRI before addressing these three contextual dimensions in more detail and how they relate to the contributions comprising the special issue.
Recognition and Japan’s Post-coup Diplomacy in Myanmar and Afghanistan
How does Japan diplomatically engage with post-coup countries? Officially, it does not maintain diplomatic relations. Unofficially, however, Japan conducts a vibrant post-coup diplomacy. Probing different forms of recognition, this article investigates how Japan manages its diplomacy with countries where illiberal, military governments have violently assumed power. Since the military government’s coup in Myanmar in 2021, Japan has adapted its policies in terms of magnitude, span and content to remain engaged in this strategic location. Similarly, since the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan in 2021, Japan has shifted its contributions for humanitarian assistance, political process and economic infrastructure. In both cases, Japan has crafted its post-coup relations amid intensifying great power dynamics on the one hand, and a changing domestic policy agenda for foreign aid and security on the other. Japan has developed its own distinct form of post-coup diplomacy that involves a ‘pragmatic’ approach to engagement and implied forms of recognition.
Utenrikspolitikkens mål er å gjøre innenrikspolitikken mulig
This policy brief is in Norwegian only.
Non-Western Visions of International Order
The scholarship on the concept of order has been expanding within international relations. The continuous upheaval of world politics first triggered a broad debate on the resilience of the liberal international order (LIO), which then led to scholarship on alternative conceptions of order, especially outside of the West. This review focuses on this body of research on non-Western views of order. It is structured geographically, taking a tour of scholarship from and on East and Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa, South Asia and the Indo-Pacific, and Eurasia. Although each region has its own intellectual traditions, we observe that these views portray the LIO in a less idealized form, exposing its hierarchical and Western-centered nature. However, while pushing for more inclusive and plural arrangements, these critiques have not yet amounted to the articulation of radical alternative ordering projects.
Energy as a tool of statecraft after Ukraine and Gaza
The wars in Ukraine and Gaza have transformed how energy functions as a tool of statecraft, revealing that contemporary energy-related power extends far beyond the manipulation of commodity trade. Direct targeting of electricity systems, fuel infrastructure, and even nuclear power facilities has become a central feature of warfare, exposing the vulnerability of modern, electrified societies. These attacks, combined with intensified forms of economic coercion such as sanctions, price caps, and market reconfiguration, underscore the inadequacy of the traditional “energy weapon” concept, which focuses narrowly on supply disruptions by exporting states. Instead, the new energy security landscape is shaped by interdependence, infrastructure exposure, cyber risk, and shifts triggered by the global energy transition. As decarbonization advances, vulnerabilities migrate from fuels to technologies, value chains, and critical raw materials, generating new geopolitical asymmetries and strategic dependencies. For European policymakers, these developments demand a reconceptualization of energy security that prioritizes systemic resilience, protection of civilian energy infrastructure, and integrated approaches to economic statecraft, defence planning, and climate policy. Understanding energy as both a strategic asset and a potential target is essential for navigating a future in which energy systems are increasingly central to conflict, coercion, and geopolitical competition.