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.

The war in Ukraine has increased attention to Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), though most research focuses on tactical use or effects on public opinion. This article asks whether OSINF can be methodically transformed into reliable strategic intelligence under wartime uncertainty. Using Russia’s defence industry as a case study, we compare three production scenarios: official claims, expert estimates, and an Open Source Information–based (OSINF) model derived from shares in battlefield losses. The OSINT scenario shows large discrepancies, suggesting actual output is much lower than reported. We argue that with proper methodological treatment, presented in the paper, OSINF now offers sufficient detail to assess national defence capacity. Our approach demonstrates OSINT’s potential to complement traditional intelligence by introducing a novel methodological framework for cross-validating OSINT-derived data against official claims and expert estimates. The findings engage scholarly debates on the integration of OSINT with conventional frameworks by providing a replicable and transparent model for producing more accurate strategic assessments, even at the strategic level.

How do states use drone exports to build their leverage with buyers? The scholarly literature acknowledges that states use arms exports to cement alliances, improve the capacities of allies and support their domestic arms industry. But there has been no examination of how suppliers of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) tailor their export strategies to develop leverage with their buyers. This paper deploys SIPRI’s classification of arms exporters (hegemonic, industrial, and restrictive) and describes how each uses a varying combination of inducements (bundling, lock-ins, and predatory pricing) and risk-mitigation strategies to build leverage while avoiding reputational damage from being drawn into external conflicts. Examining new data on seven types of follow-on sales or defence cooperation agreements after drone sales, this paper finds that of the three of the five major drone suppliers – China, Turkey, and to a lesser extent Iran – operate like hegemonic exporters. To test the proposed mechanisms, it explores how China and Turkey have exploited their drone exports to build leverage with Pakistan. It offers conclusions about how drone diplomacy will evolve as the export market diversifies.

This article introduces the concept of the weaponisation of emotion to analyse how emotional responses are strategically cultivated during instances of international political captivity. Using the case of Swedish EU diplomat Johan Floderus’s 2022 detention in Iran, it explores how states manipulate collective emotions – such as fear, outrage, and pride – to pursue political, ideological, or diplomatic objectives. Drawing on intergroup emotions theory (IET), it is argued that emotions are not mere by-products of crisis but deliberate tools of emotional statecraft, shaping public reactions, pressuring foreign governments, and reinforcing domestic legitimacy. Political captivity thus becomes more than coercion or negotiation. It transforms into a symbolic arena where emotional narratives escalate tensions, mobilise identity politics, and generate international support or condemnation. By linking emotion research with security and IR scholarship, this study offers a novel framework for understanding the socio-psychological dimensions of state power and highlights the volatility and strategic potential of collective emotions in global politics.

Here we introduce the nine research articles assembled in this special issue. Together they explore the implications for foreign policy and international security of the forced deprivation of individuals’ freedom by state or non-state actors for political advantage – what we and our authors call ‘politicised captivity’. Despite its ubiquity, politicised captivity has attracted surprisingly little scholarly attention. Although some research explores cases of kidnappings by terrorists, the use of human shields, and hostage diplomacy, there are few studies that engage the political implications of captivity in their full complexity. This is particularly odd given the recent increase in scholarly interest in the role of emotions in international politics. After all, popular emotions permeate captivity, and what we call ‘captivity passions’ have at times influenced national security policies. This volume therefore aims to redress the lack of sustained theoretical and empirical attention to how captivity triggers national emotions and affects international security.

Captivity is a complex phenomenon in international politics with a broad range of purposes, functions, and consequences. Existing scholarship suggests that states use captivity, for example, to facilitate hostage or prisoner exchanges, to extract material rewards, or, in the case of human shields, for deterrence purposes. This article argues that states may use captivity to deter not only traditional military threats emanating from other states, but also perceived threats to regime security posed by non-state actors, including individuals, and that emotions are central to this process. The argument is illustrated through three empirical vignettes that show how the Chinese government has detained foreign academics, publishers, and NGO workers engaged in activities seen as threatening regime security. Detention is interpreted as attempts to deter such actors. While fear is often seen as key to successful deterrence, the article indicates that paying attention to other emotions can help better understand deterrence failure. Specifically, because captivity, and deterrence, involve the denial of the captive’s agency and may trigger feelings of humiliation and shame, it can backfire as the target of deterrence efforts might seek to act to regain agency.

This article offers an original discursive analysis of the construction of terrorism within travel advice published by the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). It argues that this advice positions terrorism as a very specific – omnipresent, Islamist, and non-state – security threat from which British nationals will never be safe. Three contributions are made. First, empirically, the article offers a descriptively rich exploration of terrorism’s production in an entirely neglected site of discourse. Second, analytically, it details the work done by specific rhetorical mechanisms within FCDO guidance, including the recycling of generic claims relating to terrorism, quantifications of risk, and the imagination of hypothetical attacks. Third, conceptually, it demonstrates the contingent and precarious character of this discourse by highlighting important exclusions that cohere and constitute terrorism as constructed in travel advice. These exclusions – notably the violences of right-wing actors and of states themselves – contribute to a very specific construction of terrorism that helps foreclose discussion of UK responsibility for, or involvement in, terrorism.

Can Ukraine avoid a frozen conflict with Russia, and could it have done so with more Western aid and victory in the war? Drawing on the Klosek et al. (2021) dataset of frozen conflicts, the paper outlines five criteria that are necessary to bring a frozen conflict to a military end. Two counterfactual scenarios explore whether increased or accelerated Western aid could have enabled Ukraine to meet these criteria. The analysis concludes that even with substantial Western assistance, Ukraine was unlikely to achieve the kind of victory needed to compel Russia to accept defeat and address the core issues. Ukraine’s victory-oriented approach was implausible not due to a lack of Western weapons, but because it failed to resolve entrenched political issues and lacked structural military advantages. The findings suggest that policy should emphasize diplomacy, while scholarship should explore why this unfeasible approach received strong backing.

This article argues that power–dependence relations are a crucial dimension of analysis to understand how states navigate between realist and liberal logics and particularly between the balancing and integration strategies. Specifically, I distinguish between three types of power–dependence relationships: limitation, neutralisation, and competition. Limitation and neutralisation make the balancing strategy viable by allowing power to offset dependence and thus preserve the autonomy of the state. On the other hand, when limitation and neutralisation are no longer workable, particularly in the case of cross-temporal interdependence, the balancing strategy becomes unreliable, and integration tends to become an attractive alternative. In the case of competition between a state’s different sources of dependence, the loss of flexibility brought about by integration may prove costly by limiting the state’s ability to address various dependencies simultaneously. Empirically, I illustrate these mechanisms by showing that post-war European integration started as a response to a situation of cross-temporal interdependence between France and West Germany, which tended to make the limitation and neutralisation strategies unreliable. However, military integration was later hindered by the tension between competing sources of dependence for France, which increased the cost of the loss of flexibility entailed by military centralisation.