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Based on in-depth interviews with female cadets, this article explores what it is like to be a young military woman in the 2020s. Focusing on the Swedish Armed Forces this study takes its point of departure in minority group processes examined from a gender perspective. How do young military women navigate challenges specific to their gendered positionalities, and to what extent are coping strategies needed in this male-dominated environment? The article concludes that despite an increased focus on gender equality and a more welcoming attitude to military women, persistent norms of masculinity remain challenging for women in military settings. At the same time, young military women may have found new ways of navigating the burden of visibility that women in minority often struggle with. For example, while gendered performance pressure remains a reality, strategies of disassociating oneself from other women, in line with previous theorising, do not appear to be a dominant coping strategy. This generation of women entered the military under different circumstances than those who paved the way. The reassurance of being strategically prioritised may have inspired new ways of navigating a fear of visibility, in contrast with previous generations who often rejected the idea of female networks within the organisation. Young military women of today might therefore be more inclined to fight structural challenges. Given the gendered challenges military women still face, it remains to be seen whether these forms of gendered empowerment will be enough to retain them.

As shown by the developments after the full-scale Russian attackon Ukraine in 2022, the EU is a weak strategic entity. The chapter discusses this circumstance and elaborates on what could bedone in defense cooperation among European states, primarily from a Swedish perspective as part of a Nordic-Baltic setting. As a consequence of shifting strategic patterns among its major powers, the international system is increasingly marked by power political entanglements. As shown in the chapter, the Nordic-Baltic region is increasingly an arena where these entanglements (mainly between Russia, China and Iran) are played out. Thisis currently a militarized period of history and there are several signs of a potential evolving hegemonic war. In the Nordic-Baltic region, as caused by this deteriorating security situation, several subregional initiatives for security and defense cooperation have developed over the last decade. All states in the regionidentify Russia as a central threat and, in Sweden, CHOD has made a public call for war preparation, and the defense budget has increased dramatically. Further, as the region is interlinked in a case of war, Article 5 is the main regional priority. Hence, to Sweden, the EU is secondary to NATO in the defense dimension Sweden and Finland, as allies in NATO, have created a new northern flank. This means that there is a Nordic dimension to defense planning (something between national plans and Article 5), and all countries in the region have defense cooperation agreements (DCA) with the U.S. Indeed, the new northern flank is integrated in defense via Washington rather than Brussels.

Geopolitical analysis and geostrategy are vital parts of the Scandinavian realisttradition. It is not a clearly defined academic school, and its connections tovarious forms of realism is often undefined or implicit, but it tends to be unitedby its policy relevance and empirical emphasis. More specifically, in the ColdWar period geopolitical studies in Scandinavia was characterized by a small-stateperspective, focus on state strategies, and the power of history. State strategieswere explored as various forms of small-state adaptation in classic concepts likethe Nordic balance, the Swedish double policy, and Finlandization. Even if criticshave pointed out explanatory shortcomings, the return of Russia as regional threathas also reinforced the use of geopolitical analysis. Future issues in Scandinaviangeopolitics are both conceptual (what is it?), theoretical (what can it explain?),and empirical (the impact of shifting power structures in international relations)

The article discusses historical enlargements of NATO in order to explore possible explanatory frameworks useful for ongoing research on the enlargement to Sweden and Finland. With the exception for Greece and Turkey 1952, the Cold War “southern and western enlargements” were characterized by a mix of idealist and liberal impulses as well as realist and military considerations. NATO was a military pact with a liberal soul, or a guardian of liberal society with a military toolbox. In the post-Cold War enlargements there were assumptions about no risks for inter-state war, relative European stability and the ability to keep Russian protests under control. In research, NATO’s “eastern enlargements” were controversial because of its contested consequences for European security, but after 24 February 2022 it is clear that the issue of the European security order must also be part of the analysis, not least to understand the drive for membership in Sweden and Finland. The fact that Sweden was a non-member of NATO has been explained both as a consequence of a “Nordic balance”, as well as internationalist norms. The striking impression after the Russian escalation in Ukraine 2022 is that most explanations of NATO’s eastern enlargements are irrelevant to the Swedish and Finnish “northern enlargement”. Further, NATOs northern enlargement has three distinct Swedish and Finnish features: the integrated relationships with NATO prior to membership, the EU memberships and the interconnectedness of the membership applications. Three explanatory frameworks are sketched in the article: a realist perspective of a “reversed Finland factor”, a liberal perspective of an interconnected and iterative application process with pluralist input from elite and general public, and a constructivist perspective of changing Western- or small state identity.

The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine demonstrates once again the vulnerability and significance of cities in war. In this article, and with inspiration from Ian Hacking’s historical ontology, I draw on a varied source material to argue that there is today something new and qualitatively distinct in how the U.S. military approaches war and combat in urban environments. By investigating the historical-conceptual trajectory of “the urban” in U.S. military practice from the mid-eighteenth century until today, the article argues that a gradual shift has occurred in terms of how the armed forces have begun to think of and act on the urban as a distinct object that can be made “known” and managed in and through a specialized knowledge. A “military urban” has come into being, conditioned by a particular epistemic and implying a new way for urban spaces to exist in war. The article’s findings have implications for our understanding of what the urban is for militaries and, relatedly, for grasping the role of epistemics and knowledge practices in conditioning military actions in and on urban spaces.

The war in Ukraine is the first conventional war to ever take place in an entirely connected information ecology. The internet has not been switched off. Mundane smart devices are ubiquitous. Soldiers and ordinary civilians are participating in the conflict in ways that have never previously been possible. This stretches participation beyond the information domain and the kinds of connectivity that shaped conflicts in places like Syria, Tigray and Mali. Now the smartphone is routinely being used by soldiers and civilians alike to geolocate enemy columns, control drones to range find for artillery, and produce and broadcast the damage assessment for online audiences to watch. Surveillance technology already makes it possible to track individual smartphone users. In times of peace these forms of surveillance are curtailed. During a conventional war, however, private organizations and governments have reason to circumvent peacetime legal conventions. The result is that mundane connected technology forms part of an extended chain of sensors that feeds data and information to those involved in information warfare and targeting activities. In effect, the smartphone has collapsed the means to fight and represent war into the functionality of one device. This article maps the policy and military implications of these developments in relation to participation, the conduct of war and the law of armed conflict.

The Manipur conflict, which began in mid-2023, highlights deep-seated ethnic tensions between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo communities, escalating into a humanitarian crisis with over 225 deaths and the displacement of 60,000 people. Amid the violence, improvised weapons like "pumpi guns" have gained prominence. Rooted in historical resistance movements, pumpi guns are crafted from locally sourced materials, reflecting resourcefulness and resilience. Their widespread use underscores the challenges of regulating non-industrial weapons in conflict zones. These weapons are pivotal for community defense and symbolic of local craftsmanship and identity, especially in the hill districts. Pumpi guns have evolved in design and utility, serving both defensive and offensive roles, including ambushes and territorial control. Despite their efficacy, they pose risks such as misfires and injuries. The conflict's dynamics are further complicated by cross-border exchanges with Myanmar, including the trafficking of precursor materials and 3D-printed arms. Addressing this issue requires a multifaceted approach, combining stricter arms control, enhanced stockpile security, and regional cooperation. Socio-economic measures, such as vocational training and economic integration, are critical to offering alternatives to illicit weapons production. However, sustainable peacebuilding efforts must address underlying grievances, foster trust between communities and authorities, and integrate rebel groups into state structures to ensure a holistic resolution.

Over the past 2 years, since the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine, there have been very few studies that have examined the war from the perspective of Russian military thinking. To be able to more accurately predict ways in which the Russian way of war and force structure may change, it is essential to study the Russian military scientific discourse on the lessons of the war in Ukraine. Taking for granted that the Russians come to the same conclusions as Western observers can lead to mirror-imaging and will ignore the likely prospect that Russian lessons learned from the war will not coincide with those of Western military experts. This article contributes to the understanding of Russian military thinking with regard to the war by focusing on three key aspects. (1) The evolution of Russian thinking about indirect strategy. (2) The changing Russian perspective on the concept of non-contact war. (3) The Russian military discourse about the challenge posed by the increasingly transparent battlefield of contemporary wars.

Whether there are differences between the drivers of great power foreign policy and the drivers of small state foreign policy has been the subject of debate for many years. This article contributes to this debate, by showing that the foreign policies of one great power, the United States, and one small state, Sweden, regarding the humanitarian military intervention in Libya in 2011 can be explained by the same combination of factors. Although key decision-makers in both states formulated their preferences on the basis of similar circumstances, the United States, as a great power, could shape these circumstances to a greater extent and was less constrained by the situation, compared to Sweden.

The rapid global proliferation of smartphones and their associated information infrastructures has been a defining feature of the past decade's global crises. Yet, while the digital is now a topic of keen interest for scholars working on virtually everything that constitutes the international, the smartphone as an object of study in and of itself has been largely elusive. Moreover, emerging studies of contemporary crisis, such as ‘polycrisis’, often downplay the role of the digital. How can we conceptualize the ambiguity and ubiquity of the smartphone, as it impacts diverse fields of human action, from war to humanitarianism to democracy? And how can we empirically study this phenomenon and its distributed effects? We contend that smartphones are both embedded in and embed global crises. We conceptualize this as ‘global crisis ecologies’: new spaces that are not simply geographical, or easily framed in terms of North/South divisions, and that include the informational infrastructures that mediate the way crisis is apprehended. This framing helps us understand how multiple civilian, state and non-state actors at different societal levels participate in crises through everyday smartphone use. It foregrounds how the speed, audio-visual capabilities and inherent scalability of smartphones shape how crises are perceived and managed

How does how intervener airpower affect civil war parties’ ability to take and hold territory? I argue that airpower can have both short- and long-term effects on an actor's ability to take and hold territory, by reducing its ability to effectively fight its adversary. Using novel, disaggregated data, I conduct a quantitative within-case study of 2011 NATO-led intervention in Libya. I find that the NATO air campaign made the Libyan government less likely to capture territory in the short term, and that airstrikes reduced its ability to capture territory in the long term.

This article seeks to explain why governments sometime escalate their efforts to defeat a rebel organization when threatened by military intervention. Even though there is extensive knowledge about what motivates an actor to intervene, far less attention has been directed towards explaining why some military interventions end at mere coercive threats, whereas others result in full-scale invasions. Given that an intervention constitutes a strategic interaction between the intervener and the civil war actor it targets, the targeted actor’s response to the initial threat of intervention shapes the subsequent intervention process. I argue that a targeted government will respond to a threat of intervention with escalation against the rebels when it has opportunity to compartmentalize the strategy it has devised to defeat them. This implies that the government has a coherent strategic plan, which it believes it can execute in such a way that the intervener cannot effectively disrupt it. Furthermore, the targeted government also perceives that it can prevent the intervener from expanding its involvement outside of this favorable space. By employing theory-testing process tracing to analyze the Georgian government’s responses to Russian interference in South Ossetia 2004-2008, I find support for this argument. The Georgian government perceived that a limited military offensive against South Ossetia could be conducted in such a way that Russia would have limited opportunity to interfere with it. Furthermore, it also perceived that the restrained character of its strategy, favorable terrain, and international pressure would control Russian escalation.

What are the strategies an intervener can employ to control the trajectory of a civil war? Even though strategy and various strategic concepts are important parts of contemporary theoretical frameworks, empirical analyses of intervention do not fully account for its strategic dimension. More specifically, strategy’s control-oriented, contingent, and flexible and dynamic nature is not sufficiently developed and analyzed. To complement existing empirical analyses of intervention, I develop a novel framework that describes the different categories of strategies an intervener can employ, and which can be used to illustrate strategic change. The frameworks stipulates that the targeted civil war actor’s intermediary strategic goals – not its political ends – should be the main theoretical and empirical reference point. Furthermore, it uses two logics of escalation to outline several general categories of strategic action: influencing, indirect inducing, direct inducing, and imposing strategies. The framework primarily describes various military intervention strategies, but it also links them in a coherent way to different political, diplomatic, and economic strategies. To exemplify the different categories of strategies, I use illustrations from the Western – and later NATO – efforts to manage and terminate the Kosovo War (1998-99).

The aim of this dissertation is to unpack military intervention processes. I do this by making explicit the various strategic dynamics through which external interference attempts to shape the overall trajectory of a civil war. Over the past decade, almost half of all civil wars have seen active involvement from foreign troops, highlighting the importance of studying military interventions. Existing analyses of military in-tervention emphasize the strategic dynamics of these activities and implicitly or ex-plicitly rely on various strategic concepts to make sense of them. However, most of the battlefield activities where strategy is put into practice are systematically black-boxed, and mainly used to explain the various macro-level correlations between mil-itary intervention and different civil war outcomes. To understand of how military intervention affects the battlefield dynamics of civil war I argue that it is necessary to study intervention strategy as a distinct activity within intervention processes. This dissertation is comprised of four essays that analyses three different cases of military intervention by major actors against governments fighting different rebels. I use both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze the cases. In Essays I and II, I analyze how the airstrikes conducted during the NATO-led Operation Unified Protector affected the ability of the Libyan government to take and hold territory during the 2011 Libyan Civil War. Essay III explores the strategic logic behind the Georgian government’s decision to escalate its effort to reintegrate the South Osse-tian separatist republic in August 2008, despite overt Russian threats of interven-tion. Lastly, Essay IV introduces a novel conceptual framework with illustrations from the intervention in the Kosovo War (1998-99). In sum, the essays highlight in different ways the complex battlefield dynamics associated with conducting and re-sponding to intervention. Understanding how an external actor’s use of military force affects the conduct and trajectory of a civil war is thus intimately linked to the-orizing and analyzing intervention strategy as a dynamic activity.

What explains the choice of means and methods of warfare by armed groups? Conversely, why would some groups choose not to use certain weapons? Beyond the legitimacy- and reputation-based explanations common in existing literature, this article highlights the role of tactical utility, inherent costs, and normative biases of specific means and methods in shaping these decisions. Through a combination of congruence analysis and comparative methods, the article examines why the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), while employing a wide range of brutal forms of violence, generally avoided using landmines, contrasting this restraint with the behavior of other Colombian armed groups. Although the lack of tactical utility seems to be the primary driver of the non-use of landmines, the costs and stigma associated with using mines influence how the AUC perceived their utility. The findings underscore the importance of context-specific factors in the decision-making processes of non-state armed groups and contribute to broader discussions on the disaggregation of violence in civil wars. 

The post-Cold War era has ushered in an array of complex challenges, expanding the scope of security agendas for states and multilateral organizations alike. This transformation necessitated regional and international approaches, encompassing multifaceted security threats such as human rights abuses, international terrorism, climate change, migration, pandemics, and cyberattacks. As a result, coordination between civilian and military actors became indispensable. However, this shift brought forth a multitude of civil-military concepts, each tailored to specific entities but resulting in significant confusion due to subtle variations in terminology and interpretation. For instance, the United Nations, European Union, and North Atlantic Treaty Organization employ various civil-military concepts, often sharing similar terms but conveying distinct meanings. Such conceptual disparities can lead to misunderstandings and hinder effective coordination. This paper introduces an analytical tool that categorizes organization-specific civil-military concepts into archetypes and provides a repository of official concepts and their summaries. The analytical framework is based on four core parameters of each civil-military concept, i.e. the main perspective, the scope, the level of applicability, and whether the concept entails a dedicated function. This resource aims to facilitate a common language for navigating and bridging different civil-military concepts. While essential for national militaries in multinational operations, this guide also benefits civilians engaging with military organizations, providing insights into military approaches to civil-military relations and aiding in identifying interlocutors within military structures. Ultimately, this framework accommodates future developments in civil-military concepts, enabling a contextual understanding within the existing conceptual landscape.

How can entrepreneurs frame foreign policy change so it forces political opposition into acquiescence? In this article, I show how foreign policy entrepreneurs use six frame alignment strategies to situate policy within the confines of the dominating discourse in ways that generate political support, exploit windows of opportunity, and manage coalitions. This contributes to our knowledge of the available framing tools for entrepreneurs and advances our understanding of the relationship between change and continuity in foreign policy. In the empirical analysis, based predominantly on twenty-three in-depth interviews, I show how a new venture of Swedish foreign policy, the deployment of Special Forces to Afghanistan, was successfully framed firmly within the confines of the foreign policy orientation and in line with previous policies. The analysis demonstrates how potential opposition was forestalled through the use of alignment strategies as sensitive and controversial aspects were masked as foreign policy continuity.

This chapter looks at young men’s narratives of corruption in interior Tunisia. Using an ethnographically driven method, the chapter tries to capture the issues confronting youth in the margins. The chapter lays out the way that narratives about corruption, which had previously been hidden or less overtly expressed, begin to inform the quotidian understanding of state, citizenship, and the democratic transition. It argues that corruption is understood as informal and threatening and that democratisation is seen as increasing this threatening informality of corruption. The chapter shows how through narratives of corruption the state is understood in essentially negative terms, as an “empty state” that is reduced to pure coercion. At the same time, by naming and discussing corruption the young seek to articulate other ways of seeing the state and being citizens. To call the state corrupt is to hold it to account and at the same time to articulate counter-visions; narratives of corruption thus signal expectations for something else, a hope of a better state of affairs.

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.