The Swedish Armed Forces had until relatively recently the alignment to act as an international peace keeping force by supporting other actors when promoting peace and freedom. Then the focus was to strive for military interoperability in that context. Now the alignment has shifted to the focus on defense of the national territory. A task that have been given the Swedish Armed Forces is to be able to do so together with other military forces including members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This analysis seeks to answer how the military interoperability between the Swedish Armed Forces and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is today in the context of joint multinational operations with the purpose to defend the national territory of Sweden. The result of this analysis shows that the Swedish Armed Forces and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have achieved military interoperability in some respects but there is an absence of this in other respects. One of the prime conclusions of this analysis is that more research should be done in this area to get a clearer apprehension about how the military interoperability look between these actors and how it can be improved in the context of joint multinational operations with the purpose to defend the national territory of Sweden.

Cyber is a multifaceted concept that is a relatively new area of research in war studies. When a con-cept contains several underlying attributes without a clear presentation, it can create ambiguities which attributes that explain what in a joint operation. It is important to have a similar understand-ing of how concepts are used to promote the ability to cooperate and enable the exchange of infor-mation and the implementation of activities in a similar way. A challenge in cyber operations is that the domain does not follow the natural boundaries that exist in the traditional domains, air, land and maritime. This argues that a cyber operation places greater demands on collaboration among the nations who´s going to conduct the operation. The purpose of this essay is that through John Gerring's concept theory "what makes a concept good?" analyze the concepts of cyber and how they are presented in Sweden's and NATO's doc-trines in joint operations, DGO and AJP-3. The result is then compared and presents an understand-ing of how it should be perceived in a joint operation. The results of this study show that the conceptual definitions of cyber differs between the doctrines to that extent that the definitions themselves are not comparable. But at the same time, there are similarities in several aspects such as within domain operations and risk/opportunity valuation.

Changing international environment and new threats. Opportunity for a European strategic culture? The international environment is going through a period of major upheaval. Terrorism, the growing influence of emerging powers and authoritarian regimes, and the weakening of multilateralism contribute to the gradual deterioration of the world order and simultaneously represent a serious challenge to Europe. In the aftermath of the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, the vulnerability of the European security architecture became especially apparent. This thesis aims to unfold how these changes were perceived and responded to by two major countries of the European Union: France and Germany. The main focus is on the perception of these changes, the security challenges and the relationship with Russia and its confrontational policy towards Europe and the surrounding areas. Furthermore, it deals with their perception of the changing foreign-policy priorities of the United States and the deepening of European cooperation in the field of security and defense policy. The analysis of the German and French discourse depicts their attitude and then compares their approach to the changing international landscape, thus answering the question of the compatibility of their respective strategic thinking.

This diploma thesis deals with the question of potential membership of Israel in NATO. It elaborates on the hypothesis that Israel is not interested in formal NATO membership, but rather in the broadening of mutual cooperation on a formal basis. The main goal of the thesis is to answer the research question: Why is Israel still not a member of NATO? The answer combines empirical analysis together with theoretical concept of national interest. Empirical sections examine broader context of mutual relations, investigates their interests in further cooperation and defines problems connected with official Israeli application for NATO membership. Theoretical sections examine Israeli national interest in NATO membership through realist and liberal perspective. Combination of empirical and theoretical research provides a wider context of the research question, why is Israel still not a member of NATO. My proposition is that Israeli membership in NATO face challenges on levels of NATO member states as well as on the level of Israeli political representatives. Furthermore, both entities perceive security through different lenses. Israel perceive its security rather through the realist lenses because it still faces basic security threats in its immediate neighborhood, whereas NATO member states already...

This diploma thesis analyzes the phenomenon of NATO burden-sharing. Due to late security crises in Europe, such as Crimea crisis, the never-ending alliance issue has been encased in new dynamics. This new dynamics supposedly threatens the long preserved status quo and can even lead to the breakup of the alliance. The thesis uses methodological framework prescribed by Lene Hansen. This framework draws heavily on work from David Campbell and his Writing Security. For the successful analysis, we first designate our inter-textual governmental field in which we then try to observe the repeating ideational/argumentative norms of the respective discursive actors in the alliance. We also divide our research field into two time units: the 1990s era and events after 9/11. Interpretation of the behaviour of certain members shows establishment of a several interconnected centres of argumentation, which somehow coincides with the three largest European members of NATO. The thesis also shows, that these argumentative actors tend to transform their argumentative structures along with the changing environment and context. For better understanding, the work encompasses the short-term, intensive burden-sharing situations, like NATO interventions, but also debates on long-term institutional solutions, which are mostly seen...

The aim of this work is to determine the influence of nuclear weapons possession in 1) Russia's foreign policy in the Ukraine crisis, 2) relations between NATO and Russia. For this purpose the work monitors the development of NATO - Russia relations from the Budapest memorandum until present. The work also creates typology of russian signalling activities based on the theoretical basis of the nuclear deterrence conceptions and especially on the models of crisis signalling, which is closely linked to these conceptions. After monitoring these activities the work concludes that Russia is indeed using threats of nuclear weapons employment in the framework of it's attitude towards Ukraine crisis and also the intensity of signalling shows similar development as the relations with NATO.

This thesis discusses one of the most serious security challenges faced by the Baltic states since regaining their independence. This security challenge is a product of Russia’s assertive foreign policy towards its western neighbours, which has intensified after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. In order to understand the rationale behind the Kremlin’s policy in the region, the thesis aims to analyse how internal and external factors shape the foreign policy of Russia towards the Baltic states. By taking neo-classical realism as its theoretical framework, the thesis uses mixed research methods for collecting data and applies qualitative content analysis to analyse the three main factors that shape Russia’s Baltic policy. The thesis identifies that NATO’s actions in the anarchic international system raise security threats towards Russia. This shapes Putin’s threat perceptions and compels him to react with counteractions, and since the foreign policy in Russia is concentrated mainly in the hands of the president, his perceptions are decisive. Nevertheless, Putin is dependent on Russians’ support and exploits nationalist feelings of the Russian population to pursue his foreign policy. The thesis concludes that the combination of these three factors makes Russia’s foreign policy towards the Baltic states more aggressive.

This thesis intended to examine how the actions of Sweden, following the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, fit within the international relations theoretical perspective of pragmatic idealism, focusing on the actions of Sweden's foreign policy that impacted its neutrality policy. This thesis is built upon the pragmatic idealism theoretical perspective of international relations, and attempted to address how this perspective accounted for, or failed to account for the actions of Sweden in the face of the escalating Russian threat. The analysis herein is grounded in case study methodology. First, the thesis examined how Sweden-Russia relations evolved in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Second, the thesis examined how Sweden-NATO relations changed after the 2014-15 annexation of Crimea by Russia. In both cases, the paper analysed how the evolution of these relationships affected Sweden's neutrality, and how the evolution was consistent or not consistent with the “pragmatic” and “idealist” dimensions of the theoretical perspective of pragmatic idealism. The culmination of this paper drew an inference of the applicability of the perspective of pragmatic idealism to Sweden's application of neutrality to international relations. It concluded that Sweden's neutrality both prior to and following the invasion, as well as its subsequent actions, were in line with the theoretical perspective of pragmatic idealism.

Within the last decade, European states, particularly in the post-Communist and post-Soviet region, have elected more rightist-led governments. Poland is no exception and after a surprising election in 2015 led to a Law and Justice Party (PiS) government majority in the state, questions of how this political shift in the "role model" Eastern European state could impact Polish security began to circulate. (Lupitu, 2016, p. 25) This study analyses the PiS's security actions within its first year as the Polish government majority (2015-2016) to discern the potential agency political actors have in determining how regional security organisations function through a structure vs. agency framework. Using NATO as a unit of analysis, the study aims to synthesise regional security implications of Poland's political shift on the Alliance. To do so, a triangulated methodology is applied to four key security events and actions PiS took within 2015-2016 using both a document and news media analyses as well as three elite interviews. These four events include a controversial pardoning of the minister responsible for all Polish Special Services, lustration activities within Polish security agencies, a controversial dismissal of the head of NATO's Centre of Excellence in Warsaw and the Warsaw Summit of 2016. A common...

Security Sector Reform (SSR) is considered a significant feature in post-conflict peacebuilding efforts typically employed by states and international partners. Recently, the concept of SSR has played a significant role in the statebuilding process in Afghanistan after the Taliban regime; however, a disorganised and unplanned withdrawal poses severe threats to the security sector. This thesis explores the SSR efforts made by the western states after the end of the Taliban regime. The holistic approaches present in policy and strategy documents are quite challenging when it comes to SSR implementation in a post-conflict country ruled by an insurgent group for years. This thesis illustrates two competing approaches that show how SSR played a role in the post-conflict peacebuilding within Afghanistan and how peace spoilers and US/NATO withdrawal will impact the gains of twenty years in SSR. In order to better analyse the SSR process, a case study of the Afghan National Police is used. Moreover, this thesis offers some practical policy recommendations that can be useful for the concept of SSR in Afghanistan. This thesis does not offer a solution to the challenges of SSR in post-conflict countries like Afghanistan. Yet, it suggests that an uncoordinated withdrawal of external powers can negatively...