India in South Asia: Quest for regional dominance in a multipolar world
This report analyses India’s role in South Asia at a time of heightened geopolitical uncertainty and domestic volatility across the region. As India’s economic and strategic weight grows, its immediate neighbourhood has become the most consequential arena in which the opportunities and constraints of its rise are revealed.
Morocco’s climate policy at a turning point under the EU CBAM
Morocco’s climate leadership is now tested by the European Union’s (EU) Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which shifts attention from ambition to verifiable industrial performance. Despite strong renewable efforts, the carbon intensity of electricity and gaps in monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) readiness expose exporters to rising compliance pressure. The next phase of CBAM will also affect small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), many of which lack reporting and decarbonization capacity. Morocco now faces a turning point where climate ambition must translate into systems that support export competitiveness. A focused set of reforms can strengthen energy access, data credibility, and institutional coordination for a CBAM-ready transition. - Improve access to low-carbon electricity and streamline self-generation - Accelerate development of an MRV system with clear institutional roles, publicly available emission factors and reliable carbon emissions accounting tools. - Support SMEs with targeted CBAM-readiness tools, training and finance. - Consider gradual domestic carbon pricing to reduce CBAM costs and fund industrial decarbonization.
Borders Ending Nowhere: The Geopolitical Imaginaries and Practices of Russia’s Spheres of Interest in Africa
Russia has been involved in Africa since Tsarist times, but its involvement has ebbed and flowed. Nonetheless, the idea of Africa as an open political landscape in which Russia could act as a great power has been relatively persistent, often in connection with the domestic resurfacing of civilisational discourses on Russian exceptionalism. Recently, there has been much concern in the West about the expansion of Russian projection in Africa, with some suggesting that Moscow is establishing a sphere of influence. Our analysis of Russia’s geopolitical imagination and its subsequent practices does not lead us to conclude that a deliberate attempt to establish a genuine sphere of influence is underway. Instead, we see an opportunistic endeavour to assert and shape a geographically continuous sphere of interest (Russian: sfera interesov), negotiating with local partners forms of collaboration that reflect and prompt change in the international system.
From Lessons to Strategic Choices: Implications for long-term defence planning (StratLess)
This project looks at how militaries identify and draw so-called strategic lessons, and how this influences and shapes military planning. ...
A Pathway to Security in the MENA: Integrating Subregional Electricity Markets
Despite being among the richest regions in energy, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is facing security and electricity crises. Grids are beset with technical challenges and gas dependence, and energy poverty is high amidst conflict. Integrated cross-border electricity markets can alleviate power shortages through trade. Yet MENA’s three subregional power markets are underutilized, trading 2% of electricity generated. This policy brief argues that governments must integrate each of the three MENA subregional grids into electricity markets, expanding to Iran and Türkiye. This is the most practical pathway and the first phase towards a MENA-wide integrated electricity market. States must undertake technical, institutional, and market reforms to transform MENA’s subregional grids into resilient, efficient and low-carbon integrated grids offering short-term stability and long-term security.
INFRAPOLITICS: Strengthening Critical Infrastructure Governance for Resilience and Security (INFRAPOL)
How does the geopoliticization of infrastructures interact with critical infrastructure (CI) protection and governance at the national level? ...
Meaning-Making in Times of Trouble: COVID-19 Conspiracies on Russian Telegram
Many Russians harbor distrust toward government institutions and official information. Amid the uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic, they turned to social media for advice. This article analyzes how the Russian-language Telegram channel “COVID Resistance” contributed to the process of making sense of the situation. Based on a close reading of selected posts, we reconstruct four conspiratorial narratives promoted by this channel: “toxic vaccines,” “fascistoid restrictions,” “coronavirus as a hoax,” and “besieged nation.” We find that these narratives, despite often contradicting each other, served as a form of meaning-making, offering explanations that helped ordinary people navigate the crisis.
Norway and Space: Strategic Positioning, Allied Cooperation, and Exposure (NSPACE)
The NSPACE project explores how Norway can respond to growing great-power competition in space by assessing how space infrastructure shapes national vulnerabilities and strategic oppor...
India in South Asia: Quest for regional dominance in a multipolar world
This seminar will present a new report on India's role in South Asia.