Logo: to the web site of the Swedish Defence University

This article explores the emergence of new military-strategic rationalities in relation to conceptions of hybrid warfare in the grey zone through a case study of Sweden’s reinstatement of total defence since 2015. Through a governmentality-inspired approach, I analyse what it means for the organisation of a new total defence when one of the main threats to be dealt with is daily antagonistic but highly ambiguous hybrid attacks. I illustrate how conceptions of an ambiguous strategic non-peace entails a move beyond war preparedness into urgent demands for an everyday active total defence that hinges on a ‘martialisation’ of civilian life. This in turn run the risk of challenging fundamental democratic principles and civil liberties. The analysis contributes to an increased understanding and uncovering of the politics made possible by a military-strategic rationality geared towards hybrid threats in the grey zone – which in the Swedish case has resulted in a historically specific version of total defence that builds on a highly diffused and rather extreme form of decentralised defence.

What is the strategic logic of so-called ‘total defence’? At first glance, total defence may appear as one coherent strategic concept. Indeed, it was predominantly small, non-aligned states that pursued total defence during the Cold War. In this article, however, we demonstrate that depending on how ‘total war’ is understood, there are subsequently different strategic logics ingrained in total defence. We show this by developing a typology of different total defences; and by empirically illustrating variation in strategic logics over time through a historical analysis of the total defence(s) in Sweden. Recognising the inherent variation of total defence is important since it helps us to understand that hidden behind a nominal pursuit of a total defence strategy are multifaceted strategies.

Under de senaste åren har eskalerande urbanisering och väpnade konflikter i städer kommit att uppfattas som en allt viktigare global säkerhetsfråga, både bland forskare och praktiker. Samtidigt är det empiriskt välbelagt att städer alltid har formats av krig och krigföring, och krig och krigföring alltid har formats av städer. Trots detta är samtida krigsvetenskapliga och västerländska militärstrategiska diskussioner om krig, fred och säkerhet i relation till städer och det urbana ofta onyanserade och baserade på ett binärt tänkande. Syftet med den här artikeln är att genom en bred forskningsöversikt belysa och exemplifiera den ömsesidiga relationen mellan krig och städer, och därmed bidra till en fördjupad och mer nyanserad samtida diskussion om krig i och mot städer, samt till en fördjupad förståelse för stadens dubbla konstruktion och funktion som en miljö som både är konstituerad av och konstituerande för militärt våld. Dylik fördjupad förståelse är angelägen även i relation till samtida fredsforskning rörande post-konfliktstäder och urbant fredsbyggande.

This article explores the question of human agency in military targeting. Targeting is one of the key drivers of war. When studied by academic disciplines, much interest has been devoted to the ethics and effects of military targeting. Less debated, but focused here, is the question of the conditions of human agency within military targeting. In the literature that does exist on this topic, there is a questioning of the traditional conception of human agency but at the same time a lack of closer conceptualisation of different kinds of articulations of human agency in the targeting process. In this article, we propose a recentring of human agency in critical scholarship on military targeting. With inspiration from Theodore Schatzki's work on ‘practice’, by analytically approaching targeting as a practice, and through various examples from Operation Iraqi Freedom, the article develops and illustrates a framework for the conceptualisation of human agencies in targeting. This framework distinguishes articulations of agency based on whether they furthered the (temporary) ordering of the targeting practice or challenged its internal organising elements. The study of military targeting is significant not least since the phenomenon is one of the key ‘engines’ and drivers of war's constant becoming.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine serves as another illustration of the urban nature of contemporary war. While cities have been battlegrounds throughout history, it is only in the last few decades that military thinkers and strategists have seriously started to consider urban warfare as imperative – that cities have become unavoidable in war. In this article, I provide an overview of the type of urban warfare we have seen unfolding in Ukraine so far, and discuss what appear to be mismatches between these urban battles and the type of urban wars anticipated and planned for by Western military organizations and strategic thinkers. In some respects, the general character of the urban warfare we see unfolding in Ukraine has more in common with medieval than modern warfare. While Russia pursues a brutal combination of siege warfare with heavy and indiscriminate bombardment of cities, Ukraine has developed an effective urbanized defence, not only by using the urban terrain to its advantage, but by using cities as fortresses and bases of operation.

Cities both large and small, more and less economically advanced, are deeply involved in efforts to address the most challenging and complex issues of contemporary global governance, ranging from climate change and conditions of insecurity to human migration and public health. Yet this puzzling phenomenon is largely ignored within International Relations (IR) scholarship, and only partially theorized by scholars working in other fields of inquiry. Our premise in this article is that attempts to understand and assess city participation in world politics are augmented by focusing on the global identity of the city, since understanding what cities do in world politics is shaped by who cities (think they) are on the global stage. In proposing a subtle shift, from the passively labeled global city to what we call the globally engaged city, we direct analysis to the political and discursive forces shaping, delimiting, and informing this novel role for the city as a world-political actor. We propose that city identity is now fractured into local and global dimensions and set out two analytically distinct contexts in which the global identity of the city is forged through a process of differentiation from the nation-state. Our framework highlights in particular the politics of recognition shaping how the globally engaged city is defined and diffused. Through two empirical vignettes we illustrate the value of our framework as a means for IR scholarship to bring cities in from the analytic hinterlands and better understand their (potential) impact on the world stage.

In this article, we revisit the ‘local turn’ debate in the peacebuilding literature, and explore its most recent and promising approach to ‘the local’, focussing on post-war cities and on urban dimensions of peacebuilding. There is still substantive contestation and frustration in the peacebuilding research field with regards to the conceptual fuzziness of ‘the local’, and with the continual failures of international interventions to actually take into account local perspectives, promote local agency and establish local ownership. In this article, we explore to what extent recent urban approaches to peacebuilding can help alleviate some of the conceptual problems that has persisted in the literature. We reflect on and raise questions about what a focus on cities and urban perspectives is contributing to the study of local peacebuilding more specifically. We suggest three facets of analytical added value: (1) an increased understanding of how the particularities of urban and rural space affects peacebuilding locally and potentially beyond; (2) how cities and urban space are interrelated with traditional territoriality; and (3) the methodological benefits of the city/urban as (local) analytical entry point. We also discuss potential pitfalls and limitations of urban approaches to peacebuilding, and identify prospective pathways for further research.

Theorizing about the manner in which urban dimensions influence global security and vice versa is still in an embryonic stage. The central argument of this article holds that scholars in the fields of international relations (IR) and security studies largely remain blind to contemporary urban dimensions of global transboundary security issues, and have not yet adequately assessed its dynamics or political implications. In order to stimulate and structure further research, this article sets out to situate issues pertaining to urban security within a wider IR theoretical context. I suggest that the contemporary global security environment can be conceptualized in terms of a global–urban security nexus. This nexus points, on the one hand, to a changing spatial dynamic of security where urban places and practices become increasingly imperative and, on the other hand, to a rescaling of state power where urban actors are becoming increasingly empowered. I suggest that the global–urban security nexus as a point of analytical departure is equally relevant to the more traditional, narrow understanding of security as it is to the broadened security agenda, and it captures contemporary spatial security dynamics as well as changing security governance, in terms of both involved actors and practices. I finally draw out an urban security research agenda for IR that puts focus on global and transboundary security problems and their urban facets, and offers a novel way forward for studying global security dynamics in terms of its urban spaces, agents, and practices.