Research Interests
The East Asian Peace: Leads a six-year program, 2011-16 at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, with funding from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, to explain that East Asia has been so relatively peaceful since 1979, and gauge the depth of that peace. See:
http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/eap/Democratization and peace in Myanmar: Leads a project with Marte Nilsen (PRIO), Kristine Eck (Uppsala) and Joakim Kreutz (Uppsala), funded by the Norwegian MFA, 2012-13
Thailand's Missing Peace: Leads a project funded by the Norwegian MFA, in 2012
Background
Work experience:
| 2011-2016: |
Leader of East Asia Peace program, Uppsala University |
| 2010-2011: |
Randolph Jennings Senior Fellow, United States Institute of Peace, Washington, D.C. |
| 2009-: |
Research Professor, PRIO |
| 2001-2009: |
Director, PRIO |
| 1998-2001: |
Professor II of Human Development Studies, SUM, University of Oslo |
| 1992-1998: |
Research professor, Nordic Institute for Asia Studies (NIAS), Copenhagen |
| 1992: |
Research fellow and co-editor, Journal of Peace Research, PRIO |
| 1988-1991: |
Doctoral candidate, PRIO |
| 1986-1988: |
Doctoral candidate, Institute of Defence Studies, Oslo |
| 1983-1986: |
Employed by Norges Idrettsforbund (Norwegian Sports
Association) to write a history of Norwegian sports |
| 1983: |
Assistant professor, Department of History, University of Oslo |
| 1981-1982: |
Student scholarship, PRIO |
Education:
| 1992: |
Dr. philos, University of Oslo (history). |
| 1982: |
Cand. philol., University of Oslo (French and History). |
CV: see www.cliostein.com
An extensive self-authored essay about Stein Tønnesson was published as part of the 60th Anniversary series PRIO Stories in August 2019.
Blog Posts
Why it’s wise for Ukraine to engage with an adversary like Putin. Sven G. Holtsmark offers a rebuttal to our December Commonweal article in which we discussed possible negotiations over Ukraine by referencing an ancient Greek account of war on the island of Melos (also posted on the PRIO blog here and here). We appreciate Holtsmark’s ... Read more »
The lessons an ancient Greek war can teach Ukraine today. Ukraine is confronted with a stark choice: fight on through a bitter winter with death raining from above, or initiate negotiations with Russia under unfavorable terms. Two-and-a-half millennia ago, the leaders of the Greek island of Melos confronted a similar ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Monday, 29 August 2022
Democracy and separation of powers are in decline. In many countries, individuals have taken all the power into their own hands. This is true not least of Russia and China. Vladimir Putin has used his power to invade Ukraine. Recently, Xi Jinping practised encircling Taiwan. Could Xi be as willing ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Sunday, 29 May 2022
Telenor’s sale of its Myanmar venture has been completed. Its new majority owner is Myanmar’s Shwe Byain Phyu group, which is mainly known for its petroleum trade. On 11 May, in their reports to Telenor’s Annual General Meeting, Chair of the Telenor Board Gunn Wærsted and CEO Sigve Brekke spoke at length about the extremely difficult situation Telenor ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson & Ilaria Carozza on Tuesday, 8 March 2022
“Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow.” This warning rings through Taiwanese social media. “We should not allow this problem to be passed down from one generation to the next,” said Xi Jinping in 2019 about the political differences between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. The annual report from the Chinese ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson & Ilaria Carozza on Sunday, 6 March 2022
Vladimir Putin is playing for high stakes against the US and its allies on the global scene. Since Xi Jinping does not play along, Putin has temporarily transformed a bipolar power system into a triangular game, with Xi in the middle. Yet Xi is the one that Biden fears most. ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Wednesday, 1 December 2021
A new conflict pattern has appeared in Myanmar. Amidst a spiraling economic, social and health crisis, armed fighting is no longer confined to ethnic minority areas but has cropped up in cities and regions where the ethnic Bamar are in majority. They see themselves as pursuing a nation-wide resistance. Preventive ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Monday, 26 July 2021
More than 1/3 of those tested for Covid-19 in Myanmar now test positive. The crematorium in Yangon can hardly handle all the bodies. Many health workers remain on strike since the February 1 coup. When they try to help people on a voluntary basis, they risk arrest. Social media is ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Wednesday, 3 March 2021
The coup d’état in Myanmar marks a defeat for the military’s attempt to create a “discipline-flourishing” democracy. The coup occurred on 1 February, just before the newly elected parliament was set to convene. This timing made it easy to arrest the country’s leading politicians. The military used allegations of electoral ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Friday, 5 February 2021
Facebook is Myanmar’s dominant media platform. Now the country is again a dictatorship. In 2018, Facebook banned commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing for his role in the expulsion of the Rohingya. Now, as the country’s new dictator, he temporarily shuts down Facebook. Myanmar’s many conflicts have given Facebook director Mark Zuckerberg ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Friday, 4 September 2020
Dan Smith, interviewed by Stein Tønnesson What I want, if you look at me and my career, is on the one hand, a lot of activism, and on the other, a lot of research. The activism I have engaged in was sometimes in a movement, like the British Campaign for ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Wednesday, 25 September 2019
Pavel Baev, interviewed by Stein Tønnesson In the late 1980s, when I took part in drafting speeches for Mikhail Gorbachev underpinning his concept of an ‘All-European House’, one part of my work was to strive towards the elimination of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. Nothing came out of it at ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Friday, 23 August 2019
Lene Kristin Borg and Grete Thingelstad in Conversation with Stein Tønnesson At a farewell lunch organized for PRIO Director Sverre Lodgaard at the end of his term in 1992, someone said that, under his leadership, PRIO had made a transition from anarchy to dictatorship. The speaker who said this expressed herself ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Wednesday, 5 June 2019
When looking back, I find nine paths I have explored in a quest to understand war and peace: War as war, war as horror, outbreaks of war, severity of wars, war endings, peace viability, regional transitions to peace, peace practices, and peaceful “utopian moments”, such as 1948, when the UN ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Wednesday, 22 May 2019
When people ask what peace is, I urge them to tell me what they associate with war. They answer death, destruction, battles, arms, hatred, uniforms, suffering, fear, anxiety, loss, misery, and much else, all of which are bad and sad. Then I suggest that peace could be the opposite: life, ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Wednesday, 2 May 2018
Donald Trump is the unknown factor in the South Korean president’s peace diplomacy. Friday 27 April 2018 was a new historic day for Korea. Even before he had completed the first year of his five-year term as president of South Korea, the 65-year-old human rights lawyer Moon Jae-in succeeded in holding ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Tuesday, 30 January 2018
The Vietnam War remains the deadliest war the world has seen since 1945. The Tet offensive was a turning point. For the US, it took away the belief that victory was possible. All that was left was to find a way out. Fifty years ago, in the middle of the ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Tuesday, 29 August 2017
Here are three scenarios for the North Korean crisis: The recent flurry of threats between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump has caused much consternation. Threats can indeed be dangerous but only when they are followed up by hostile action. The latest important developments in this crisis have been North Korea’s ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Thursday, 11 May 2017
Uncertainty concerning President Donald Trump’s China and North Korea policies have instilled new fears of war in East Asia, a region that has enjoyed a surprising level of peace for almost four decades. Yet, if China treats Trump with care, the region may remain peaceful. The text in this post ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Tuesday, 25 April 2017
When Chinese president Xi Jinping met US president Donald Trump in Florida on 6–7 April, Xi convinced his host that it is not easy to exert influence on North Korea, but apparently promised to help the United States to the best of his ability. In practice, it may be Trump who helps ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Wednesday, 19 April 2017
To a Tokyo audience of Japanese peace practitioners, academics, journalists and diplomats, I recently chose to address the Japanese as East Asians. I had three important messages to convey: You East Asians have a Peace to Defend The East Asian Peace is at Risk Please overcome your differences and aim for ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Tuesday, 21 March 2017
Stein Tønnesson delivered this year’s The Fjord Memorial Lecture at Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Lillehammer. The lecture discusses Trump’s team of advisors, calls for fighting the increasing use of lies in political campaigning, sees Trump’s election as having weakened democracy worldwide, and perceives a major risk to world ... Read more »
For the first time in over half a century, Myanmar has a government with a popular mandate, led by the National League for Democracy (NLD). Although the Myanmar armed forces still have extensive political powers under the 2008 constitution, and may seriously curtail the independent action of the new government, ... Read more »
The century of peace. The 20th century laid the foundations for what could make our century a century of peace. The 20th century is often referred to as the bloodiest in human history. Towards the end of that century, the historians Eric Hobsbawm, Gabriel Kolko and Niall Ferguson published general ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Thursday, 3 September 2015
70 years ago, Japan signed an agreement of formal surrender on an American warship in Tokyo Bay. The anniversary of this event will be marked in Beijing today, September 3rd by a massive military parade in which Chinese and Russian soldiers march together. President Xi Jinping’s most important guest during ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Friday, 24 July 2015
Since the Sino-Vietnamese war of 1979 – a period of 36 years – there has not been one single war between states in the whole of East Asia, a region comprising one third of mankind, and which was ravaged by some of the word’s worst wars from the 1840s to ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Wednesday, 17 June 2015
A human tragedy has been unfolding in the Bay of Bengal. Thousands of poor Rohingya and Bangladeshi refugees and job seekers have been the victims of xenophobia, cynical smugglers and incapable governance. What has ASEAN done? So far very little. Yet this crisis is exactly the kind of non-traditional trans-national ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Tuesday, 24 February 2015
The Ukraine crisis has made Russia more dependent on China. Putin is popular in Beijing, and Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are the best of friends. But can China save Russia from its crisis? 70 years ago, from 4-11 February 1945, Josef Stalin received US president Franklin D. Roosevelt, ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Monday, 17 November 2014
Russian and Chinese presidents aim to divide US and allies, including Japan, with WWII celebration. When Chinese President Xi Jinping met Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Beijing for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, he stated that “Japan must look at history squarely and more towards the future.” Xi’s carefully ... Read more »
Posted by Marte Nilsen, Stein Tønnesson & Emil Jeremic on Thursday, 23 October 2014
Are the people of Myanmar able to distinguish between Norway’s role in promoting peace and the commercial interests of Norwegian businesses? Now that several state-owned Norwegian companies have entered into large and risky ventures in Myanmar, Norway is walking a tightrope between peace and commerce. The maintenance of support for ... Read more »
Posted by Stein Tønnesson on Wednesday, 8 October 2014
World War 1 was primarily a European War. World War 2 was both European and Asian. World War 3 has not yet occurred. If it does, it will be mainly Asian. Provided the pattern of alliances and strategic partnerships continues to look the way it does today, World War 3 ... Read more »
In March/April 2014 Myanmar will carry out its first population and housing census in more than 30 years. If carried out properly it may provide reliable data to be used not just by the government, but also by civil society organizations and political parties, as a basis for negotiating the ... Read more »