European security policy increasingly relies on comprehensive defence and responsibilisation, expecting households to follow contingency protocols and sustain themselves for at least 72 hours. Using 2025 urban survey data from Helsinki (Finland), Riga (Latvia) and the German cities of Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, this article shows that urban populations are underprepared. Further, we examine whether threat salience, identifying a hazard as a personal concern, translates into threat‑appropriate preparedness. We assess both material and cognitive indicators. Findings show a persistent perception–action gap across all sites. Helsinki exhibits comparatively higher cognitive awareness but low material readiness; Riga and the German cities display even weaker alignment across cognitive and material domains. Among respondents worried about specific hazards, preparedness does not improve for recommended actions. We argue that responsibilisation is under‑communicated and under‑operationalised for urban realities even in high responsibilisation models like Finland. Meeting EU/NATO ambitions requires clear thresholds, local scaffolding and behaviourally savvy interventions that make preparedness feasible within the everyday constraints of city life.
This paper examines how Russia appropriates Western academic knowledge as a tool of influence in its communication with Western audiences. It pursues three main objectives. First, it argues that the concept of soft power has been widely misunderstood due to its intangible, non-kinetic nature, often being mischaracterized as disinformation and manipulative practices associated with Russian influence. Second, the paper offers a refined interpretation of sharp power. While sharp power has typically been examined in political, institutional, normative, or economic contexts, this study calls for an ideational—or even ideological—approach. Third, it argues that Russia exploits the intellectual strengths of Western democratic societies, namely the knowledge field. In order to explain the last point, this study offers a discourse analysis of Vladimir Pozner and Fyodor Lukyanov, Russian intellectuals who frequently present themselves as independent commentators, alongside Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister. The aim is to demonstrate, both the similarities in their discursive strategies, and how they directly draw on concepts originating in the Western academic tradition. These concepts and theories, particularly those rooted in international relations and political science, are selectively appropriated, re-signified, and mobilized to ‘speak the language’ of Western audiences, with the intention of legitimizing Russia’s foreign policy positions.
Terrorism is a paradoxical phenomenon: Despite its status as a critical global security threat, its strategic effectiveness often proves counterproductive, failing to achieve its core agendas. Therefore, why does terrorism persist as a global threat despite its frequent failure to achieve political or ideological goals? This article argues that the answer lies not in simple political or strategic models, but in the complex, reciprocal relationship between individual psychology and organisational factors. This article introduces a new theoretical framework, the Group Cohesion Model, to analyse this dynamic. This multi-dimensional framework is applied to three of the most dangerous and violent extremist Islamic terror organisations – ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Al-Shabaab – using media interviews and testimony reports from current and former members. A comparative analysis between these organisations reveals that the choice to use terrorism is not just a strategic or rational decision. Instead, the model shows it is a complex process of interplay between individual drivers and organisational elements that transform terrorism into a seemingly legitimate action. By presenting these nuanced insights, this new framework sheds light on why these organisations persist and offers ways to develop more effective, multi-dimensional counterterrorism policies.
After 2003, Iraq underwent a profound political and economic transformation, accompanied by various challenges, including the burden of accumulated external debt. The post-regime government restructured Iraq’s debt within the framework of the ‘Paris Club’ and through bilateral negotiations with creditor countries. The debt rescheduling aimed to alleviate the financial burden and reintegrate Iraq into the global financial system, but this process was conditional upon implementing economic and political reforms. External political factors played a crucial role in debt rescheduling. Decisions regarding rescheduling were influenced by the political motives of major powers seeking to achieve strategic gains in Iraq. Additionally, the United States and its partners imposed conditions related to reconstruction, regional stability and the safeguarding of their strategic interests in the post-war era. These political interventions affected the course of the economic process and sparked discussions about national sovereignty and the influence of external powers in shaping Iraq’s economic policies. The study, conducted through a descriptive–analytical method, concluded that the rescheduling of Iraq’s debt was more than just an economic process; it reflected the deep interconnection between international politics and economics in the context of rebuilding a post-conflict state.
This paper analyses the conflictual and cooperative signals of two domestic actors – the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian separatists – and two international actors – the European Union and the Russian Federation – during the first three years of the conflict in Ukraine. Previous studies largely treated the actions of domestic actors as a dependent variable and the actions of international actors as an independent variable. Our results demonstrate that the European Union and the Russian Federation, far from being independent players, assume the role of an ‘error correction mechanism’ by counterbalancing and counteracting the unbalanced and non-reciprocal interactions of the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian separatists, thereby transforming an otherwise asymmetric conflict into a symmetric one. The paper discusses liberal institutionalist, social constructivist and offensive realist explanations for the observed behaviour and demonstrates why the offensive realist explanation fares best in light of Russia’s massive escalation in 2022.
Over the past decade, the European Union has articulated increasingly explicit ambitions to act as a security provider in the Indo-Pacific. Southeast Asia constitutes a particularly revealing arena in which to assess this evolution, as the region sits at the geopolitical core of the Indo-Pacific while remaining anchored in ASEAN-centred security practices, non-alignment and sensitivity to external power projection. This article examines whether the EU’s expanding security engagement in Southeast Asia reflects genuine role learning, understood as a transformation of its international identity, or a more limited process of role adaptation within an essentially civilian and normative framework. Drawing on role theory, the analysis adopts a triadic approach linking role conception, role performance and role recognition. Empirically, it combines an examination of EU strategic documents and policy initiatives with elite perception data from regional surveys and a systematic analysis of ASEAN official statements and plans of action. The findings show that while the EU has broadened its security-relevant activities in the Indo-Pacific, these developments remain layered onto pre-existing civilian-oriented roles. As such, Southeast Asian actors continue to recognise the EU primarily as a normative and stabilising partner rather than as a provider of regional security. The article concludes that the EU’s trajectory in Southeast Asia is best understood as adaptive adjustment rather than deep role learning, highlighting the possibilities and limits of stretching a civilian role in a competitive Indo-Pacific order.
The Algerian War occupies a particularly contentious and emotionally charged place in France’s national memory – serving as the source of a veritable war of memories that is regularly fought on various political and scholarly battlegrounds. Previous research has shown that the tension between republican universalism and the colonial crimes committed during imperial conquest has produced a colonial legacy that sits uncomfortably at the heart of French identity. Contributing to this scholarship, this article employs the theoretical premises of ontological security theory to examine France’s incomplete reconciliation with its colonial past. By analysing how interest groups generate ontological insecurity through the contestation of the state’s official narrative in their pursuit to gain official recognition and commemoration, this analysis provides a novel understanding of bottom-up memory lobbying in France. It thus examines how Harki memory entrepreneurs and associations commemorating the 1961 Paris massacre strategically frame their demands for recognition by attacking the Republic’s ontological security. The study suggests that a closer analysis of bottom-up threat constructions to the state’s ontological security order contributes to a more holistic understanding of the internal deliberation of the state’s sense of self.
The politics of Transboundary Water Security (TWS) reflect a complex interplay of power, discourse and competing national interests. Focusing on the Nile Basin and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), this paper examines how water security has become a contested political and security concept between upstream and downstream riparian states. Drawing on primary data generated through in-depth and semi-structured interviews with senior Ethiopian officials, GERD negotiators and transboundary water experts, the study offers an empirically grounded and theoretically informed analysis of TWS, an area that remains underexplored within both security studies and transboundary water governance scholarship. The paper conceptualises TWS as an intersubjective field of struggle in which competing hydro-concepts: hydrosovereignty, hydrosecurity, hydrohegemony, hydropolitics and hydrosolidarity/hydroharmony are mobilised to advance divergent political claims. These hydro-concepts correspond to distinct security paradigms, including competitive, cooperative, collective, common and community security, revealing how water governance debates are embedded within broader security imaginaries. The analysis shows that the GERD has intensified these contestations while simultaneously exposing the limits of unilateral and securitised approaches to Nile governance. The paper argues that hydrosolidarity, grounded in cooperative sovereignty, where sovereignty is reimagined as hydrological interdependence rather than absolute territorial control, offers a viable pathway toward the emergence of a transboundary water security community in the Nile Basin.
Sanctions are increasingly imposed in response to international crises and military conflicts. Much is known about the aims sanctions seek to achieve, such as coercion, deterrence and signalling, yet the catalysts for their imposition are often overlooked. Despite the existence of a sanctions framework developed for specific international concerns, each sanctions programme has a justification unique to it. In my paper, I present a novel argument that a ‘menu’ of justifications exists for the implementation of international sanctions. This ‘sanctions à la carte’ includes five sets of justifications for imposition: crime-based, value-based, hostile sanctions, countermeasures and war sanctions. Understanding the varied nature of these sanctions frameworks compels us to reconsider the existing models of examining sanctions’ effectiveness, legitimacy and proportionality.
This study investigates how the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) intervenes militarily in the affairs of member states. Through comparative case study and process-tracing methodology, cases of non-intervention including Kyrgyzstan, 2005, 2010, 2020; Armenia, 2021; Tajikistan-Kyrgyzstan, 2021–2; and Kursk, 2024 are compared to a single intervention that occurred in Kazakhstan, 2022. The analysis reveals that interventions are highly selective and not strictly driven by key provisions of the organisation's charter. The CSTO acts when domestic instability jeopardises a member regime’s survival, specifically when the state’s coercive apparatus loses reliability or control over its monopoly of violence. State breakdown within a CSTO member can create strategic risks for Moscow because the erosion of regime control over coercive institutions opens space for alternative political forces to seize power which may not be aligned with the regional hegemon’s interests. The anticipation of a non-aligned government emerging from state breakdown induces the CSTO to strategically interpret member state instability through the potentiality of domestic collapse and future strategic realignment. Hence, preventing the rise of hostile regimes is a core factor behind intervention.
This article adopts a normative approach to one of the most consequential issues of alliance management: the question of if and when an ally is justified in breaching its collective defence duty (CDD). An ally’s CDD constitutes its formal obligation to militarily defend its ally in the event that the latter experiences an armed attack. Drawing on both normative political theory and contemporary International Relations scholarship on alliance credibility and security dilemmas, the article first considers and rejects two opposing but equally extreme views on this question. Next, the article proposes what it calls the Moderate View as a more persuasive response. The Moderate View draws on Glenn Snyder’s concept of the alliance security dilemma to argue that Ally X is justified in breaching its CDD if it is reasonable for Ally X to believe that there is a high likelihood of its imminent entrapment by Ally Y, and if Ally X cannot reduce this likelihood by signalling its concerns to Ally Y. Two distinct arguments are then provided in support of the Moderate View. In the final section, the Moderate View is defended against three objections. The article demonstrates how empirical concepts from IR can inform normative theorising while providing practical ethical guidance for alliance policymakers.
This article explores the perceptions of an interplay between formal and informal institutions in sustaining Ukraine’s defence and governance during the full-scale Russian invasion. Focusing on three cities—Vinnytsia, Mykolayiv and Sumy—it examines how civil society organisations, business actors, municipal authorities and national-level decision-makers contribute to security-related functions such as direct city defence, wartime governance, material support to the army, financing of military needs, community leadership, coordination of efforts and communication. Using the repertory grid methodology, the article interviews and records the perceptions of civil society leaders and experts on institutional roles and effectiveness under wartime conditions. Findings reveal the centrality of non-state actors, particularly Territorial Defence Commanders and Local Civic Activists, in frontline cities, often compensating for underachieving formal institutions. Municipal authorities exhibit varied performance, excelling in Vinnytsia but struggling in Mykolayiv and Sumy. The article highlights the adaptability of civil society, the limited governing effectiveness of city formal institutions, the exclusion of national-level decision-makers from local affairs, and the critical need for collaboration between all these actors to enhance resilience and address wartime challenges.
In 1975, Indonesia initiated oil and gas cooperation, leading to the establishment of the ASEAN Council on Petroleum (ASCOPE) in 1976. Then, the ASEAN Petroleum Security Agreement (APSA) was created to improve petroleum security and minimise the impact of emergencies experienced by ASEAN Member States (AMS). The First APSA was signed in 1986 but did not succeed, so ASCOPE was tasked with conducting a review. This led to the signing of the Second APSA on 1 March 2009, which was then ratified by all AMS in 2013. As the initiator of the ASCOPE establishment and considering the status of Indonesia as the highest oil producer among AMS, even with its status as net oil importer, this research examines why Indonesia failed to implement the Second APSA even after it had been ratified for ten years. The research will gather primary data from official APSA documents and related agreements, as well as interviews. The secondary data are from official reports, presentations and studies about energy trends and development. The authors argue that non-compliance is the factor affecting the stagnation of the Second APSA in Indonesia. Therefore, before the expiration of the Second APSA in March 2023, AMS agreed to extend it on an interim basis for the next two years.
This study examines major theoretical models that seek to explain states’ pursuit of nuclear weapons programmes and decisions to abandon them. A comparative historical analysis of multiple case studies suggests that the traditional ‘security’ model cannot be supplanted by Scott Sagan’s challenger alternatives – the ‘domestic political’ and ‘norms’ models. While political dynamics and normative pressures play a significant role in nuclear policymaking, the analysis indicates that these factors are themselves influenced by underlying security considerations. The findings further caution the United States against relying exclusively on normative constraints or the presence of democratic political structures to dissuade allies facing growing nuclear threats from pursuing nuclear breakout capabilities.
This article examines China’s Global Security Initiative (GSI) as a soft balancing strategy, specifically in the form of normative balancing. It employs a qualitative approach based on data collected from the official website of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as secondary sources including journal articles, newspapers and online news platforms. The study analyses the GSI as a normative balancing strategy and explores its implications for the security architecture of the Middle East using a normative balancing conceptual framework. As an effort by China to challenge the dominance of the United States through the promotion of alternative security norms, the GSI has implications for the Middle East security architecture in three key areas: first, it counters the United States’ common security rhetoric by advancing the concept of indivisible security; second, it introduces a Sino-centric perspective on regional security issues; and third, it emphasises the norm of non-interference as an alternative to the United States’ interventionist approach in the region.
Despite increasing calls to globalise and pluralise the field, International Relations (IR) remains dominated by institutions based in the Global North. This paper engages with the theme of exclusion with access by complementing ongoing critiques of the discipline’s epistemic hierarchies by examining how Latin American scholars are represented in top-tier IR journals. While the inclusion of Global South voices has become more visible, such inclusion is often symbolic, conditional and structurally constrained. By mapping Latin American authors who published in ten prestigious IR journals from 2010 to 2024, we analyse training backgrounds, publication locations, co-authorship networks and research themes to reveal the material and epistemic barriers that shape visibility and legitimacy in IR. We conceptualise these barriers as part of a broader ‘Global South frontier’ that limits transformative participation. With its hybrid position as Westernised yet peripheral, Latin America offers a unique lens for interrogating the discipline’s persistent inequalities. This paper contributes to broader debates on knowledge production, reflexivity and structural gatekeeping inbroader debates on knowledge production, reflexivity and structural gatekeeping inIR by centering the publication process as a key site of disciplinary power.
This article employs the assemblage thinking to further the debates on the nature of terrorist spectacle. The spectacular nature of terrorism – inducing shock on the wide part of the public – is widely regarded as one of the defining traits which distinguish it from other forms of political violence. So far, most studies have focused on the role of modern media in enacting the terrorist spectacle, showing how violent actions are conveyed via media straightforwardly to audiences who react to the (spectacular) acts with the feeling of terror. To nuance these works, I suggest adopting the prism of assemblage which highlights how various human and non-human elements co-constitute the social and political world(s). The ‘assemblage thinking’ makes it possible to discern two features crucial for studies of terrorist spectacle. First, it highlights how it emerges from the interplay of particular objects that carry within them wider meanings, various historically situated modes of transmitting information and images, and broader civilisational fears related to the perpetrators’ identities. Second and relatedly, I show that rather than a wilful strategy pursued by human actors, the terrorist spectacle is a contingent phenomenon produced by the interplay between various elements and practices. I illustrate these points by juxtaposing Palestinian groups’ plane hijackings in the 1960s and 1970s and the recent ISIS attacks.
This paper shifts the focus from the familiar question of why is there no non-Western theory in International Relations (IR) to a process-oriented inquiry of what happens to non-Western perspectives when incorporated into IR? While critical IR scholarship has explored the way ethnocentrism, essentialism and empire shapes knowledge within IR, the mechanisms and processes of marginalisation that occur when non-Western voices are included in IR remain less understood. To address this gap, the paper conceptualises marginalisation not as a static outcome but as a dynamic process unfolding in stages. Drawing on the case of Kautilya, an Indian strategic thinker, and autoethnographic accounts of engaging with Kautilya as student, researcher and teaching assistant in both India and Canada, I develop the concept of ‘exclusion with access’. I argue that ‘exclusion with access’ encompasses two key dynamics. First, ‘exclusion with access’ offers a lens to analyse the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in IR, particularly the superficiality, tokenism and symbolism of diversity and inclusion in the discipline. Second, ‘exclusion with access’ represents a distinctive stage of integrating non-Western thought into IR, one succeeding the stages of exclusion and formal exclusion. Ultimately, by proposing the lens of ‘exclusion with access’, I propose challenging the binary of inclusion-exclusion in IR and exploring access’, I propose challenging the binary of inclusion-exclusion in IR and exploring the specifics, conditions and mechanisms of integrating non-Western voices into IR.
This paper investigates how civil society organisations (CSOs) navigate and reshape geopolitical narratives within the European Union’s evolving candidacy framework. By highlighting the performed inclusivity of EU narratives, it offers a nuanced perspective on the socio-political dynamics of accession processes and promotes a more pluralistic interpretation of the EU candidacy approach. Focusing on Georgia's EU candidacy application, it examines how CSOs, situated in semi-peripheral borderlands, address the complexities of accession processes, structural inequalities and the exclusionary practices embedded in performed inclusivity. The analysis unfolds in three parts. First, it situates the study within the broader context of the politicisation of EU candidacy narratives and introduces the conceptual framework based on relational narratives. Building on the scholarship of strategic narratives and structural narratives, it explores how relational approaches can contribute to the pluralistic understanding of emerging narratives. Second, in a methodological section, it outlines the empirical approach to study relational narratives, based on narrative analysis. Third, through engaging with Georgia’s EU candidacy application process, it analyses how civil society organisations narrate Georgia’s candidacy to address the geopolitical tensions through relational narratives, highlighting their efforts to contest the EU’s limited geopolitical framing. In conclusion, the paper discusses how civil society organisations use relational narratives and offer a nuanced understanding of the socio-political dynamics of accession processes, advocating for more pluralistic interpretations of the EU’s borderlands to counter performed inclusivity.
The global order has been changing, becoming less Europe-centred. In this context, the paper critically examines the coloniality of power embedded in European Union (EU) foreign policy narratives, with a focus on Josep Borrell’s 2022 ‘Garden and Jungle’ speech. The study situates its empirical analysis within the shifting geopolitical context post-2022. The EUropean discourse strives to restore its once hegemonic global power position, with growing popularity of the idea of ‘Make Europe Great Again!’ (Hungarian Presidency 2024) (echoing rhetoric similar to that of the German EU presidency earlier: ‘Gemeinsam. Europa wieder stark machen’ (Bundesregierung.de 2020)). In the face of geopolitical conflicts shaping European foreign policy, such as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Israeli military forces’ attack on Palestinians on the Gaza Strip, the underlying logic of Othering and Europe’s hardening understanding of its power have been unfolding (Oleart & Roch 2025: 2). The EU’s foreign policy narrative has moved away from the post-war project of a ‘peaceful’ and ‘soft-powered’ actor toward adopting the ‘language of power’ and embracing a ‘European sovereignty’. Therefore, I argue that at a time when the EU is losing its relative weight in global geopolitics, EUropean leaders tend to use colonial echoes strategically in political discourses signalling a dominant position over the Other and marking a clear border between the imagined Europe and the ‘Jungle’. Drawing on postcolonial theory and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this study seeks to reveal how official EU foreign policy narratives reinforce asymmetrical power structures once cemented at the height of Western European colonialism towards non-European counterparts. I emphasise the continuity of the coloniality of power since the EU’s very conception, which is rooted in the loss of global dominance following the collapse of Western European colonial empires. From this historical perspective, I regard Borrell’s framing of EUrope – drawing on colonial tropes of moral and developmental superiority, especially in its relations with Latin America – as an attempt to preserve the global power position that Western Europe occupied during the era of colonial empires. The paper does not aim merely to point out the ‘immorality or inappropriateness’ of Borrell’s use of the Jungle rhetoric; rather, it argues that, beyond the linguistic expressions, there is an underlying colonial paradigm (Orbie et al. 2023). By empirically showing the enduring influence of colonial narratives in EU foreign policy, such as the implicit and explicit construction of the ‘Other’, this paper contributes to debates on ‘exclusion with access’. It exposes the coloniality of power that underpins current EU institutional foreign policy discourse and advocates for a postcolonial rethinking of EU external relations.
