Differentiating Hybrid Threats against the High North and Baltic Sea regions

Russia’s grey-zone threats and actions are a major concern for bordering countries who are on the receiving end of such actions, both physical and cyber. This policy brief examines how such hybrid threats affect countries in the High North and Baltic Sea regions and evaluates the challenges related to response and countermeasures. NATO's policy is that the member nations are responsible for building resilience and responding to hybrid threats or attacks. To avoid invalid interpretations or paralysis in assessment and response to such complex and diverse threats, they should be differentiated and dealt with separately rather than boxed into a wide cognitive basket. This Policy Brief is part of the project ‘Norway as an in-between for Russia: Ambivalent space, hybrid measures’ financed by the Norwegian MoD.

The Construction of Status in Security Politics: Rules, Comparisons and Second-Guessing Collective Beliefs

Tapping into international relations status’ research’s extended lineage, this chapter makes the case for a thick constructivist account of international status dynamics that makes the construction of rules and comparisons central to analysis. Drawing upon the work of Robert Gilpin and Nicholas Onuf, the chapter’s approach enables the exploration of how the rules governing status competitions emerge, why some rules become agreed upon and others contested, and the consequences of these processes of rule formation. While this framework requires a gestalt switch for conventional status research, this chapter argues that it is possible to do so while remaining consistent with status research’s core definition of status. The value of the framework is illustrated via a case study of how the rules of the nuclear status competition emerged and solidified over the course of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks between the Soviet Union and United States (1969–79).

Review of Transnational Lawmaking Coalitions for Human Rights

A strong contribution to international studies’ scientific ontology of human rights processes, Transnational Lawmaking Coalitions in Human Rights illuminates and dissects a hitherto underappreciated but influential process through which non-state actors influence the interpretation and thus implementation of human rights law. Indeed, getting down among the weeds of human rights treaty bodies’ lawmaking processes, Reiners emerges with a compelling account of how an informal, important if transient, actor, she calls Transnational Lawmaking Coalitions (TLCs), clarifies human rights law and thereby structure states’ human rights obligations through drafting general comments. Operating across the boundaries of inter-governmental organizations, Reiners documents how TLCs emerge out of the “opportunity structure” generated by the recurring need to clarify human rights law and the chronic underfunding of human rights treaty expert bodies (p. 55). Composing of at least one of the treaty body’s appointed expert members, we have a case of TLC when members of the expert body then reach outside to utilize expertise within their professional networks for drafting a general comment. According to Reiners, working outside formal processes, these expert networks conduct their work on a shoestring budget lubricated primarily with the social capital, professional recognition, and moral conviction (p. 57). While lacking formalized processes for engaging with stakeholders, TLCs nonetheless render what can become authoritative new human rights interpretations, largely beyond the purvey or at least the direct influence of the state parties (pp. 22–4). As Reiners put it, TLCs “emerge from” and “operate through” the formal bodies but are not formal institutional entities themselves nor directly employed by state parties (p. 46). In this way, TLCs can be understood as exploiting a loophole in the human rights architecture through which non-state actors can bypass deadlocked formal treaty-making processes (p. 142–3).

Will a more humble NATO be a stronger NATO?

NATO’s narrative about itself has changed. However, this narrative is unlikely to gain much support elsewhere in the world, claim the authors of this op-ed in Aftenposten. NATO turns 75 and describes itself as "the world’s most successful military alliance". Like all other viable international actors, NATO must be able to look itself in the mirror and critically reflect on its own actions to maintain legitimacy both among its own populations and in the wider world, and, if necessary, adjust its course. This article, based on a longer analysis published in the journal Contemporary Security Policy, is an attempt to contribute to this reflection.

How are these two supposed to cooperate?

They don’t have much in common, Donald Trump and Keir Starmer. But does that mean we are about to see a British showdown with the United States? In this op-ed in Dagsavisen, NUPI researchers Øyvind Svendsen and Paul Beaumont raise this question. At first glance, the two leaders appear to be diametrical opposites. On one side, the somewhat rigid social democrat and human rights lawyer Starmer; on the other, the ruthless rule-breaker Trump. Can they cooperate at all? Must the British now break away from their special relationship with their American guiding star?

Tourists as a Means of Power

For many in Norway, Chinese tourists represent an important source of income. For China, tourism is hardline politics. Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide (Arbeiderpartiet) recently told Aftenposten that we must exercise caution regarding Chinese investments in critical infrastructure, but that this does not preclude a future free trade agreement. Minister of Culture Lubna Jaffery (Arbeiderpartiet) also seeks to strengthen cooperation with China. It is reasonable to question whether the government fully understands Chinese power politics. As China expert Torbjørn Færøvik emphasizes, it is one thing to work towards cooperation and dialogue with China, “but weaving the Norwegian economy into the Chinese one is something quite different.”

In the Blind Spot of the Norwegian EU Debate: EU Health Preparedness After COVID-19

This article challenges the Norwegian EU debate by focusing on an overlooked but increasingly important policy area for European cooperation, namely health policy and more specifically health preparedness. The EU has started major processes related to health preparedness in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Norway takes part in some of these processes through the EEA agreement but is also currently excluded from important areas. This article serves two purposes: it maps ongoing EU development in health preparedness and assesses the extent to which this area should occupy more space in the Norwegian EU debate, including the sustainability of the current status quo. The article further identifies two specific areas that are central to Norway in relation to health preparedness. The first concerns the development of the EU’s Health Union and Norway’s political work to ensure formal access to all the initiatives that have recently been developed in the EU. The other concerns the effects that the EU’s intensified work on health preparedness has for the Norwegian health industry. The article concludes that Norwegian vulnerabilities are particularly linked to Norway’s political role as an EU outsider, but that these vulnerabilities must be considered in the context of any contribution the Norwegian health industry can make in the European health market if Norway becomes more closely connected to the Health Union.

How do donors integrate climate policy and development cooperation? An analysis of the development aid policies of 42 donor countries

This article assesses how donor countries integrate climate action into their development aid policies. An analytical framework is developed for the systematic comparison of development aid policies along three dimensions: hierarchy of policy objectives, types of measures the donors implement, and linkages to international climate negotiations. Analyzing the development aid policies of 42 donors, we find that only three have redesigned their development aid policies to fully integrate climate policy concerns. Instead, donors treat climate change as a thematic priority area. This includes several donors that are currently not obliged to provide climate finance under the UNFCCC. Furthermore, five major donor countries emphasize the use of diverse foreign policy tools to support climate action in developing countries. Importantly, we identify how other development goals (poverty, gender) are integrated with climate policy goals. Only two donor countries clearly separate development aid and climate finance. Luxembourg states that its climate finance pledge is additional to development, while New Zealand has a separate climate finance strategy where the allocation of funds is based on climate mitigation effectiveness concerns.

Expelled from the Fairytale: The Impact of the Dissident Legacy on Post-1989 Central European Politics

To understand the political dimension of dissident legacies, we need first to understand the components that “made” the dissidents and follow their reconfiguration after 1989, leading to initial empowerment followed by gradual demise of the liberal post-dissident elite. Dissidence in the form that first appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s in central and eastern Europe constituted a particular mode of political practice, combining open, non-violent dissent with universalist moral claims. The phenomenon of dissidentism was transnational, as political empowerment of oppositionists was achieved through a particular network of relationships between domestic audiences, repressive regimes, and Western media, social movements, trade unions, political parties, and policymakers. The specificities of the dissidents’ empowerment can partly explain key features of post-dissident politics and the visible backlash against former prominent dissidents, which has contributed to the rise of illiberalism and to democratic backsliding. This article traces the post-1989 trajectories of a few who belonged among central Europe’s most prominent representatives in this symbolic category, to try to explain the causes and character of the swift backlash against them—or as Václav Havel put it, their “expulsion from the fairytale.” Three pillars of dissident political power turned into the roots of their demise. First, critics question the dissidents’ uniqueness and rewrite their master narrative. Further, we see a clash of representations that results from the dissidents’ transnational empowerment, and third, the broader anti-elite and anti-intellectual tendencies that always accompanied dissidence as its shadow became amplified by more recent populist rhetoric.

The urgent need for social science and humanities knowledge for climate action in Europe