The Indo-Pacific region has experienced a notable surge in the establishment and consolidation of new multilateral and minilateral frameworks, largely driven by the shifting geopolitical landscape shaped by China's growing influence. Notably, he Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), consisting of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, has advanced through intensive and regular...
Multilateral military exercises (MMEs) are largely ignored by scholars of international security, despite the fact that they tell us much about a state’s strategic goals and contingency plans. They arguably serve as a better indicator of a state’s intent than either studying discourse or policy documents alone or other metrics than are often invoked such as force structure, which may take...
This paper examines the current state of Sino-Russian strategic cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region through the lens of joint military exercises. Over the last two decades, China and Russia have conducted an increasing number of joint military exercises around the globe, both multilaterally and bilaterally. In 2012 the two countries launched their first joint naval exercise in the Yellow...
With the advent of the New Revolution in Military Affairs, the strategic environment that existed during the post-Cold War “unipolar moment,” when the US and its junior alliance partners could conduct combined arms operations with guaranteed air superiority and freedom of maneuver in the seas, is no more. Nevertheless, the fact that the globalized, hyperconnected 21st century will be a century...
Why and how are states inclined towards strategic preferences in foreign policy? Why do they prefer certain instruments of coercion over others? Part of IR scholarship advocates that a strategic culture approach offers highly relevant perspectives on foreign policy decision-making. The project seeks to investigate the role of strategic culture when it comes to coerce an adversary. From a...
While many consider Sino-American relations in East Asia central to future great power competition, scholarly efforts to make sense of this competition remain incomplete. Much of the extant literature features several implicit assumptions: that conflict dynamics are driven by Sino-American competition, that competition is best understood by evaluating the economic and military realms, and that...
Lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS), or killer robots, represent a significant yet controversial military innovation. Once activated, these systems can select and attack targets without further human input, offering certain advantages, such as a speed-based edge in combat. However, LAWS also pose legal, ethical, and security dilemmas, with advocates for banning them emphasizing public...
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to have a deep transformative effect on the character of war. While discussions on military AI predominantly centered on the implications of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS), empirical evidence highlights that AI applications extend beyond the notion of “killer robots”, especially in the form of decision-support and Lethal Targeting Assistance...
This article reviews competing understandings of the agency and moral relevance of nuclear weapons for international politics among two incommensurable worldviews in global nuclear politics: hegemonic nuclearism and subaltern anti-nuclearism. It argues that what (if anything) is considered a responsible nuclear weapon state largely depends on implicit assumptions about the agency and moral...
The rise of political polarization and partisan contestation over foreign and security policy has challenged traditional notions of bipartisanship and cross-party consensus in democratic countries. While partisan contestation seems to be prevalent, there are instances where cross-party consensus emerges. This paper theorizes a novel causal mechanism of partisan entrapment through which...
This book offers the first comprehensive study of defence offsets and its economic, security, political and theoretical implications.
Originating in the second half of the 19th century, defence offsets – additional economic, industrial and technological benefits to states for buying foreign weapons – have since been a key feature of the global arms trade and defence industry. And yet, offsets...
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine would be expected to constitute an external shock sufficient to cause a dramatic transformation of the defence policies of European countries. Political leaders have frequently referred to this critical event as a ‘wake-up call for Europe’. Yet, defence policy experts generally suggest that this perceived sense of urgency has not yet translated into a...
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine would be expected to constitute an external shock sufficient to cause a dramatic transformation of the defence policies of European countries. Political leaders have frequently referred to this critical event as a ‘wake-up call for Europe’. Yet, defence policy experts generally suggest that this perceived sense of urgency has not yet translated into a...
Both academic studies and internal EU documents have established that contracting Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) services by the EU is nowadays a widespread practice, despite the persisting lack of EU-level regulation and significant divergence in Member States’ national regulatory frameworks. PMSCs have been used primarily to support and sustain EU activities abroad, i.e....
Social scientists are increasingly focusing on the factors that explain the development, organisation, and enforcement of cybersecurity capabilities. However, a systematic analysis of these capabilities in terms of the policy instruments used has not been attempted so far. Which policy instruments can actors use? How do they vary between the institutions? How can the variation in the...
Since, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, particular concerns exist about disruptinon of energy supplies and transportation systems, including global ports, such as the Port of Rotterdam (Ornstein, 2022). While threats to critical infrastructures are not new (e.g. attacked ports during WWII), the contemporary situation is different: (digital) technology plays a key role in hybrid warfare, making the...
International Military Assistance (IMA) is undergoing a major revival in the light of the war in Ukraine, in which it is a fundamental marker, both in terms of the ability of the players to last in a war of attrition (Western support for Ukraine, North Korean and Iranian support for Russia) and as a means of indirect action for the benefit of the states providing the aid. While this case study...
The research investigates security perceptions and coping strategies among Afghan citizens experienced living in Afghanistan under Taliban rule post-August 2021, employing a vernacular security approach. This approach explores how individuals construct, understand, and experience (in)security in their daily lives, offering a bottom-up perspective often overlooked in mainstream security...
The outbreak of a war on European territory in 2022 has rather suddenly created a high demand for expertise on war and strategy in Europe – a demand that has since been further fed by the war in Gaza, its impact on neighboring countries, as well as heightened tensions between the United States and China. At the same time, new technological developments, such as the reliance on AI or the cyber...
The European presence in the Indian Ocean and the wider Indo-Pacific has increased in the past years. Risks and threats to maritime security in key transit routes have grown in intensity, whether from piracy and terrorism, to the attacks by the Houthis on shipping in the Red Sea. At the same time, the concept of freedom of the seas is under attack in the Western Pacific, specifically the...
In today’s multipolar and interconnected world, states often use surrogates in order to pursue their interests and expand their influence, while staying underneath the threshold of direct conventional war with a great power competitor. This paper proposes a conceptualization of surrogates that includes all human actors that patrons, who can be both state or non-state actors, delegate some or...
During the Cold War, Western public opinion was an important factor in shaping the trajectory of nuclear arms control talks between the United States and the Soviet Union. However, we know little about the extent of public support for arms control in today’s era of renewed great power competition. To address this gap, we conducted a series of surveys and survey experiments in the United...
How has Russia’s invasion of Ukraine influenced domestic debates on nuclear strategy in Russia? Western scholars and analysts have voiced the concern that as Russian conventional capabilities deteriorate due to the war, its reliance on non-strategic nuclear weapons could grow. Contrary to this expectation, this article argues that a close reading of political and military elites’ nuclear...
In the post-Cold War World, stigmatization emerged as a way of disciplining transgressive states. However, the existing state of affairs raises questions on the feasibility of targeted punishment and disciplining through stigmatization. Even the members of the Western liberal-democratic society of states sharing certain normative stances and similar security concerns do not always act in...
Increased strategic competition over technology puts defence innovation at the forefront of current national security and defence policy strategizing. A central issue in the defence innovation debate is how different types of countries – from advanced major powers such as the US, over catching-up states like China to middling powers such as Russia, Iran and India, and finally to small...
Models of terrorism target selection are not well connected to strategic decision-making and behavioural motivations. This paper addresses this gap and connects terrorist groups’ strategic objectives of recruitment and support building with terrorist attack decision-making. Terrorist groups make strategic short-term changes in two violent tactics – (1) attack target selection and (2) attack...
As a result of the pro-disarmament discourse stemming from the Humanitarian Turn in nuclear disarmament, there has been a growing salience of domestic voices in European countries which contribute to NATO's nuclear mission. At least prior to the Russia's invasion of Ukraine, many of these voices advocated for strong steps towards nuclear disarmament.
But how do the technocrats, who often...
In liberal market economies like the US and UK, private actors have come to play an indispensable role in the emergence of robust defense industries and the provision of security. States particularly rely on the private sector in areas of high technological innovation, such as arms production and cybersecurity. While technological innovation and the resulting public reliance on private...
Nuclear weapons and climate change put future generations in the wrong by externalizing potential long-term harm and constraining their freedom of choice through extended policy trajectories. Focused on nuclear weapons, this article conducts a comparative analysis of intergenerational justice concerns in both contexts. The principal argument emphasizes the distinct temporality of these...
Why do states continue to invest in military technologies that are ineffective or simply do not work? Despite nearly 70 years of research and development in the United States, missile defense continues to face high, if not insurmountable, technological challenges, is financially burdensome, and has resulted in negative outcomes for strategic stability. Hence, this paper asks: What explains the...
In recent years the operations of mercenaries and other comparable service providers such as private military and security companies (PMSC), have come to light more frequently, nevertheless there are still many unanswered questions surrounding the phenomena. The relevant regulatory frameworks, are of limited use given the changes in the nature of these actors and how they have been used in...
In 1996, the International Court of Justice was unable to “conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake”. This highly nuanced legal (non-)condemnation of nuclear threats came after decades of the Cold War, which was characterised by nuclear...
The strength of Nuclear-Weapons-Free-Zones (NWFZs) is put to the test as global strategic stability falters from conflict between Nuclear Weapons States (NWS). Currently, five NWFZs are legitimized by treaties that span large regions including Africa and South America (Goldblat, 1997; Green, 2009). This prominence is explained by the historic utilization of NWFZs as a diplomatic tool for...
I examine how ransomware groups – groups of hackers who encrypt stolen data and financially coerce victims to pay to recover the data – adopt Artificial Intelligence (AI) in their operations. I show that many ransomware groups stand to gain a number of operational advantages from AI, including identification of target vulnerabilities, prediction of victim response, and assistance to...
The Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine supposedly marks the return of the paradigmatic conventional high-intensity warfare, thus calling into question the past two decades of irregular conflict. Upon closer inspection, however, the war in Ukraine also exhibits several continuities, including the fact that non-citizens are fighting on behalf of both conflict parties. This paper examines the...
The Black Sea stands out as a region of heightened complexity due to the divergent military, economic, and legal interests among its littoral states. Faced with the challenge of pursuing discordant objectives, its states’ policies towards this arena oftentimes appear incoherent. In this volatile geopolitical landscape, characterized by risks and intense competition, a nuanced understanding of...
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 demonstrated many limits in its military, planning and intelligence structures. The low combat readiness and preparedness of its forces were matched by inadequate logistics. And overarching everything was intelligence – more precisely an intelligence failure. As many preliminary assessments of Russia’s intelligence work before the invasion have...
This paper brings recent advances in critical security studies and Science and Technology scholarship into greater dialogue with the more established International Relations (IR) literature on military change to highlight the role that shared social “imaginaries” of war can play in mediating how shifts in the external threat environment impact the development and fielding of new military...
With the formalization of Sweden's accession to the alliance, the Baltic Sea will officially become a NATO lake - a success story that proves transatlantic unity and political determination to generate a credible defense and deterrence posture on the eastern flank. The same cannot be said for the other half of the flank, which is exposed to a range of security challenges.
This preliminary...
How effective were U.S. attempts at reassuring its allies and partners in the wake of the February 2022 Russian re-invasion of Ukraine? During this major crisis moment, the United States implemented a wide-ranging series of policies to support Ukraine, to deter Russia, and to reassure its NATO allies. These actions included broad sanctions, enhanced U.S. force presence in Central and Eastern...
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 inaugurated a high-intensity prolonged conventional war that has since become stalemated. Recent Russian and Ukrainian offensives have failed to achieve meaningful territorial advances. The fate of the war increasingly hinges on each sides’ ability to adapt and innovate—particularly for Ukraine where the early loss of territory and dependence on...
