The Nordic Review of International Studies (NRIS) publishes peer-reviewed scholarly contributions within the field of International Relations (IR), focusing specifically on Nordic perspectives. The NRIS is committed to publishing articles that examine the international sphere empirically, theoretically, or institutionally from a Nordic angle. The NRIS is edited by Dr Johanna Vuorelma (University of Helsinki), Dr Sanna Salo (Finnish Institute of International Affairs), and Dr Ville Sinkkonen (Finnish Institute of International Affairs).
Finnish International Studies Association
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Arctic research infrastructures between normative ideals and geopolitical objectives
This discussion article explores how both scientific and security considerations are embedded in Arctic research infrastructures. It suggests that both normative ideals and geopolitical objectives can be identified in the discourses and practices surrounding the physical constructions, objects and technologies used for environmental or climate related knowledge-building in the Arctic. This has implications for developing appropriate policies that comprehensively acknowledge the science-security nexus without undue securitisation or bias. In drawing attention to the interface between Arctic science and security, and how such concerns are materially embedded, this discussion article argues that new assemblamatic approaches could allow for more relevant Arctic scientific and security related policymaking. New perspectives are needed to move beyond binary dichotomies that view Arctic politics through either normative or geopolitical frameworks. The article calls experts and academics to further address questions on the configuration of the Arctic science-security nexus, as well as on the extent to which Arctic science and security policies are mutually entangled rather than mutually exclusive.
Copyright (c) 2025 Aleksis Oreschnikoff https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
This article analyses Finland and Norway’s evolving narratives about one another as neighbours, partners, and allies against the backdrop of political and scholarly discourses about the broader Nordic security community. Drawing on International Relations (IR) theories on regional security complexes and security community formation, we find that a swift reframing of the Finnish-Norwegian relationship was possible after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 because it was formulated against the backdrop of the already established narrative about the well-functioning and trustful Nordic security community. The intense interaction dynamics between Finland and Norway in recent years have brought the Nordic security community to an unprecedented level of integration, and an all-time high sense of ‘we-ness’ now characterises Finnish-Norwegian relations.
Copyright (c) 2024 Matti Pesu, Kristin Haugevik, Katja Creutz, Øyvind Svendsen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Copyright (c) 2024 Helmi Räisänen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
With the decisions of Finland and Sweden to join NATO, a long chapter of Nordic neutrality is suddenly closed. This article examines the often misunderstood term ‘neutrality’ and the problems of finding a single definition relevant to post-Cold War politics. It then looks at the unique role and high profile that the Nordics have enjoyed in diplomacy and peacekeeping. Finally, it asks if NATO membership for Sweden and Finland is detrimental to international diplomacy and conflict resolution.
Copyright (c) 2024 Brendan Humphreys https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Russian informational campaigns and NATO in the Arctic
This discussion article presents evidence of how Russia mounts information campaigns through its press agencies to discredit NATO’s presence in the Arctic region. The analysis highlights how and when different framings of NATO’s actions in the Arctic region are disseminated by Russian press agencies. The discussion article suggests strategies to counter these campaigns as well as recommendations for policy-makers and researchers to better monitor Russian disinformation on the Arctic region.
Copyright (c) 2024 Mathieu Landriault https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Foreign Fighters in Ukraine: The Brown-Red Cocktail
Copyright (c) 2024 Sofiya Voytiv https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Imagining peace and producing knowledge about the war in Ukraine
After two and half years of Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine, experts around Europe are increasingly tempted to picture peace in Ukraine and security in post-war Europe. Peace researchers have a few useful principles to guide the way. The legacy of Johan Galtung proposes that not just any peace is better than conflict. The kind of peace that is suitable should be defined by those affected by the conflict. To support the emerging debate, this discussion article asks, what do we know about what peace means for Ukrainians? The answer is not that much. Debates about peace and security in Europe have long sidelined perspectives from the ‘periphery’ and Ukrainian voices continue to be dismissed despite the on-going war. Moscow’s perspective, in contrast, has historically been influential in shaping European debates, manifested in the silent acceptance of Russian imperialism in its self described sphere of interest. This discussion article proposes that in order to leave behind the European security order that enabled Russia’s aggression in the first place, the perspective of the ‘peripheries’ should be placed at the forefront of imagining future peace and security in Europe.
Copyright (c) 2024 Tyyne Karjalainen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Special Issue: Nordic perspectives on Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine
Copyright (c) 2024 Johanna Vuorelma, Ville Sinkkonen, Sanna Salo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Mitigating black carbon emissions from gas flaring and Arctic maritime shipping
The Arctic region and Russia, the major emitter of greenhouse gases, are facing effects of climate change faster than the rest of the world. Evidently, climate change and adoption to it will shape Russia’s future, and vice versa, regardless of who or what kind of a government is in power. This includes addressing the problem of black carbon and other short-lived climate pollutants from hydrocarbon industry and maritime shipping in the Northern Sea Route accelerating climate warming, with harmful effects on air quality, ecosystems and human health. Drawing on insights of international relations literature, this article examines conceptualisations of illiberalism, illiberal environmentalism and their contemporary versions in Russia, and discusses how these frameworks can be applied to understand Russia’s policy choices regarding climate change and the Arctic since the invasion in Ukraine in February 2022 and considers prospects for post-war Arctic collaboration. It finds that these conceptualisations when carefully contextualised help to identify ideational underpinnings intertwined with national interests in policy texts and illuminate connections to societal beliefs held by Russian conservatives and indicate authoritarian and illiberal practices guiding policymaking and implementation. Post-war international collaboration among climate scientists is viewed as worth pursuing, and perhaps essential, to mitigate Arctic warming.
Copyright (c) 2025 Minna Hanhijärvi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The Arctic Fable and the Unbearable Question
This discussion article addresses the means and matters that constitute a claimed entity known as ‘the Arctic’. A polemic, poetic and problematising reading of the Arctic is conducted by using different parables, metaphors and literature displaying elephant as their centrepiece. They enable to illustrate the Arctic as a subjective aspect, disciplinary practice, product of power and knowledge, and imaginary lost object. These conditions are finally addressed with the unbearable question, formulated to either liberate or burden the ones who are the practitioners of Arctic studies.
Copyright (c) 2025 Joonas Vola https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Decolonising Arctic geopolitics and security
Ongoing geopolitical changes and the “arctification” of world politics are introducing new pressures on the Sámi people, whose lands stretch across the northernmost parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula in Russia. While climate change has increased global and national interest in the Arctic region’s natural resources and logistical and transport potential already for some time, today land use in Sápmi is reshaped also by acute security and defense imaginaries which are promoting strong military build-up across the region. In this article, I discuss the challenges that these changes are presenting to the Sámi and to their ability to voice concern for their own rights, security and future. Focusing especially on the challenges associated with the energy transition as well as growing military land use, the article sketches out and introduces a notion of subaltern security dilemma (SSD), which is offered here as a tool for a critical, deconstructive and decolonial approach to the study of Arctic geopolitics and security in Sápmi and more broadly.
Copyright (c) 2025 Laura Junka-Aikio https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Finland and Sweden’s decisions to join NATO not only marks the end of a long period of neutrality and military non-alignment for the Nordic neighbours - they also require major shifts in their policies and self-perceptions related to nuclear weapons, disarmament, and nuclear deterrence. Drawing on a comparative research design and theory on depoliticisation, this article analyses how joining a nuclear alliance was made possible in two historical contexts marked by traditional opposition towards nuclear weapons. Comparing domestic deliberations about the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and NATO membership between 2016–2022, our findings suggest that two key narratives are essential for understanding how the nuclear dimension of NATO membership was reconciled in both countries. First, ‘the virtue of (disarmament) pragmatism’ narrative centres around how the historically stratified Finnish pragmatic approach to nuclear disarmament served as a guiding principle in both countries. Second, ‘the necessity of extended (nuclear) deterrence’ narrative enabled the nuclear dimension of NATO membership to become reconciled with Finland and Sweden’s historically neutral and non-aligned policies.
Copyright (c) 2024 Tapio Juntunen, Emma Rosengren https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Copyright (c) 2025 Johanna Vuorelma, Sanna Salo, Ville Sinkkonen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
This article comparatively examines how Norway, Finland, and Denmark have reacted through their Arctic engagement to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and the collapse of the ‘Arctic exceptionalism’ paradigm. We trace how Nordic states came to consider Russia as an existential threat, necessitating extraordinary measures ranging from Finland’s NATO accession to Denmark’s abandonment of its EU defence opt-out and Norway’s reinforcement of its northern brigades. There is a cascading pattern from domestic securitisation to interstate Nordic cooperation and interregional anchoring in NATO and the EU, as well as global-in-the-region positioning. While convergence on containment is evident, divergences persist in geographical emphases, institutional alignments, domestic patterns and histories. Norway has focused on maritime approaches, Finland on its eastern land border, and Denmark on Atlantic extension via Greenland and the GIUK gap. Nordic securitisation is contributing to the reshaping of Atlantic and Arctic security and the NATO-anchored sub-complex, where unity coexists with nationalised geographies of risk. The future of Arctic security will not be determined by Washington and Moscow alone but will hinge on Nordic agency, especially Norway’s dynamic role. Decisions in Helsinki and Copenhagen also now bind regional security dynamics to global rivalries.
Copyright (c) 2026 Elena Kravchik, Rinna Kullaa https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Finland’s international defence and security cooperation as a shelter-seeking strategy in the views of the Finnish MPs in the era of great power competition
Great power politics and current developments of multipolarity challenge the rules-based order and international environment in which small states, including Finland, operate. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Finland has joined NATO and strengthened its bilateral and multilateral defence cooperation. In this article, we look at international defence and security cooperation as a shelter-seeking strategy. The article relies on original interview data (N=22) of the members of the Finnish parliament (2019-2023 term), which will be examined through theoretically-oriented qualitative content analysis focusing on international cooperation from the perspective of shelter theory. The study shows that shelter-seeking takes place in both bi- and multilateral manners, but there are significant differences in costs and benefits and drivers behind shelter-seeking.
Copyright (c) 2026 Anna Kronlund, Teemu Häkkinen, Hannu Salomaa https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
This article examines the effects of various forms of linkage on public attitudes towards foreign relations. Focusing on Norway, it analyses attitudes towards Russia, Russians and Norway’s Russia policy following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Rather than assuming a single continuum of pro- or anti-Russian sentiment, the article explores whether and how geographical, personal, informational and interest-driven linkages are associated with distinct attitudinal dimensions. Drawing on a nationally representative survey, we first use Principal Component Analysis to identify the underlying structure of Russia-related attitudes. Four dimensions emerge: geopolitical outlooks, attitudes towards ordinary Russians, support for distancing from Russia, and security threat perceptions. In a second step, the analysis shows that linkage plays a limited role in explaining geopolitical outlooks, which appear largely insulated from individual-level connections and experiences with Russia. By contrast, it is more strongly associated with attitudes towards ordinary Russians, support for distancing from Russia, perceptions of security threats, and the likelihood of expressing uncertainty. These findings highlight that different types of linkage do not have a uniform effect across different aspects of foreign policy opinion.
Copyright (c) 2026 Aadne Aasland, Marthe Handå Myhre https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Whither dialogue? Nordic leadership and the collapse of Europe’s two-track approach to Russia
Copyright (c) 2026 Matti Pesu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Strategic allies or Nordic outposts? Comparing US and Nordic perspectives on Nordic Defence Cooperation Agreements (DCAs)
In recent years Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have signed or updated bilateral Defence Cooperation Agreements (DCA) with the United States. These agreements were presented as enabling deeper defence cooperation with a strategic ally in a severely deteriorated European security environment. The agreements provided strategic flexibility for increased US presence in Northern Europe. However, rather than signalling unique relations between the Nordic countries and the United States, they should be seen as an extension of America’s overall strategic approach to military presence and cooperation with allies and partners in Europe. For the Nordic countries, the implication is that they cannot insulate themselves from political risks in the transatlantic relationship.
Copyright (c) 2026 Joel Linnainmäki https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The decline of US Diplomacy - Implications for US global leadership
Diplomacy has been a cornerstone of US global leadership in the post-Cold War era. The Trump Administration has dismantled long-standing foreign policy institutions, sharply reduced foreign assistance, and shifted foreign policy decision-making toward the executive branch. At the same time, it has moved away from multilateralism in favour of a transactional foreign policy centred on personalised presidential diplomacy, bilateral deals, and the use of coercive economic measures. Together, these changes have weakened US global leadership. They have reduced American soft power, eroded global trust, undercut US influence in global norm setting, and diminished the country’s ability to monitor and respond to global developments. Although the US continues to have unmatched military power and economic leverage, a sustained withdrawal from development assistance, public diplomacy and multilateral forums, especially on transnational challenges, is likely to accelerate competition over the future rules and norms of the international order. As China rapidly expands its global initiatives and India, Brazil and other BRICS countries press for reforms of international institutions, the liberal character of the global order will very much depend on how US allies and partners take up the reins in response to the US retreat.
Copyright (c) 2026 Deborah McCarthy https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The IN, TO, and THROUGH methodology categorises threats affecting the circumpolar Arctic. Scholars such as Lackenbauer, who developed the methodology for the North American Arctic, and Østhagen, in applying it to the European High North, identify and categorise different threats that fall under the broad umbrella of ‘Arctic Security’. Comparing the European High North with the North American Arctic, we observe that the sub-regions face shared and distinct pressures, with kinetic and “hybrid” threats TO the High North presenting less risk to the North American Arctic. The subregions share common IN threats driven by climate change, as well as THROUGH threats driven by strategic competition and technological change. Our commentary gestures to areas of common alignment on “total defence” and comprehensive security approaches, as well as opportunities to bolster strategic deterrence and political stability in a region that is no longer viewed as exceptional.
Copyright (c) 2026 Nicholas Glesby, Ryan Dean https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Return of the Americas and the rise of Norden
The Arctic is emerging as a world-shaping space where US hemispheric ambitions and Nordic sovereignty converge. Washington’s renewed focus on the Western Hemisphere turns attention northward — including but not exclusively toward Greenland — generating friction with a traditional ally, Denmark, while creating alignment with Finland. Meanwhile, the Nordic Council’s institutional promotion of Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Åland marks a geopolitical shift, stretching Norden across two continents. Although all Nordics now belong to NATO, the rootedness of their different strategic cultures portends a great test for Nordic Unity precisely where the Arctic meets the Americas. Emerging dynamics may also split the European geostrategic space into two, separating the Arctic and the immediate sub-Arctic from the rest of the continent.
Copyright (c) 2026 Lauri Tähtinen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
This article sets forth a preliminary conceptual framework for understanding how the United States prioritises policy engagement across competing domestic and international demands. Adapting the Eisenhower Matrix, it categorises policy issues along two dimensions – importance and urgency – while situating decision-making within constraints of time, financial resources, public opinion, and elite tolerance for pressure. The framework provides a descriptive tool for analysing how prioritisation unfolds. The article highlights how institutional dynamics, political incentives, and the pressures of the contemporary attention economy shape the assignment and contestation of urgency and importance. It also considers how media cycles and amplification through social media can elevate issues perceived as urgent or important while obscuring less visible but strategically significant priorities. By structuring policy debates within four quadrants of urgency and importance, the framework offers a means for tracing how issues move across categories and why certain policies receive attention or resources. In doing so, it provides analysts with a systematic tool for interrogating US policy choices and the competing visions, constraints, and narratives that shape them.
Copyright (c) 2026 Cordelia Buchanan Ponczek https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Continuity over change, institutions over innovations, organised over organic
This study approaches Nordic resilience as a continuum and a multi-level process exploring the resilience perceptions across the region. Through a mixed-methods approach combining earlier literature and a unique set of interviews collected in the Nordic countries and regions in 2021–2022, the study develops a heuristic model of Nordic resilience, which is composed of three overlapping phases: resistance, endurance, and transformation. While the study does not attempt to evaluate whether resilience to certain dangers exists either spatially or temporally, it builds a catalogue of perceived resilience elements specific to the Nordics. The research confirms that despite terminological differences, resilience perceptions across the Nordics are aligned. The identified resilience factors appear mostly at the national and international levels emphasising the state responsibility and centrality in resilience production. Simultaneously, the interviewees give little attention to the micro-level responsibility for resilience, namely the role of individuals and communities. This leads to a Nordic resilience paradox where problems with responsibility and governability of resilience are practically absent but the strengths of a resilience approach are not fully recognised as attention to bottom-up agility, innovation, and organic transformation is lacking.
Copyright (c) 2024 Johanna Ketola https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Nationalist justifications of realist policies
Russia’s all-out-attack against Ukraine in late February 2022 caused a fast turnaround in Finland’s public support for NATO membership that led the political parties, which had hitherto opposed joining NATO, to reconsider their stances. I argue that those parties, via their elites, employed a realist strategy of security, bolstered by political nationalism to express unity with the population to justify their shift, in an attempt to depoliticise the issue altogether. The premise of the study thus becomes the use of nationalism in explaining states joining international organisations rather than seeing it only as a disruptive force in interstate cooperation. The study also contributes to the previous scholarship on Finnish foreign policy and its different schools of thought by examining how nationalism plays a part in the realms of security and national interest. Ultimately, the membership signals a Finnish foreign policy swing from idealism to classical realism in which Finland had hitherto been an anomaly. This study uses data collected from Finnish parliamentary parties’ council conferences held between April and May 2022, where they formulated their stances.
Copyright (c) 2024 Waltteri Immonen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Rethinking Finnish-Swedish relations, Nordic cooperation, and NATO
Two of the long-lasting consequences of the dramatic year 2022 are Finland and Sweden’s decisions to apply for NATO membership, taken on 15 and 16 May respectively. The decisions resulted from the Russian large-scale aggression against Ukraine at the end of February. With and around these decisions, we can see a myriad of adjustments, policy changes, shifts of public opinion, and turnarounds in discourse on security and defence. This article takes up some of these issues and reflects on where they might be leading, not only for Finland and Sweden, but also for Nordic cooperation and NATO in the near future.
Copyright (c) 2023 Hanna Ojanen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Book review: The gloomy future of the United States
Copyright (c) 2023 Maria Lindén https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Finland became a full member of NATO in April 2023. In this article, I will review four rounds of the Finnish NATO debate from the 1990s to the 2020s leading to the membership application in May 2022. There were some elements that distinguished the debates in each decade, but the arguments both in favour as well as against the membership remained basically the same. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine did not change the key reasons in favour of membership in NATO, namely added deterrence and protection to strengthen Finland’s security, but they became more compelling in the eyes of the public. Applying for membership in NATO was seen as too uncertain and the former Warsaw Pact members as a wrong reference group in the 1990s, the risk of being dragged into faraway wars was deemed as too great in the 2000s, and the policy of military non-alignment with a close NATO partnership was still seen as the best strategy to keep Russia at bay in the 2010s.
Copyright (c) 2023 Tuomas Forsberg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
NATO’s strategic thinking in the changing security environment
Some argue that the Russian invasion of Ukraine caused NATO to change course and put more emphasis on Collective Defence, which as we know, was the initial intent of the 1949 Washington Treaty. I contest that argument by explaining that the NATO has never lost sight of this initial intent. In its Strategic Concepts NATO has always maintained Collective Defence as one of its core tasks. In response to the Russian Federation’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, it had just stepped up its efforts to be prepared to defend the Euro-Atlantic area - witness the expressions of political will at subsequent NATO Summits and the increased defense budgets of its member states.
Copyright (c) 2023 Tiina Mac Intosh https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
In recent years, NATO has put significant effort into advancing its work on the linkages between security and climate change. In the NATO summit in Madrid in 2022, the alliance declared its climate neutrality target, and it has previously announced it aims to become a leading organisation on climate security. For the potential new NATO members Finland and Sweden, climate security can also prove to be a relevant topic through which to contribute to the agenda of the alliance, as both countries prioritise climate issues in their foreign policies. In order to provide a meaningful input to climate security within NATO, however, the countries need to shape their message beyond presumed climate security know-how. This is not to be taken as a given especially as it may be in the interest of the countries to focus on traditional military security issues rather than climate change in the NATO context. Yet by neglecting climate security altogether, Finland and Sweden risk missing an opportunity to contribute to the strategic planning of the alliance in a field of emerging importance.
Copyright (c) 2023 Emma Hakala https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
In the past two decades, a foreign policy shift has taken place in Washington, and it is not limited to one side of the political spectrum. Voices from the left-wing of the Democratic party, or progressive Democrats, are also challenging traditional foreign policy orthodoxies, and these views are moving closer to the mainstream. The focus of this foreign policy re-examination is around US military spending in service of global dominance and (over)extended military commitments. This has important implications for European allies of the United States. An examination of progressive views reveals that US commitment to NATO in general is supported, as are the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO. Not least due to a commitment to climate change mitigation and multilateralism, for Europeans in the political center and left of center, much of the progressive foreign policy agenda should be welcome. However, there is a broad and firm view that Europeans collectively should rely much less on the United States for their security – which is a prospect that European NATO countries are still far from genuinely pursuing.
Copyright (c) 2023 Rachel Tausendfreund https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0