In recent years, there has been a shift in emphasis from critical infrastructure protection to that of resilience. This development reflects the acknowledgment that complete protection can never be guaranteed, and that achieving the desired level of protection is not cost-effective as a rule in relation to the actual threats. This article reviews the responses of four of the five Nordic countries to this challenge, namely Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The article analyzes their strategies and conceptual development, highlighting the common trends and differences. In so doing, it argues that these countries have a better starting point for the task of making their critical infrastructure resilient than most of the EU. This is due to the fact that even before the resilience debate emerged, these countries had based their policies on securing vital societal functions rather than the individual infrastructures that support these functions. The article concludes that some kind of Nordic model can really be identified when it comes to approaches towards critical infrastructure resilience. It should also be recognized, however, that there has been a fruitful interplay at the conceptual level between the Nordic countries and the EU that has inspired and influenced both parties.

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This article contributes to the growing scholarly literature endeavouring to explain Russia's annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. While much of the debate relies on the grand theories of International Relations such as realism, liberalism, or constructivism, this article approaches the puzzle from a psychological point of view and discusses several middle-range theories within this genre. These theories are examined sympathetically but critically, spelling out the added value they might have in elucidating Russian foreign policy, while also considering the methodological limitations in producing plausible explanations. Moreover, the article strives to overcome the traditional juxtaposition between the idea of rationality as a standard account of agency, and various psychological interpretations. Obvious methodological problems notwithstanding, the article concludes that cognitive and psychological featuressuch as the possibility of groupthink, assessment of prospects, operational codes and belief systems, personality characteristics, and emotionscan be applied to the Russian case and they can all explain Russia's higher willingness to take risks in the context of the Ukrainian crisis. In that way they can provide with partial explanations, and indeed are important elements of our understanding of Russian foreign policy in general and the Crimean case in particular.