Asle Toje

Asle Toje (born February 16, 1974) is a Norwegian foreign policy scholar and commentator. He is the Research Director at the Norwegian Nobel Institute. Toje is a regular contributor to the Norwegian foreign policy debate, including as a regular columnist in the Dagens Næringsliv and Bergens Tidende. Toje has family roots on the island of Utsira. He grew up at Byremo and in Drøbak.

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 in the same tradition as Radosław Sikorski and Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

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.