The World Stage

In this episode, Professor Deborah Welch Larson joins host Morten Skumsrud Andersen to discuss how the need for recognition and the fear of status loss affect international politics.

Drawing on decades of research, Larson starts with the mistrust that defined the Cold War, before examining how powers like China and Russia seek international status through emulation, competition, and social creativity.

The episode also explores a paradox of contemporary U.S. politics; whilst President Donald Trump aims to restore American greatness, his policies may undermine the foundations of U.S. international status. We examine the psychology of grievance and humiliation, and ask what it signals when a hegemon begins to retreat from the international order it helped create.
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Over the past decade, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has redrawn physical, economic, and political maps. From ports in the Indian Ocean to railways across Central Asia, the BRI has been described as the most ambitious infrastructure project in modern history. But ambition does not necessarily equate permanence, and scale does not guarantee influence.

How far can infrastructure take power and where are its limits? Is the Belt and Road Initiative a durable foundation for global influence, or have we begun to see the edges of its reach?

In this episode of The World Stage, Lunting Wu (NUPI) asks Carla Freeman (Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies) and Hidekazu Sakai (Kansai Gaida University) these questions.
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In this episode of The World Stage, NUPI Senior Researcher Erik Skare explores the complex history and internal dynamics of Hamas with Jeroen Gunning, Professor at King's College London and a pioneer in the field of critical terrorism studies.

Founded in 1987 as the military wing of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas has grown into a multifaceted movement encompassing political, social, and military dimensions. Gunning details the profound internal tensions between pragmatists and hardliners, the struggle to balance its role as the de facto government in Gaza with its identity as a resistance movement, and how the October 7 attacks have fundamentally reshaped the region’s geopolitical map.

The conversation also examines the power balance between the leadership inside Gaza and the external leadership abroad, as well as the implications of the "terrorist" label for Palestinian unity and the future of governance in the region.

The episode is part of the follow-up to the NUPI symposium "What Now? Israel, Palestine and a Region in Crisis." The symposium was organized by Frode Saugestad in collaboration with NUPI and supported by Fritt Ord.
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New forms of cooperation are emerging, and countries are increasingly turning to smaller, more flexible alliances to navigate uncertainty. In this new landscape, partnerships between like-minded actors matter more than ever, and the relationship between the European Union and Japan is a key example of this.

As global governance continues to evolve, this episode asks: how can the EU and Japan not only adapt to change, but actively shape it?

This episode of The World Stage is in collaboration with the podcast Making sense of EU by the Université libre de Bruxelles. In the episode we explore how the EU and Japan are adapting to a more fragmented and unpredictable world. Together with Professor Akiko Fukushima (Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research) and Dr Wrenn Yennie Lindgren (Norwegian Institute of International Affairs), we unpack the evolving balance between multilateralism and so-called “smaller clubs” – from ASEAN to the Quad – and what this means for global governance. We also discuss where the EU and Japan can act together to shape new rules, relying as much on trust and dialogue.

This episode is hosted by Alix Bullman (Univerisité libre de Bruxelles). It is also a part of the NUPI-led project “NAVIGATOR” which receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the grant agreement ID: 101094394.
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In this episode of the NUPI podcast The World Stage, Cedric de Coning (NUPI) sits down with Louise Lieberknecht (formerly GRID-Arendal) who is one of the authors of a new report investigating the environmental dimensions of conflict in the Lake Chad region. The authors have examined how insecurity impacts the environment and how conflict dynamics are shaped by environmental factors.

The episode is part of the NUPI led project Managing Climate, Peace and Security Risks from the Borderlands of the Lake Chad (CPS-Lake Chad). The project is funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) through the Cross-border Conflict Evidence, Policy, and Trends (XCEPT) research program.
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