My Visit to PRIO

Posted by & filed under International Summer School

This is the first of two guest blog posts by students who attended this years Peace Research course at the International Summer School 2015.

“He reminds me of my grandfather!” The liveliest girl in our class had her back to the wall and was sobbing uncontrollably while PRIO’s old, too tall and too nice head librarian Odvar Leine, unmoved by the commotion in the room, was busy explaining the procedures and collections of his compact yet focused library. The man’s husky English with a sweet Norwegian accent was the thing that not only Jessica but all of us were going to miss profoundly in the coming weeks. Almost all our classes were scheduled at University of Oslo’s (UiO) Blindern Campus and we kept yearning for Odvar and PRIO dearly as the rigor of a world-class course and the attractions of the ‘city between blue and green’ would ultimately allow us to venture only to the UiO libraries.

Coffee and Peace Research. The picture is taken during a seminar in PRIO’s Philosopher’s Hall. PHOTO: Jelena Milenkovic.

The Peace Research Institute Oslo has a ‘War Room’ too, our course coordinator Anne Duquenne had smilingly informed us while she ushered us towards the roof. Indeed, there was food for thought. The war-cry that instantly caught my eye was: “Thinking requires leisure time”, with a short note appended: “and good food”. The large group of Asians in this batch of twenty international scholars couldn’t agree more as ‘good food’ was exactly the thing they were missing the most at Blindern Dormitory; hence they were unable to do much serious thinking about war and peace.Read More

Arctic fishing and Russian Maritime Doctrine

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Many Arctic watchers were glad to hear about the agreement on prohibiting fishing in the newly-opening waters around the North Pole, signed a couple of weeks ago in Oslo by Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the USA. Indeed, it was a significant step in protecting migrating fish stocks – but Iceland declared strong reservations. It… Read more »

Contestations over National Identity and Diversity: An analysis of French and British media debates in the autumn 2014

Posted by and & filed under Migration

How and when is national identity and nationhood debated, and what does this reveal about the boundaries of national identity? Drawing on analyses of opinion pieces from French and British newspapers, we examine how national identity is debated, contested and challenged in light of national and international news events during the autumn of 2014. This blog post is based on a Policy Brief from the research project ‘Negotiating the nation: Implications of ethnic and religious diversity for national identity’ (NATION).

PHOTO: Creative Commons/Jon S on Flickr

  • National identity is an embedded theme in public debates, spurred by events and societal change, but also often abstract and removed from everyday life.
  • Three areas of debate with conflicts over the boundaries of national identity emerge: Immigration and ethnic diversity; terrorism and religious diversity; state independence and union.
  • In discussions on immigration and ethnic diversity, opinions are often justified through expressions of and references to ‘national’ values.
  • Religious diversity is contested in relation to ‘Muslim’ terrorism and radicalisation, but also to notions of ‘Christian’ values in the secular state.

Mediations of national identity

Recent acts of terrorism have fuelled longstanding French and British debates on nationhood: who is French or British, and who is not. Events that induce fear, such as terrorism, crises and other disruptive events, often provoke public debate, change public opinion and alter traditional categories. In this Policy Brief we examine when questions about national identity appear in public debates and how national identity is contested. By analysing French and British media debates from the autumn of 2014, this study provides a snapshot of ongoing debates on national identity in France and the United Kingdom.

Read more in a recent PRIO Policy Brief ‘Contestations over National Identity and Diversity’.

How Long can Putin Continue doing Nothing?

Posted by & filed under Regions and Powers

The Swiss media surprised Putin with a question: What can you say to people who think you are nuts?

Putin has always preferred to postpone decisions until the last possible moment and to keep his lieutenants and international counterparts in the dark about his intentions. This summer, however, he is arguably wasting time and maneuvering himself into a corner, from which the only escape will be jumping into another spasm of hostilities in eastern Ukraine with the hope that a victory can cancel all other problems. The risks are frighteningly high, and Putin has avoided them for yet another week. But now August is approaching—a month that has traditionally brought Russia multiple disasters.

For the whole article, see Eurasia Daily Monitor, July 27.

14 March 1988: East Asia’s Last Interstate Battle

Posted by & filed under Regions and Powers

Since the Sino-Vietnamese war of 1979 – a period of 36 years – there has not been one single war between states in the whole of East Asia, a region comprising one third of mankind, and which was ravaged by some of the word’s worst wars from the 1840s to the 1970s. There have been internal armed conflicts in several Southeast Asian countries since then (Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand) but no interstate wars.

Vietnamese protesters burn incense to pray on the anniversary of 64 Vietnamese soldiers who died on 14 March 1988 during an attack by Chinese soldiers on Gac Ma island, one of the disputed Spratly Islands. EPA/Luong Thai Linh

Yet there have been some serious incidents, like the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan in 2010, presumably by a North Korean torpedo, and artillery shelling at a disputed part of the border between Cambodia and Thailand in 2008-11, near the ancient temple of Preah Vihear.

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The Important Debates – Four Years Later

Posted by & filed under Law and Ethics

Streets of Oslo following 22 July 2011. Photo: Jørgen Carling, PRIO

Four years have passed since the biggest terror attacks on Norwegian soil during peacetime. Once again we are solemnly commemorating the dead and expressing our solidarity. The debate about the potential uses of the actual sites that were affected is also very much alive and continuing. But are there other debates that we also need to have?

Our research for the NECORE project focuses on discourses, negotiations, identity and resilience in Norwegian society after the terror attacks of 22 July 2011. In our research, we consider among other things the four important debates described below – and different ways of approaching them.Read More

The China Factor in Russian Support for the Iran Deal

Posted by & filed under Regions and Powers

To the oil prices, and might they never go up – or down?

The United States needed Russian support to conclude the Iranian nuclear deal. As U.S. President Barack Obama acknowledged, “we would have not achieved this agreement had it not been for Russia’s willingness to stick with us.” But with U.S.-Russian relations at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War, Russian support came as somewhat of a surprise, even to Obama. So, why was Russia willing to support an Iran deal that even the normally anti-American Russian media describes as Obama’s personal achievement?

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The Air Tragedy that Condemns Putin’s Russia

Posted by & filed under Regions and Powers

Memorial to the victims of MH17 in the Netherlands. Nobody from Russia came to the ceremony in Nieuwegein.

It was a year ago last Friday (July 17) that the Boeing 777 Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down by a missile over eastern Ukraine, resulting in a loss of 298 lives. The shock of that tragedy awakened Europe and the wider global community to the grave risk that the localized armed conflict in Donbas posed to international security. Russia strenuously denied responsibility, despite its direct involvement in sparking the very war that turned the sky over Ukraine into a battle-zone, and despite supplying the separatists with the surface-to-air missiles that inflicted heavy losses on the Ukrainian Air Force and later shot down the Malaysian passenger jet. International investigations have not as yet delivered definite results, but various independent examinations of the tragedy have firmly established that Flight MH17 was hit by a single missile fired from a Buk-M1 missile system, which arrived to the rebel-controlled part of Donetsk region on July 14; and immediately after the salvo, the weapon was withdrawn back to Russia.

The rest of the article is in Eurasia Daily Monitor, July 20.

This Week in South Sudan – Week 29

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Monday 13 July The civil war continues to stifle South Sudan’s oil economy. The Central Equatoria state government condemned the SPLA of “brutality” after clashes with fighters from the Mundri tribe near Juba, which left at least 8 people dead. The SPLA later denied allegations of attacks on unarmed civilians. A hand grenade explosion in… Read more »

How Can States and Non-State Actors Respond to Authoritarian Resurgence?

Posted by & filed under Governance, Non-state Conflict Actors

Anti-democracy, pro-Sharia public demonstration in Maldives, 2014. By RLoutfy.

Two weeks ago, the Monkey Cage ran a piece by Matthew Baum and Phil Potter suggesting that the policy of “democracy-promotion” has gone out of style.[1] I think they’re right that in many circles democracy-promotion is politically passé and that, more broadly, democracy advocates are really having a tough couple of years. In the midst of pushback against democracy agendas within democracies themselves, they are also dealing with the “comeback” of authoritarianism. [2] Setting aside the debate as to whether the recent resurgence is overstated, it does appear to be the case that while democratic countries are questioning the wisdom of promoting republics abroad, authoritarian regimes are pushing back against civil society, activists, and oppositionists, seeing them as a direct threat to their established orders.Read More