Foreign and security policy

Shortly after the dissolution of the union with Sweden in 1905, Norway’s first Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jørgen Løvland maintained that the best foreign policy was to have no foreign policy (Eide 1997:79). This line of argument advocated a need to keep the new state distant from the ‘European warrior states’ in order not to be entangled in the affairs of continental powers (ibid.:79).