Constructivist research has observed punctuated equilibria in international politics, with rapid changes interspersing more prolonged periods of stability, characterised by a single and enduring dominant security narrative. However, in the contemporary era of affective polarisation, single dominant security narratives are no longer the norm. This, in part, reflects the decline of the bully pulpit, following the rise of a cacophony of storying actors. We argue that constructivism requires a theoretical supplement to help make sense of this new empirical reality. Drawing on eventful sociology, we complement extant IR research on narrative with greater focus on contingency, iterative interaction, and agentic creativity as part of a configurational account of the storying of political events. We explore this in the US case – characterised by inward-looking, hyper-partisan politics. Analysing a new dataset of 1288 political and media texts, we trace the construction of the Capitol riots, through the combined actions of myriad storying agents, within two distinct, enduring, and synergistic national security narratives. The outcome is surprising: highly divergent but intimately entwined stories of continuity. Our findings suggest that constructivism requires updating – to be more contingent, agentic, and configurational – to meet the demands of the new, hyper-polarised era.

This paper explores the complexity of superpower rivalry in the scramble for control of Africa’s abundant mineral resources. African governments are wary of diplomatic, economic, and sometimes military interventions, having experienced them all before. The twenty-first-century legacy is a distrust of Western motives, even as fresh development opportunities present themselves through Africa’s ‘green’ and strategic mineral wealth. African nations are desperate to kickstart growth and view the combination of local mineral wealth and non-Western capital sources as a catalyst for overcoming crippling poverty. Yet, Africa’s abundance of critical minerals is impacting security, potentially leading to competition and conflict rather than peace and prosperity. China is pursuing a ‘grand strategy’ geared towards enhancing its own national security, rather than that of Africa, through control and often ownership of critical mineral supply chains. Russia is also present in Africa, but there is no grand strategy, just opportunistic strategic liaisons between proxy paramilitary groups and undemocratic African governments. The West is now belatedly ramping up engagement with Africa in a bid to protect its national security interests. Governance is critical for ensuring that superpower rivalry over scarce resources does not destabilise the continent, but rather acts as a transformative force for African development.

In 2015, the Swedish government resumed a coordinated ‘total defence’ planning. While such changes have been much analysed, the establishment of a ‘market’ for total defence remains underexamined. Drawing on an institutional approach and focusing on the market as a strategic action field, we examine defence markets as politics to better understand recent transformations of Swedish defence. We deductively and thematically compare two moments of transformation – the end of the Cold War and the 2015 shift back to total defence – through the analysis of key government documents and inquiries, business group reports, and press releases. The comparison demonstrates the importance of state–firm relations in the institutionalisation of defence markets, especially emphasising the different forms of settlement of the defence market field. The article provides a synthesis of the sociology of markets and the marketisation of defence, which will help improve our understanding of state–market relations and the role of business in the development of ‘whole-of-society’ models and in defence transformation more broadly.

This article examines how generative AI (GenAI) is reshaping strategic crisis decision-making through the emergence of ‘synthetic foresight’ – the algorithmic simulation of adversary intentions, escalation pathways, and imagined futures under conditions of uncertainty. Unlike traditional practices such as early warning, scenario planning, wargaming, or red teaming, which discipline strategic imagination through structured engagement with uncertainty, GenAI functions as a synthetic cognitive and strategic actor, shaping how leaders anticipate, interpret, and respond to crises in real time. While the implications of GenAI span multiple domains, this study focuses on nuclear crises as the most acute and consequential test of these dynamics. The article identifies three interrelated risks: the normalisation of low-probability escalation pathways, the misattribution of adversarial intent cloaked in algorithmic certainty, and the emergence of synthetic feedback loops that can transform foresight into a driver of escalation. Together, these dynamics may generate self-fulfilling escalatory prophecies, undermining crisis stability as simulated futures begin to shape the behaviours they were intended to anticipate or prevent. The article theorises synthetic foresight as a distinct epistemic force – not merely a predictive aid, but a transformative influence on how strategic futures are imagined, interpreted, and acted upon.

When do relations between a rising state and a hegemonic state deteriorate? Scholarship in international relations theory maintains that when the rising state meets the three criteria of the power transition theory baseline – higher growth rates, power parity, and frustration with the status quo – relations between it and the hegemonic state deteriorate. These conditions alone cannot explain the timing and shape of the rising state to challenge the hegemonic state. In this article we introduce scope and boundary conditions for power transition theory, focusing on the rising state’s challenge and its effects on power transition dynamics. We propose that a rising state’s challenge to the hegemonic state is contingent on two variables: only when the rising state translates its gross power rise into advanced military capabilities and perceives the hegemonic state to have low resolve will it escalate its strategy against the hegemonic state and deteriorate their relations. An examination of three case studies – US–China relations (1991–2024), Spain–Portugal relations (1469–94), and Germany–UK relations (1871–1914) – support this argument.

Military doctrine can function as a tool of change by articulating a vision of the future force. However, how and under which conditions this occurs is contested. This study is structured as a theory-testing process-tracing case study on the use of doctrine by the Royal Norwegian Air Force 1999–2011. Following its perceived irrelevance during Operation Allied Force in 1999, the Norwegian Air Force shifted from a defensive to an offensive posture, culminating in extensive bombings during Operation Unified Protector in 2011. However, Norway did not use doctrine as a tool of change, despite having all the theorised preconditions for doing so. This was due to a tradition of writing descriptive, rather than prescriptive doctrine. Yet, while not having direct effect, doctrine served as a platform for internal debate, influencing changes in force employment, organisation, and equipment indirectly. These findings challenge conventional assumptions about doctrine as a driver of military change, highlighting its indirect role in shaping military discourse and institutional adaptation. The study contributes to the study of international security by demonstrating that the direct impact of doctrine on military transformation is contingent on doctrinal traditions.

The article probes the analytical utility of the increasingly popular concept of ‘cognitive warfare’. It proceeds by reflecting writings associated with the concept’s mainstream meaning against selected insights from general strategic theory and affective science and finds cognitive warfare problematic in multiple aspects. From the perspective of general strategic theory, cognitive warfare misrepresents the nature of the challenge at hand, blurs the distinction between core aspects of strategic effort, and draws on questionable rather than sound strategic thought. From an affective science perspective, it relies on an increasingly outdated paradigm for explaining the human mind, provides little insight into how cognition shapes behaviour, and overlooks the beneficial roles of emotions in maintaining social cohesion. Integrating these perspectives, the article argues that information aggression is better understood as attempted subversion centred on specific emotions. The presented argument allows practitioners to better understand the nature of the challenges they face and to develop appropriate remedies, and academics to study the subject in a more focused manner.

This article investigates the DDIS scandal in Denmark through the lens of Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical theory, focusing on the performative dimensions of the case and its portrayal in the media. We explore how this scandal, situated in a Scandinavian high-trust context, contributes to broader debates on intelligence accountability – an area predominantly examined in Anglo-Saxon settings. Drawing on a qualitative document analysis of media coverage, we argue that the scandal, whether framed as an intelligence or political affair, reveals a breakdown in dramaturgical discipline among key actors, challenging public perceptions of legitimacy and control. However, this breakdown has not yet translated into significant changes in intelligence practices or societal norms regarding intelligence oversight. Reflecting on de Blic and Lemieux’s notion of scandals as tests of societal norms, we find that pre-existing norms of high trust in intelligence authorities remain largely unaffected. Instead, criticism was absorbed through a reframing of the scandal as a complex, political, and person-centred issue, with the primary implication being increased secrecy and political control rather than enhanced accountability.

Space systems are becoming an ever more important part of international security capabilities and practices. However, problematic interpretations of the Space Age are taking root in practitioner and academic circles along the contours of three sequential Space Ages. This article develops an original critique of these periodisations by applying a large technical systems approach and empirical research. It emphasises the role of space system builders and the prevalence of paradoxes in analysing space infrastructure as a method for critiquing three claims over the sweeping waves of democratisation, commercialisation, and militarisation in outer space that the periodisations make. This article proposes an alternative periodisation of a singular Global Space Age from 1957 that advances the counter-arguments that: first, power remains concentrated to a handful of space system builders rather than democratised to the many; second, that the space economy still relies on the state rather than being transferred to the private sector; and third, that the claims of sanctuary in space today ignore the spectre of space warfare that has long stalked space infrastructure. The infrastructural Global Space Age framing is offered as a useful materialist foundation for building bridges between international security, infrastructural technologies, and space security scholarship.

What explains how the public views government responses to hostage crises? Existing research has explored how incident-level factors shape public opinion of hostage recovery, but we know less about which Americans support recovery – and why. In this article, we explore how individual-level factors shape public support for bringing captives home. We argue that support for hostage recovery reflects partisan, ideological, and emotional factors. Drawing on two large, national surveys of the American public, we show how Americans’ partisanship, broader foreign policy attitudes, and other personal traits predict willingness to support a range of hostage recovery activities, including negotiations, ransom payment, prisoner exchanges, and military rescue missions. We find that foreign policy internationalists are much more likely to support recovery compared to isolationists, though ‘militant’ and ‘cooperative’ internationalists prefer different recovery options. While broad, bipartisan majorities support recovery efforts, Republicans are significantly less supportive of making concessions to bring captive Americans home – partisan differences that are exacerbated when recovery is proposed by an out-party president. Finally, we show that respondents with children are more supportive of recovery than non-parents, a result we attribute to the emotional pleas made by captives’ parents. This paper explores the domestic politics of international threat, revealing the individual determinants of support for recovery.

Elected leaders often manipulate public emotions during kidnapping crises to advance political goals, yet they can also become trapped by the very ‘captivity passions’ they stoke. We call this the sorcerer’s apprentice effect, after Goethe’s tale, to capture a recurring pattern in democracies across time and cultures. Politicised captivity arises in contexts of interstate conflict or terrorism, where the seizure of individuals triggers a volatile mix of public emotion and political opportunism. Drawing on scholarship of emotion in international relations, we show how political entrepreneurs mobilise anger, fear, and contempt – amplified by media, civil society, and state institutions – to rally electoral support. These same emotions, however, can constrain leaders’ future choices. Case studies reveal that efforts to exploit kidnappings for political gain often backfire: Adenauer (USSR) found lasting success, but Nixon (Vietnam), Reagan (Iran), Abe (North Korea), and Netanyahu (Gaza) illustrate how early wins can sow costly failures. Policy failure surely has many causes, but in our analysis, the broader the emotional repertoire leaders attempt to harness, the greater the risk of unintended and counterproductive outcomes.

Russia’s systematic deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children from occupied territories since 2014 is a central instrument of Russian governance. This article conceptualises the abduction of children as politicised captivity – the state-directed, long-term custodial control of a vulnerable population segment for explicitly political ends. The removal of children serves the strategic goals of exerting coercive pressure on local families, disrupting Ukrainian identity transmission, and facilitating demographic restructuring. Drawing on Foucault’s ‘biopolitics’ and Agamben’s ‘state of exception’, we analyse how institutional and legal mechanisms, from ‘recreation’ camps to streamlined adoption decrees, are employed to seize control over the identity formation and future political subjectivity of minors. Empirical findings, derived from witness testimonies and interviews, detail the operational pathways of transfer (e.g., filtration, holiday schemes) and the resulting experiences of psychological trauma, educational disruption, and ideological indoctrination. We argue that by targeting children, Russian authorities employ a sophisticated form of biopolitical control that is fundamental to maintaining and legitimising their long-term authority in contested spaces.

Thought reform campaigns aimed at the psychological transformation of captives have long been tools to enhance national security and political legitimacy in East Asia. Fusing Soviet concepts of human perfectibility and Confucian ideals of transformation through education, sophisticated systems have evolved to convert political opponents. Whether labelled as tenkō in Japan, ‘self-renovation’ in Nationalist China, or ‘new learning’ in the People’s Republic of China, these programmes shared the fundamental goal of pressuring individuals to renounce previous beliefs and adopt state-sanctioned ideologies. This article examines how Japanese war crimes prisoners, political dissidents, and former Chinese Nationalist officers experienced these campaigns. Despite differences in implementation, each regime used confession, group study, and psychological coercion. This historical perspective is particularly relevant today as China’s leadership continues to weaponise historical narratives – including the ‘correct’ understandings of WWII history – with implications for contemporary tensions between China and Taiwan.

This study examines Norwegian veterans’ construction of meaning of the war in Afghanistan with two main objectives. A first aim is to add empirically to research on veterans’ meaning-making, querying into veterans’ construction of meaning after failure in a recent military operation. A thematic analysis of interviews with fifteen veterans illustrates how, despite their own admission of the war’s limited overall achievements, Norwegian veterans rendered the war meaningful. They emphasised that they had done their job, realised themselves as individuals, experienced community, made a difference ‘then and there’, and served their country. Working towards a second aim – to enhance scholarly understanding of civil–military dynamics in relation to veterans’ experiences – the study discusses implications of this meaning-making for Norwegian civil–military relations. Two main arguments are set forth: (1) a significant discrepancy in the construction of meaning among veterans compared to the Norwegian public illustrates a societal–military gap in evaluations of the war and (2) a reciprocal distance between veterans and politics and society demonstrates a weakness in civilian control of the Norwegian Armed Forces. By way of conclusion, the study reflects on consequences of its findings.

Over the past decade, China has significantly expanded its security cooperation with other authoritarian regimes, yet existing research struggles to capture the informal and ambiguous nature of these relationships. This article develops a new conceptualisation of ‘security ties’ grounded in the logic of authoritarian rule. Security ties are sustained interactions that contribute to regime survival and unfold across five functional domains: diplomatic and military contacts, support for regime security, military capacity building, non-combat operations, and wartime support. To capture variation, this article analyses security ties along three dimensions: depth, durability, and domestic involvement. As a proof of concept, the framework is applied to China’s security ties with ten representatively selected autocracies between 2019 and 2024. The analysis reveals that China’s ties to Russia are by far the deepest, most durable, and institutionalised. Ties to other autocracies are more selective and uneven. Military capacity building emerges as a central but varied pillar, while cooperation aimed at regime security and wartime support remains limited to a narrow set of partners. The article advances debates on authoritarian alignment by conceptualising it as a differentiated web of security ties rather than a cohesive alliance, and it offers a framework for systematically analysing autocratic security cooperation.

Violations of sovereignty not only generate emotional diplomatic outbursts but are also frequently the subject of multilateral engagements. One paradigmatic example of a sovereignty violation engendering this kind of response is that of state-led international kidnappings. But why do the victims of sovereignty violations multilateralise such transgressions? What makes them think that other states will be receptive to such attempts? To answer this question, we theorise the role of performative emotionality in maintaining the institution of sovereignty. Specifically, we conceptualise sovereignty as a social institution that constructs states as persons, and thus as bearers of dignity, and upholds this construction through shared feeling rules. This reveals sovereignty violations to be primarily a denial of dignity, that is, the expectation to be treated as an autonomous person of equal moral worth, which demands an appropriate emotional performance from all states, not just those involved in the sovereignty dispute. This performance is shaped by the international system’s colonial legacy, embodied in an enduring standard of civilisation. To illustrate this, we analyse two instances of state-led international kidnappings: Argentina’s response to the abduction of Adolf Eichmann by Israeli agents in 1960, and Japan’s ongoing response to the kidnapping of multiple Japanese citizens by North Korea.

Outer space is increasingly central to international security. The use of Starlink in the Russo–Ukrainian war has enabled Ukrainian operations while negating Russian interference. Having witnessed Starlink’s crucial impact in Ukraine, several states seek to emulate the system’s offensive and defensive advantages. This article analyses how the onset of mega-constellations – satellite systems consisting of very high numbers of smaller satellites – will affect stability in the space domain. As states are increasingly dependent on space for both nuclear and conventional operations, the stability of the space domain is a key concern for international security. Showing how mega-constellations can mitigate existing vulnerabilities in space while generating offensive advantages on earth, this article shows that their proliferation is likely to make conventional counterspace attacks ineffective and costly. Therefore, mega-constellations will have a stabilising effect between states equally dependant on space. However, under conditions of asymmetric dependence, less space-reliant states may find incentives to employ highly destructive weapons, including nuclear weapons, to disable adversary mega-constellations. Accordingly, the proliferation of mega-constellations may act in a destabilising manner, especially if under conditions of asymmetry in space.

This article explores how emotions can affect policies of hostage rescue and recovery. Any hostage rescue/recovery strategy must consider the relative weights of at least three major goals: 1) maximising chance of recovering/rescuing the hostages; 2) punishment of the kidnappers; and 3) avoidance of collateral damage and killing of bystanders. This article will show how an understanding of emotion can help explain why one of these goals comes to dominate another, why one goal fades in importance. The article will argue that a specific combination of two emotions – anger and contempt – drives the elevation of the punishment goal above that of maximising chances of hostage recovery while also greatly diminishing any value of collateral damage avoidance. The article considers these issues with a short case study of hostage taking at Attica Prison in 1971, which serves as a link to the main case – Israel’s post–October 7 hostage policy towards Gaza.

The family is rarely a topic of international politics, but politicised captivity is one of the few domains where familial relations can play a prominent role. Crucially, the families involved generally lack the traditional power resources of wealth or official status that would normally be understood to influence outcomes within international politics. What they do possess, however, is a different set of emotional–political resources that both evoke emotion and invoke a diverse set of social rules concerning emotional experience. To explore our claims, we examine the case of the family of Yokota Megumi, a thirteen-year-old Japanese girl abducted by North Korea. This case both illustrates the potential of emotional–political resources to mobilise action and also highlights the risks that emotional narratives of families can be leveraged by political actors for their own purposes.

As the conduit for approximately 99 per cent of digital communications globally, submarine cables are the backbone of the internet and modern digital societies. Amid global strategic competition, submarine cable network security has emerged as a central concern for states, ushering in a distinctive era of geopolitical-economic competition over these seabed networks. This paper focuses attention on state intervention in the form of ‘friendshoring’, which has increasingly dictated the control of information flows through submarine cable networks. A term that emerged during the Biden administration, ‘friendshoring’ refers to how states encourage firms to shift trade and supply chain networks to countries that are viewed as sharing political values. Using the Coral Sea Cable System, the East Micronesia Cable System, and Palau Spur Cable as case studies, this paper illuminates how and why these so-called like-minded states have sought to develop collective control of submarine cable networks – what we describe as ‘network centrality’ – by excluding ‘unfriendly’ states from the development of seabed cable networks in an increasingly contested maritime region. While states seek to ‘friendshore’ the seabed to reduce geopolitical and economic risks and enhance influence in smaller countries, the practice contributes to reifying strategic competition and global economy bifurcation.