Asle Toje

Asle Toje (born February 16, 1974) is a Norwegian foreign policy scholar and commentator. He is a former Research Director at the Norwegian Nobel Institute and a current member of the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee. Toje is a regular contributor to the Norwegian foreign policy debate, including as a regular columnist in the Dagens Næringsliv, Utrop and Morgenbladet. Toje is a proponent of Neoclassical realism. In the Norwegian foreign policy discourse he has been a proponent of limited government, a free market economy, and social conservatism. He has been a spokesman for a strong defense and close ties to U.S. foreign policy. Toje is considered to belong to the same intellectual tradition as Francis Fukuyama.

Academic career

Asle Toje was educated at universities in Oslo and Tromsø before going on to study international relations (Dr. Phil.) at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 2006.

He studied under Kenneth Waltz when he stayed as Fulbright Fellow by Columbia University 2004-2005 and was research associate at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies 2007-2008. In 2008, Toje was a visiting scholar at the European Union Institute for Security Studies in Paris. As an academic, Toje is best known for having developed "transatlantic bargain" thesis where he argues that the United States 's presence through the NATO and European integration in the shape of EU is an integrated complex. Geir Lundestad wrote "A thoroughly enjoyable read". He continued: "The fact that NATO and the EU need to be seen together is a point that is well made, especially with regards to enlargement."[1]

In 2010 Toje published the book The European Union as a small power - after the post Cold War which received warm reviews. Among them, historian and foreign policy commentator Robert Kagan, who wrote: "The great strength of Asle Toje's absorbing, detailed and much-needed study is to show what role the European Union might be expected to play under multipolarity."

Philip Stephens of The Financial Times added: "In a striking analysis of foreign and security policy hum the opening Decade of the century, Asle Toje, a scholar at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, concludes That Europe Has Been showing all the Characteristics of a small power - or Rather of a series of small powers as The Limited Influence of the Union co-exists with the constrained power of France, Britain and Germany."[2] The Economist chose the book as one of its "Recommended Reading for the beach".[3]

Private life

Toje has family roots on the island of Utsira. He grew up at Byremo and in Drøbak. After finishing high school, he worked for some time as a machine operator at Ringnes brewery. When starting college in 1996 Toje was, by his own admission, a 'poor student', focusing on his passion, mountaineering. This changed after a mountaineering accident in 1997 shattered both legs and broke his back. He fell an estimated 180 meters on Kvaløya.

The accident forced him to focus on his studies, finishing his Candidatus magisterii and securing a place at Cambridge University in 2000, where he went on to complete his PhD. Toje is married and has three children.

Bibliography
  • The Causes of Peace: What We Know Now (Houston, Nobel Press, 2019)
  • Will China's Rise Be Peaceful?: Security, Stability, and Legitimacy (Oxford University Press, Ed. 2018)
  • Jernburet – Liberalismens krise (Oslo, Dreyer Forlag, 2014)
  • Rødt, Hvitt & Blått – Om demokratiet i Europa (Oslo, Dreyer Forlag, 2012)
  • Neoclassical Realism in European Politics Ed. w, B.Kunz (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2012)
  • The European Union as a small power - after the post Cold War (London, Palgrave / Macmillan, 2010)
  • America, the EU and Strategic Culture: Renegotiating the Transatlantic Bargain (London, Routledge, 2008)
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gollark: If they got a fab, they could not operate it.

References
  1. Lundestad, G. (2008) Spalte, Aftenposten, 23 March
  2. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/84efd5fe-bc55%20-11df-a42b-00144feab49a.html http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/84efd5fe-bc55 -11df-a42b-00144feab49a.html
  3. "Reading for the beach". The Economist. 2010-08-16.
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