How to understand and deal with Russian strategic communication measures?
Russia’s use of communicative tools to promote the country’s strategic objectives in the aftermath of the 2014 crisis in Ukraine has posed a new strategic challenge to the Western policy-making community. NATO, the EU and national authorities have become increasingly aware of this new challenge, and have taken measures to reduce the negative impacts of Russian (dis)information campaigns.
Everyday sovereignty: International experts, brokers and local ownership in peacebuilding Liberia
The present article investigates how sovereignty is performed, enacted and constructed in an everyday setting. Based on fieldwork and interviews with international embedded experts about the elusive meaning of ‘local ownership’, we argue that while sovereignty may, indeed, be a model according to which the international community ‘constructs’ rogue or failed polities in ‘faraway’ places, this view overlooks that these places are still spaces in which contestations over spheres of authority take place every day, and thus also spaces in which sovereignty is constructed and reconstructed on a daily basis. Local ownership, then, becomes our starting point for tracing the processes of the everyday enactment of sovereignty. We make the case that sovereignty should not be reified, but instead be studied in its quotidian and dynamic production, involving the multiplicity of actors reflecting the active production of the state beyond its presumptive existence as a homogeneously organized, institutionalized and largely centralized bureaucracy.
Nordic-Baltic Security in Times of Uncertainty: The Defence-Energy Nexus
The report shows that energy and defence in the Nordic-Baltic region are closely interrelated. During the Cold War, the energy cooperation of Western European countries with the USSR was seen as an element of strengthening the status quo and reducing the risk of conflict. In the new strategic situation, when Russia is interested in regaining the status of regional and global power, there is a real threat that Kremlin will use Europe's dependence on Russian gas to divide NATO and the EU. The Russian military advantage in the region, the ability to block access to Alliance forces and the ability to influence its members through energy blackmail may encourage Russia to test NATO's credibility, increasing the risk of conflict in the region. NATO's ability to deter Russia creates a natural platform of cooperation for Norway and Poland. Both states should also be interested in reducing the Alliance's dependence on Russian energy resources.