Frukostseminar: Japans tryggleiks- og utanrikspolitiske utfordringar på den koreanske halvøya
Nord-Koreas hurtige framgang i utviklinga av atom- og missilprogram har blitt ein alvorleg tryggingstrussel mot det internasjonale samfunnet. Junya Nishino gjester NUPI for å fortelje om trusselen frå ein japansk ståstad.
Building Bridges for Success:Rethinking Peace Operations Training for Complex Environments
Witnessing the changes in armed conflict since the 1990s, several global political-level agendas have emerged, recognizing the growing human suffering from armed conflict and the long-term consequences on societies. These high-level agendas, such as Protection of Civilians (POC), Women, Peace and Security (WPS), and Children in Armed Conflict (CAAC), address crucial issues that fall under a broader human security approach, and are to be addressed by peace operations. As such, they have at an increasing rate been included in strategic level doctrine and policy. The three global UN peace and security reviews published in 2015 stress the need for a shift to more people-centered, inclusive processes, establishing better context awareness, and investing in cooperation with external counterparts significantly. If peace operations are to remain relevant and effective in achieving international peace and security, this needs to be taken into account. This shift within peace operations requires that the preparation and training of peacekeepers follow suit in order to meet the challenges faced in increasingly complex environments. This policy brief therefore advocates for the adoption of an integrated approach to peace operations training, putting greater emphasis on comprehensive, people-centered approaches and contextual analysis.
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.
The Lebanese army after the Syrian crisis: Alienating the Sunni community?
This chapter analyses Lebanese Armed Forces’ (LAF) attempts to deal with security threats in the wake of the Syrian crisis and the implications for relations with Lebanon’s Sunni community. Examining incidents where the LAF has been accused of targeting and conspiring to kill Sunni clerics, the authors analyse the growing discontent among Lebanese Sunnis who are opposed to the military role of Hizbollah in Syria. Since the 2011 Syrian revolt, the LAF has been accused of being a partisan institution, reflecting the growing influence of militant jihadist movements targeting the army. The lack of a national defence strategy has forced the army to intervene on a case-by-case basis in a context of sectarian unrest. However, in contrast to the situation in Shia-majority areas controlled by one dominant actor, Hizbollah, the Sunni ‘scene’ emerges as more fragmented.
Civil-Military Relations in Lebanon. Conflict, Cohesion and Confessionalism in a Divided Society
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.