The World Stage

How can we understand the African Union’s evolving position in a changing global order from its role in the G20 and its peace initiatives in Somalia and Sudan? In this episode of The World Stage, Solomon Dersso (Amani Africa) and Cedric de Coning (NUPI) discuss this topic. Solomon Dersso is the founding director of Amani Africa, an independent pan-African policy research, training and consulting t...

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...

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 this episode of the NUPI podcast The World Stage, we take a closer look at the state of European democracy in the wake of the recent election to the European Parliament.  What will be the outcome of the right wing wave and what does it mean for the state of democracy in the EU? NUPI Research Professor Pernille Rieker is joined by  Guri Rosén,  Associate Professor at the departmen...

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, particularl...

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,...

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 Kar...

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 Ive...

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. Wha...

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...

In this episode NUPI's Ole Jacob Sending sits down with Professor Dan Nexon of Georgetown University to talk about how international political leadership – or hegemony – is established and undone.    Nexon argues that hegemony is established through the supply of (public) goods – such as security – for other states. This is what the US has been doing for decades, but now C...

In this episode of The World Stage, we meet Dr. Paolo Benanti. Benanti, who is known for coining the term algorethics, is a professor in ethics of technology and a Franciscan monk. He is a member of UN Secretary General's High-level Advisory Board on Artificial Intelligence and also serves as an AI advisor to none other than Pope Francis.   Joins us for an insightful conversation between Bena...

In this episode of The World Stage, join us for an insightful conversation with AI expert Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, recently recognized on The Times list of the world’s 100 most influential people in AI, and Dr. Niels Nagelhus Schia, head of NUPI’s Research Center on New Technology. Chowdhury brings a unique perspective on the intersection of technology and society, advocating for the critical need fo...

In this episode of the The World Stage, NUPI researchers Thor Olav Iversen and Cedric de Coning discuss how to sustain peace amidst the uncertainty and unpredictability of complex crises. Cedric introduced the concept of adaptive peacebuilding in a 2018 article in International Affairs , and he and his co-authors has further developed the concept and tested it in several case studies in a recently...

Is the BRICS a geopolitical competitor to the West? In this episode of the NUPI podcast The World Stage, Thor Olav Iversen (NUPI), Cedric de Coning (NUPI) and Benedicte Bull (UiO) reflect on the driver and consequences of the expansion of the BRICS group of countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) to also include Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, Argentine and the UAE.   W...

How should we regulate AI? How will AI impact the power balance between the US and China? And how does Microsoft navigate this complex landscape? In this episode, Brad Smith, Vice Chair and President of Microsoft, shares his unique insights on these questions and more. He is joined by CEO of NBIM (Norges Bank Investment Management) Nicolay Tangen and NUPI Director Ulf Sverdrup. This episode is rel...

What issues are likely to be covered in the Agenda for Peace? Why is it important?  UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, has called for a ‘New Agenda for Peace’ that can help the United Nations and international community address the many complex challenges the world faces today.   In this edition of the World Stage podcast, NUPI’s Cedric de Coning is in conversation with As...

Visiting prisoners, assisting lost travellers and distressed expats. Consular work is often considered the ugly duckling of the foreign services, far away from the negotiating tables and corridors of power. Still, the duties of the consuls also include dramatic crises evacuations, such as the recent dramatic extractions of diplomats and foreign nationals from Sudan.   Ian Kemish has a rich ca...

UN peace operations are overwhelmingly deployed within societies fractured by civil war. To understand why the UN has encountered difficulties, operational and political, in these settings, one must understand the political economy of civil war . These informal networks of power and their consequences for efforts to end wars and build lasting peace, are examined this episode of The World Stage. Pr...

What are the reasons behind the limited impact of violent extremism and the Islamic State in the Kurdistan region of Iraq? In this episode of the NUPI podcast The World Stage, Dlawer Ala’Aldeen (Middle East Research Institute), Juline Beaujouan (University of Edinbrugh & Open Think Tank) and Morten Bøås (NUPI) are standing at the top of the citadel of Erbil in the Kurdistan region of Iraq to d...

How do you find missing persons in the midst of war? Kathryne Bomberger, Director-General of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), explains how her organisation investigate cases, search for, and identify missing persons in wartime Ukraine. The conversation is hosted by NUPI researcher Tora Berge Naterstad and produced as part of the  RUSSNETT  project. Hosted on Acast....

Climate security was one of Norway’s priority areas during its period as an elected member of the UN Security Council (2021–2022). What did Norway achieve?   Hans Olav Ibrekk, Norway’s Special Envoy for Climate, Peace and Security, and Florian Krampe, director of the Climate Change and Risk Programme at SIPRI, take stock on Norway’s effort and lessons learned for others that will be working o...

Was there ever a deal to be had with Putin before the war? Is Russia mainly motivated by domestic or foreign policy considerations? And is there anything Western leaders can do to win hearts and minds in Russia?   In this episode of The World Stage, Kadri Liik, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, and Julie Wilhelmsen, research professor at NUPI, discuss Russia-W...

In this episode of The World stage, Rana Mitter, Professor at the University of Oxford, and Bjørnar Sverdrup-Thygeson, Senior Research Fellow at NUPI, will first give an overview of China’s key domestic issues, before analysing Beijing’s foreign policy goals. Norway has a lot of experience dealing with The Soviet Union, and later, Russia, but China is a very different kind of actor. How shoul...

In this episode of the World Stage podcast, NUPI’s Cedric de Coning is in conversation with Amitav Acharya and Stein Tønnesson on the emergence of non-Western and Global International Relations. The discipline came into being as an academic field during the past half-century when the US and its Western allies were the driving force behind globalization and the establishment of the global governanc...