The World Stage

The global governance of digital technologies is frequently framed around a contest between two competing camps.One camp is the so-called like-minded states, led by the US, its European allies and democratic states like Australia and Japan.The other camp, often dubbed the sovereigntists, are a coalition of authoritarian states of which Russia and China are the most prominent.Within this bipolar framing, the rest of the world, collectively labelled the digital deciders, are pulled between the two competing positions. While their choices have consequences for the future trajectory of global digital governance, less attention is paid to their own objectives and policy goals.In this episode of NUPI’s podcast series The World Stage, we welcome Arindrajit Basu. He is a PhD-student at the University of Leiden and previous research lead at the Centre for Internet and Society in India. Together with NUPI researchers Lars Gjesvik and Stein Sundstøl Eriksen, he discusses the limitations of not taking the position of countries like India seriously. He also talks about India’s approach to global digital governance, and how it fits within its broader foreign policy objectives.The conversation is led by Lars Gjesvik.

On 12 June Russia celebrated its national day, “Russia day”. This day is marked with concerts and celebrations in all the regions in the Russian Federation. This year, alongside celebrations from Moscow, Novgorod, Buryatia and other Russian regions, the news on Russia’s state-owned TV-channel Rossiya 1 showed images from the Kherson region, a Ukrainian territory annexed by Russia in September 2022. In the clip, teenagers were making cookies glazed in the three colors of the Russian flag. According to the voiceover these cookies were to be given to participants in the “special operation in Ukraine” – a euphemism for Russia’s war against Ukraine. In this way, Russian propaganda attempts to normalize a view of the “new regions” as part of Russia thus potentially expanding the boundaries of the Russian nation. In this episode of the NUPI podcast The World Stage, we take a closer look at everyday nationalism. This approach focuses on how people consume, reproduce and challenge the nation through ordinary daily practices. We also talk about everyday nationalist practices that take place in Russia and Ukraine amidst Russia’s war against Ukraine. Finally, we talk about the propaganda regarding the war which is conveyed daily to ordinary Russians through state television. Here, you will hear from J. Paul Goode, McMillian Chair in Russian Studies and Associate Professor at Carleton University, Marthe Handå Myhre, senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Urban and regional research (NIBR), Oslo Metropolitan University, and Natalia Moen-Larsen, senior researcher at NUPI. The podcast is produced as part of Russia Research Network (RUSSNETT) project.

Over a year into Xi Jinping’s historic third five-year term as President, China continues to make headlines worldwide. Many of these headlines now suggest not only that China’s rise is slowing down but that it is only increasing in controversial terms vis-a-vis the West. How are we to make sense of Xi’s China today? And how should we consider history´s role in this understanding, particularly in the context of the great power competition between China and the US? What are the problems with comparing today’s geopolitical landscape with the Cold War? And how should Norway navigate relations with China in light of the close China-Russia partnership? To explore these questions, NUPI Senior Research Fellow and Head of NUPI’s Centre for Asian Research Wrenn Yennie Lindgren sits down with Professor Odd Arne Westad of Yale University and Professor Iver B. Neumann who is Director Fridtjof Nansen Institute (FNI). This episode of The World Stage is a part of the Geopolitics Center, led by NUPI.  

2024 will be an important election year on both sides of the Atlantic. President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are yet again battling each other in this years presidential race. Whatever outfall, we know it will have implications for Northern European security, in quite different ways. Biden has an understanding of the importance of NATO in Europe, however with a rising China, will US resources continue to shift towards the Indo-Pacific? Will a second Trump administration be as critical and skeptic towards its commitment to European countries and NATO? Either way, it looks like Europe needs to be ready to take further responsibility for their own security. UKs General Election will be taking place in July this year. Polls are showing that a political change may be on the steps, and that Labour is likely to become the new governing party. What will this mean for European security? How well would Labour’s Keir Starmer cooperate with Trump on matters of security and defence?In this episode of the NUPI podcast The World Stage, we take a closer look at which implications the UK and US elections will have on Northern European security.Here, you will hear from Max Bergmann, Director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program and the Stuart Center in Euro-Atlantic and Northern European Studies at CSIS, Neil Melvin, Director of International Security at the Royal United Services Institute and NUPI Research Professor Karsten Friis.  The conversation is hosted by NUPI Junior Research Fellow Gine R. Bolling. The conversation is based on the report US and UK Elections: Implications for NATO and Northern European Security written by Max Bergmann, Karsten Friis and Ed Arnold, who is a Senior Research Fellow for European Security within the International Security department at RUSI. This report is published as a part of the trilateral CSIS/RUSI/NUPI research cooperation on transatlantic security, funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

As ad hoc coalitions (AHCs) proliferate, particularly on the African continent, two questions crystallize. First, what consequences do they bring about for the existing institutional security landscape? And second, how can the trend of AHCs operating alongside, instead of inside, international organizations be captured and explored conceptually?To answer these questions, Malte Brosig and John Karlsrud have in a new article in International Affairs examined the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) fighting Boko Haram and its changing relationship to the African Union. Through a case-study and a review of policy and academic literature, the article launches the concept of deinstitutionalization and how it can be characterized.The authors identify three features of deinstitutionalization, and in sum, the article unwraps processes of deinstitutionalization and identifies three forms of rationales for this process: lack of problem-solving capacity, limited adaptability and path dependency.In this episode of the NUPI podcast The World Stage, NUPI Research Professor Ole Jacob Sending sits down with the two authors to dig into the article and its findings.Malte Brosig is a Professor at University of the Witwatersrand. John Karlsrud is a Research Professor at NUPI.

Why should we connect the environment to issues of peace and conflict? And in a world of dramatically increased geopolitical tensions, is it possible for cooperation on climate change and environmental issues to contribute to positive change at the level of great power politics? In this episode, Ashok Swain (Uppsala University) and Cedric de Coning (NUPI) talk about these issues with Thor Olav Iversen (NUPI).

The Arctic continues to be transformed and impacted by global forces, from declining sea ice on the Arctic Ocean, through new summers of devastating wildland fires, to the wide-reaching political consequences of Russia's war against Ukraine.The Arctic is also a vibrant and varied region and homeland, and marked by three decades of post Cold War efforts at strengthening circumpolar governance.What options are there for moving Arctic governance forward, and what needs to be done first?In this episode of The World Stage NUPI Research Professor Elana Wilson-Rowe is joined in the studio by Edward Alexander, co-chair of the Gwich'in Council International, and Jennifer Spence, who is a Senior Fellow at the Arctic Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School.

2023 marked 75 years of peacekeeping missions in the UN. In this time, more than 70 peacekeeping operations have been deployed by the UN. Hundreds and thousands of military personnel, UN police, and other civilians from more than 120 countries have participated in UN peacekeeping operations.So, looking only at the numbers, surely peacekeeping operations must have been a success? Recently, however, several countries have asked the UN to leave, including Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo. So, what is this a symptom of? Where are we, 75 years after the first UN peacekeepers set their foot on foreign ground? Is this still functional? Has it worked so far? And if so, will it continue to do so in the future? What is the future for peacekeeping?In this episode of the NUPI podcast The World Stage, we take a closer look at what UN Peacekeeping mission are and whether they have been successful.In this episode you’ll hear from David Haeri, (Director, Policy, Evaluation and Training Division, UN Peacekeeping) Annika Hilding Norberg (Head of Peace Operations and Peacebuilding, Geneva Centre for Security Policy), Tor Henrik Andersen (Minister Counsellor, Peace and Security, Africa, Norwegian Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York) and NUPI Research Professor Cedric de Coning.