Publications

Algorithmic Warfare: Taking Stock of a Research Programme

This article by Ingvild Bode, Hendrik Huelss, Anna Nadibaidze, Guangyu Qiao-Franco & Tom F. A. Watts takes stock of the ongoing debates on algorithmic warfare in the social sciences. It seeks to equip scholars in International Relations and beyond with a critical review of both the empirical context of algorithmic warfare and the different theoretical approaches to studying practices related to the integration of algorithms (including automated, autonomous, and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies) into international armed conflict.

Ingvild Bode, Hendrik Huelss, Anna Nadibaidze, Guangyu Qiao-Franco & Tom F. A. Watts

Towards Intelligence Accountability as a virtue

Melanie Hartvigsen's first academic journal article, titled 'Towards Intelligence Accountability as a Virtue,' has been published in the Intelligence and National Security journal. In it, she argues that to fully understand the controversies surrounding intelligence accountability, we must comprehend the institutional logics and power struggles within and between intelligence agencies and oversight bodies.

Melanie Hartvigsen

"Great Powers and War in the 21st Century: Blast from the Past" in the Routledge Handbook of Future Warfare.

Olivier Schmitt, Ph.D, along with Dr. Vicky Karyoti and Amelie Theussen, Ph.D., just published a chapter "Great Powers and War in the 21st Century: Blast from the Past" in the Routledge Handbook of Future Warfare.

Olivier Schmitt, Vicky Karyoti and Amelie Theussen

Constructing Expertise: The Front - and Back-Door Regulation of AI’s Military Applications in the European Union

The article investigates how the EU as a multi-level system aims at regulating military AI based on epistemic authority. It suggests that the EU acts as a rule-maker and a rule-taker of military AI predicated on constructing private, corporate actors as experts. As a rule-maker, the EU has set up expert panels such as the Global Tech Panel to inform its initiatives, thereby inviting corporate actors to become part of its decision-making process through the front-door. But the EU is also a rule-taker in that its approach to regulating on military AI is shaped through the backdoor by how corporate actors design AI technologies. These observations signal an emerging hybrid regulatory security state based on ‘liquid’ forms of epistemic authority that empowers corporate actors but also denotes a complex mix of formal political and informal expert authority.

Ingvild Bode and Hendrik Huelss

Loitering Munitions and Unpredictability - Autonomy in Weapon Systems and Challenges to Human Control

A new report by Dr. Ingvild Bode and Dr. Tom F.A. Watts highlights the immediate need to regulate autonomous weapon systems, or ‘killer robots’ as they are colloquially called. The report’s central argument is that whilst most existing loitering munitions are operated by a human who authorizes strikes against system-designated targets, the integration of automated and autonomous technologies into these weapons has created worrying precedents deserving of greater public scrutiny.

Ingvild Bode and Tom Watts

Practice-Based and Public-Deliberative Normativity: Retaining Human Control over the Use of Force

In this article, Dr. Ingvild Bode exposes the concealed dynamics driving the discourse on lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS). As autonomous technologies seamlessly integrate into weaponry, redefining nations' understanding of human control, the article embarks on a two-step journey. From covert design practices to public discussions within the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on LAWS, it uncovers the transformation in human roles and decision-making norms. These revelations, informed by international practice theories, critical security studies, and Science and Technology scholarship, introduce fresh perspectives on the collective shaping of normativity and normality.

Ingvild Bode

The Need for and Nature of a Normative, Cultural Psychology of Weaponized AI (Artificial Intelligence)

The motivations for this project by Rockwell Clancy, Ingvild Bode, and Qin Zhu include the increasingly global, cross-cultural and international, nature of technologies, and counter-intuitive nature of normative thoughts and behaviors. The nature of this project consists in developing standardized measures of AI ethical reasoning and intuitions, coupled with questions exploring the development of norms, administered and validated across different cultural groups and disciplinary contexts.

Rockwell Clancy, Ingvild Bode, and Qin Zhu

Prospects for the Global Governance of Autonomous Weapons: Comparing Chinese, Russian, and US Practices

In this article the authors Ingvild Bode, Hendrik Huelss, Anna Nadibaidze, Guangyu Qiao-Franco, and Tom F.A. Watts argue for the necessity to adopt legal norms on the use and development of AWS. Without a framework for global regulation, state practices in using weapon systems with AI-based and autonomous features will continue to shape the norms of warfare and affect the level and quality of human control in the use of force.

Ingvild Bode, Hendrik Huelss, Anna Nadibaidze, Guangyu Qiao-Franco, and Tom F.A. Watts

Weaponised Artificial Intelligence and Chinese Practices of Human–Machine Interaction

This article by Ingvild Bode and Guangyu Qiao-Franco unpacks China’s understanding of human–machine interaction to find that it encompasses many shades of grey. Specifically, despite repeatedly supporting a legal ban on LAWS, China simultaneously promotes a narrow understanding of these systems that intends to exclude such systems from what it deems “beneficial” uses of AI.

Ingvild Bode and Guangyu Qiao-Franco

Unmanned? Military Masculinities in Filmic Representations of U.S. Drone Operators

In this “Men and Masculinities” article, Bjerre examines how U.S. drone operators are constructed and represented in the context of military masculinities in the films Drones (dir. Rick Rosenthal, 2013), Good Kill (dir. Andrew Niccol, 2014), and Eye in the Sky (dir. Gavin Hood, 2015).

Thomas Ærvold Bjerre

Membership has its Privileges: Targeted Killing Norms and the Firewall of International Society

There has been a long-standing debate over the ethics of targeted killing, with many scholars voicing concern over whether technological advancements and normative change are driving the normalization of these operations. Framed through social constructivism, they argue that the persistent use of these operations, combined with a lack of vocal opposition among states, makes a global norm cascade in favor of targeted killing increasingly possible. However, given the increasing number of states that have conducted these operations persistently over the past twenty years, why are these operations still bounded to violent non-state actors? This paper puts forward an alternative perspective that explains the bounded persistence of these operations via a novel construction of the international society/international system distinction found in the English School of International Politics.

Vincent Charles Keating

Cyber Threats - The Dark Side of the Digital Society

A danish book about cyber threats. Major Mikkel Storm Jensen from the RDDC and fellow Ph.D. candidate at Center for War Studies, has contributed with two chapters in the book about the state's role in protecting Denmark's critical infrastructure and the strategic threat from Chinese cyber espionage.

Mikkel Storm Jensen

Autonomous Weapon Systems and International Norms

In this book Ingvild Bode and Hendrik Huelss present an innovative study of how testing, developing, and using weapons systems with autonomous features shapes ethical and legal norms, and how standards manifest and change in practice. Autonomous weapons systems are not a matter for the distant future - some autonomous features, such as in air defence systems, have been in use for decades. They have already incrementally changed use-of-force norms by setting emerging standards for what counts as meaningful human control. As UN discussions drag on with minimal progress, the trend towards autonomizing weapons systems continues.

Ingvild Bode and Hendrik Huelss

Entrusted Norms: Security, Trust, and Betrayal in the Gulf Cooperation Council Crisis

This paper by Vincent C. Keating demonstrates the utility of considering how some norms might not just be internalized, but also entrusted. It argues that entrusted norms are different from internalized norms because they have light policing and, when broken, they result in not simply a reaction of disappointment, but betrayal. As such, the offending party cannot simply return to the behavioral status quo and expect a return to the political status quo.

Vincent Charles Keating

Resilience in EU and International Institutions

This book is published by Routledge and co-edited by Trine Flockhart and Elena Korosteleva. Within a volatile, uncertain and complex world hit by crises, pandemic, and diminishing control, the book explores the concept and practice of resilience. It proposes a new understanding of resilience, both as a quality and a way of thinking that can lead to a more sustainable way to govern the world today.

New publication on oil and the political economy in the Middle East

Martin Beck co-edited and co-authored the first comprehensive analysis of the Middle Eastern political economy in response to the 2014 oil price decline in a Manchester University Press volume that connects oil market dynamics with an understanding of socio-political changes. Picture licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

War Time: Temporality and the Decline of Western Military Power (free chapter on Afghanistan)

This book by CWS experts Sten Rynning, Olivier Schmitt and Amelie Theussen examines the alleged decline of the West's military power, investigating the role of time in a series of structural fractures that leave the West seemingly muscle-bound: overwhelmingly powerful in technology and military might but strategically fragile. Due to the situation in Afghanistan, the publisher Brookings Institution Press and Chatham House have agreed to make Kathleen J. McInnis' chapter "Civilian Casualties and Contemporary Coalition Operations: The Case of Afghanistan" freely available.

Warning about War

The 2021 annual ISA best book award has gone to CWS co-director Chiara De Franco and her co-authors Christoph Meyer and Florian Otto. The book explores the impacts and persuasiveness of warnings issued by intelligence services, media professional and NGOs in four recent conflicts. By investigating why some warnings are more impactful than others, the book offers novel insights into the study of conflict prevention and the understanding of persuasion in foreign policy.

Air defence systems set problematic precedents for what counts as meaningful human control

A new report by Ingvild Bode and Tom Watts published in collaboration with Drone Wars UK finds that ways of using air defence systems have incrementally diminished human control over the use of force – and how this matters for the debate on autonomous weapons.

Deterrence in the 21st Century - Insights from Theory and Practice

Center for War Studies professors Peter Viggo Jakobsen and Steen Rynning contribute chapters to important book updating our understanding of deterrence

Russia as a Military Great Power

A New book is out in Danish about Russian Military Power. Fellow PhD Candidate Mikkel Storm Jensen has written a chapter about Russian Cyber Warfare & our PhD Candidate Michael Gjerstad co-wrote a chapter with Niels Bo Poulsen about Russian Military Culture.

French Defence Policy Since the End of the Cold War By Olivier Schmitt & Alice Pannier

This book by Olivier Schmitt and Alice Pannier describes the evolution of French defence policy since the end of the Cold War. This book will be of great interest to students of defence studies, French politics, military studies, security studies, and IR in general.

Olivier Schmitt & Alice Pannier

New publication on the figure of the deserter in American film and culture

CWS’ associate professor Thomas Ærvold Bjerre has just published the article “Military Masculinity and the Deserting Soldier in Stop-Loss,” examining the figure of the deserter in American culture, with a focus on the 2008 Iraq War film Stop-Loss.

How to challenge an international order: Russian diplomatic practices in multilateral security organisations

In this article Olivier Schmitt contributes to this debate through a theoretical contribution to practice-based approaches to International Relations. Using De Certeau’s understanding of practices, it analyses Russian diplomatic practices in multilateral security organisations and illustrates how this helps infer foreign policy motives, contrary to the field-specific relationalism of Bourdieu-inspired practice approaches. The article was published on the European Journal of International Relations.

Wartime Paradigms and the Future of Western Military Power

In this article Olivier Schmitt introduces the concept of ‘wartime paradigm’ as a heuristic device to understand the relationship between the perception of time and the conduct of warfare, and argues that after the Cold War, a specific ‘wartime paradigm’ combining an optimization for speed and an understanding of war as risk management has guided western warfare, from force structure to the conduct of actual operations.

Fluctuating Regional (Dis-)Order in the Middle East

Martin Beck (SDU) and Thomas Richter (GIGA) argue that a new regional order has emerged that can be characterized as a highly contested multipolar system in flux. Papers come from the two guest editors, and May Darwich, Raymond Hinnebusch, and Sean Yom. They cover the American retreat from the Middle East, the aggravated struggle for regional power between Saudi Arabia and Israel versus Iran, Saudi Arabia’s new petro-aggression, escalation in failed Saudi and Emirati military interventions, and the battle over the reconstruction of Syria.

Fluctuating regional (dis-) order in the post-Arab Uprising Middle East

How has the Middle Eastern regional order changed in the current decade, and what are the consequences of these changes? CWS Professor Martin Beck provides answers to these questions by serving as a co-guest editor and (co)-author of two articles of a special section of Global Policy.

Is this the end? Resilience, ontological security, and the crisis of the liberal international order

Trine Flockhart analyzes the current crisis of the liberal international order and the need for urgent attention. In her article in Contemporary Security Policy, Trine seeks to understand why agents often fail to take decisive adaptive action, even when such action is desparately needed. (Picture: cropped from Neptuul under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)

Verden ifølge humaniora

A key task in the humanities is to develop new ideas and concepts that help us navigate the world we inhabit. A new book, edited by CWS member Anders Engberg-Pedersen along with two colleagues, Karen Gram-Skjoldager and Mikkel Bille, looks at how the humanities contribute to the societies we live in.

Military Drones in Europe

Dr. Dominika Kunertova's report provides the critical insights that national governments and defense companies need in order to navigate the European military drone landscape and offers a guide to their strategic planning and investment. Observing the international proliferation of military Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), also known as drones, the report puts together a comprehensive overview of military drones in Europe to conceptualize the diffusion of UAV technology and the competition dynamics on the European defense market.

On the continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Martin Becks writes on how the recent conflicts in the Arab world have impacted the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; how the conflict has evolved since the third intifada; and what the current dynamics of opposition between the actors look like.

NATO’s Futures : the Atlantic Alliance between Power and Purpose

In this new report, CWS professor Sten Rynning takes stock of NATO challenges, painting a fairly grim future of NATO stalemate and ultimately failure if NATO leaders allow the Alliance to continue to drift, but also offering hope for renewal.

Den ‘dybe stat’ i Trumpland: Konspirationsteorier i USA før og nu

In this article published in Økonomi og Politik, Kasper Grotle Rasmussen looks at the role of conspiracy theories to question power in the United States' history and now under Trump. (Photo: Conspiracy theories by Marco Verch under Creative Commons 2.0)

Diplomacy and the Arctic Council

In her latest book Danita Burke argues that the Arctic Council is a club: a group of states that mutually benefit from voluntary collaboration and that use the forum as a vessel to help define and guide the parameters of their cooperation.

U.S. foreign policy under Trump

What has the election of US president Donald Trump changed in terms of foreign policy for Denmark, and for Europe more generally? Kristine Kjærsgaard analyzes change and continuity in US foreign policy in her latest article "Amerikansk udenrigspolitik under Donald Trump – brud og kontinuitet" in Økonomi og Politik. Photo credit: Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead

Understanding Russian soft power

Were you fascinated by Homeland´s last season featuring Russian influence in the US? Do you want to learn more about the strategies developed by the Kremlin? Vincent C. Keating, associate professor at the CWS, offers you two useful resources on the matter.

Crisis Management versus Collective Defense

In this paper, Nick Williams tries to answer some key questions about NATO’s military transformation. How did this transformation happen? How did NATO members succeed in transforming NATO as a military instrument? Importantly, what was a remote possibility in the early 1900s - a strengthened and assertive Russia - is now a reality. Russia is now able to challenge a NATO that, in the meantime, has expanded to Russia’s borders. Must, and can, NATO transform its military structure again to return to its original function of collective defense?

Peace in Practice

In this paper, Bodil Stevnsboe Nielsen gives an insight into the practical work of the EU Council of ministers and how decisions are prepared and taken. It illustrates how the structures and rules facilitate a culture of compromise rather than controversy which enables the Council to find solutions to seemingly intractable problems.

Russian diplomatic practices in multilateral security organizations

In this article Olivier Schmitt analyzes the Russian diplomatic practices and illustrates how this helps infer foreign policy motives, contrary to the field-specific relationalism of Bourdieu-inspired practice approaches. The article was published on the European Journal of International Relations.

Surviving in a Forgotten, but Not So Frozen Conflict

In this paper, Lukasz Mackiewicz analyzes how specific policies on the 'Luhansk People's Republic' (LPR) regarding the provision of humanitarian aid and the nationalization of companies have exacerbated economic decline and contributed to the deterioration of living standards.