Facing new threats: The US cyber security strategy
Cyber security and cyber defense are areas that are increasingly receiving more attention, but there are still major challenges for how a country will manage to deal with such threats. Victor Piotrowski and Ralph F. Wachter comes to NUPI to share his experiences about US cyber security and the strategy the country uses.
Hva skal Forsvaret forsvare?
(Norwegian only): Forsvaret av Norge opptar folk, men fokuset i forsvarsdebatten har vært mest på budsjett, baser og struktur. Det er imidlertid en tendens til at vi glemmer å diskutere det mest grunnleggende, nemlig hva slags trussel Forsvaret skal forsvare oss mot. Hvordan bør Forsvaret skrus sammen for å forhindre krig, avskrekke Russland, og kunne respondere alene og med allierte?
Vil USA fortsatt forsvare Europa?
(Available in Norwegian only): Har det noen effekt når Trump svinger pisken over sine allierte og krever høyere forsvarsbudsjett? Vil det få fortgang i forsvarsinvesteringene i Europa?
NATO-skuta ikke enkel å snu
(Available in Norwegian only): Alliansen har i snart to tiår fokusert på utenlandsoperasjoner. Nå har kollektivt forsvar kommet øverst på dagsorden, men i et Europa preget av økonomiske problemer er endringer krevende.
Cyberangrep - hvem har ansvaret?
(Available in Norwegian only): Digitale angrep er den mest sannsynlige trusselen mot Norge, konkluderte både e-tjenesten og PST med da de med kort tids mellomrom slapp sine trusselvurderinger. Kort tid etter avslørte PST at hackere, høyst sannsynlig med russisk tilknytning, har angrepet Forsvaret, Utenriksdepartementet og Arbeiderpartiet. Angrepene ligner veldig på angrepet mot demokratenes e-postserver i USA i høst, både i måten de ble utført på og hvem som er mistenkt for å stå bak. Frykten for russisk innblanding risikerer nå å skygge over den ubehagelige sannheten, nemlig at cybersikkerhet i altfor liten grad blir tatt på alvor og forstått. Hvem har ansvaret for å beskytte oss mot dette?
Nordic responses to Geopolitical challenges (GEONOR)
Which tools to politicians in the Nordic countries have available to them in a more challenging geopolitical sphere? ...
How The Joint Strike Fighter Seeks To Preserve Air Supremacy For Decades To Come
Since its inception in 2001, the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program has cleared several technical and political hurdles as it is nearing the end of its development stage, formally known as System Development and Demonstration (SDD), which is expected to be completed in the spring of 2018. The JSF is designed to be a game changer – with the combined air-to- air and air-to-surface capabilities – which means that it can both support ground troops and naval forces – when it comes to targeting enemy strategic targets during warfare. The JSF, also known as the F-35 Lightning II Program, can also operate in areas where the F-16 cannot. Furthermore, the JSF program has established comprehensive planning processes that seek to identify and analyze technological advances by adversaries such as North Korea, Russia, China and Iran as they seek to respectively close their military gaps with Washington.
Limiting violent spill-over in civil wars. The paradoxes of Lebanese Sunni jihadism. 2011-2017
Research on violent spillovers in civil war has often exaggerated the potential for conflict contagion. The case of Lebanon is a counter-example. Despite the massive pressure of the horrific war in next-door Syria, it has, against all odds, remained remarkably stable – despite the influx of more than 1 million Syrian refugees and almost complete institutional blockage. This paper, based on ethnographic research and semi-structured interviews from Lebanon, studies the determination to avoid a violent spillover into Lebanon from the perspective of the country’s Sunni Islamists. Recent trends in the scholarly literature have shown that Islamists are not inherently revolutionary, nor always dogmatists, and often serve many social purposes at home. The main argument is that the Syrian war has not been imported into Lebanon; instead, the Lebanese conflict is externalized to Syria. Lebanon’s conflicting factions, including the Islamists, have found the costs of resorting to violence inside Lebanon to be too high. Even those Lebanese Sunnis who have crossed the borders to fight in Syria do so because of domestic reasons, that is, to fight against Hezbollah on Syria soil, where they can do so without risking an explosion of the Lebanese security situation. Sectarianism, in the sense of opposition to Hezbollah and the Lebanese Shia, is the main driver of radicalization for Lebanese Sunnis.
Situating (In-)Security: A United Army for a Divided Country?
This volume examines Lebanon’s post-2011 security dilemmas and the tenuous civil-military relations. The Syrian civil war has strained the Lebanese Armed Forces’ (LAF) cohesion and threatens its neutrality – its most valued assets in a divided society. The spill-over from the Syrian civil war and Hezbollah’s military engagement has magnified the security challenges facing the Army, making it a target. Massive foreign grants have sought to strengthen its military capability, stabilize the country and contain the Syria crisis. However, as this volume demonstrates, the real weakness of the LAF is not its lack of sophisticated armoury, but the fragile civil–military relations that compromise its fighting power, cripple its neutrality and expose it to accusations of partisanship and political bias. This testifies to both the importance of and the challenges facing multi-confessional armies in deeply divided countries.