Explosion in Norway (Updated/Updated Again)

22 July 2011, 1442 EDT

A likely bombing near the PM’s office in Norway. I don’t have time to write at the moment, but there are a number of policies and political factors that make Norway a target for jihadists. But there are also reasons why those of other ideological stripes are very unhappy with the current red-green government.

Concerns, prayers, and sympathies to our many friends in Oslo.

UPDATE: Follow the news on your source of choice. The small-arms attack on a Labour-Party Youth Camp is appalling, but consistent with shifting tactics of transnational jihadist. I find the combination of large vehicle bomb and small-arms attack elsewhere a bit surprising, but I suppose it (1) leaves no doubt about the orientation of the attack and (2) screams “no one is safe.”

DOUBLE UPDATE: right-wing extremist. Death toll at 80. Should have backtracked much earlier. I sent out a tweet six hours ago querying about whether the Norwegian far right had a militant strain. Should have raised that on the blog. Anyway, shades of Oklahoma City. Makes sense of the non-standard operating procedure and the dual targeting.

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.