international security essay

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The Oxford Handbook of International Security

Alexandra Gheciu is professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and associate director of the Centre for International Policy Studies at the University of Ottawa.

William C. Wohlforth is the Daniel Webster Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College.

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Future-oriented questions are woven through the study and practice of international security. The 48 essays collected in this Handbook use such questions to provide a tour of the most innovative and exciting new areas of research as well as major developments in established lines of inquiry. The results of their efforts are: the definitive statement of the state of international security and the academic field of security studies, a comprehensive portrait of expert assessments of expected developments in international security at the onset of the twenty-first century’s second decade, and a crucial staging ground for future research agendas.

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Greg and Elina chat with Chong Ja Ian about Singapore under Lawrence Wong’s premiership. Japhet and Lauren cover the latest from the region.

The Murky World of Deepfakes

In her aptly named scientific study, “ As Good as A Coin Toss ,” Horizon Fellow Di Cooke joins Dr. Kathleen McInnis to walk through the murky world of deepfakes and the countermeasures that should be prioritized to mitigate the dangers posed by weaponized synthetic media.

Podcast Episode by Kathleen McInnis and Di Cooke — May 15, 2024

Bonus Episode: Protests in Georgia and European Implications with Tinatin Japaridze and Eto Buziashvili

Max discusses the ongoing protests taking place in Georgia with Tinatin Japaridze and Eto Buziashvili. 

Podcast Episode by Max Bergmann — May 15, 2024

The new assistance package passed by Congress requires the administration to produce a U.S. strategy for supporting Ukraine. This piece outlines five key issues this strategy should address.

An audio version of “NATO and Economic Security: A Political Oxymoron or Inevitability?,” a new commentary by CSIS’s Emily Benson and Pau Alvarez-Aragones. This audio was generated with text-to-speech by Eleven Labs. 

Podcast Episode by Emily Benson and Pau Alvarez-Aragones — May 15, 2024

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• HKS Insights and Analysis on the Russia-Ukraine War Read what Harvard Kennedy School faculty members and other experts are saying about the Russia-Ukraine war. From geopolitics to sanctions to the role of misinformation and cyberattacks, HKS scholars analyze the Russian invasion of Ukraine and what it means for the world.
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International Security

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• Volume 33, Number 2, Fall 2008

International Security publishes lucid, well-documented essays on all aspects of the control and use of force. Its articles cover contemporary policy issues, and probe historical and theoretical questions behind them. Essays in International Security have defined the debate on American national security policy and have set the agenda for scholarship on international security affairs.

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• Assessing the Dangers of Illicit Networks: Why al-Qaida May Be Less Threatening Than Many Think
• Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, Calvert Jones

• Nuclear Stability in South Asia
• Sumit Ganguly
• Ten Years of Instability in a Nuclear South Asia
• S. Paul Kapur
• Security and Displacement in Iraq: Responding to the Forced Migration Crisis
• Sarah Kenyon Lischer
• Making the World Safe for Partial Democracy?: Questioning the Premises of Democracy Promotion
• Arthur A. Goldsmith
• pp. 120-147
• Wishful Thinking or Buying Time?: The Logic of British Appeasement in the 1930s
• Norrin M. Ripsman, Jack S. Levy
• pp. 148-181
• Correspondence: ASEAN, Regional Integration, and State Sovereignty
• Hiro Katsumata, David Martin Jones, Michael L.R. Smith
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Globalization and the Study of International Security

Journal article

Cha, Victor D. (2000) Globalization and the Study of International Security, Journal of Peace Research 37 (3): 391–403.

In spite of the plethora of literature on security and globalization, there is relatively little work written by security specialists that interconnects the two. In the case of security studies, this has been in no small part because the field remains entrenched in the 'foodfight' of competing realist, liberal, and constructionist research programs. In the case of the globalization literature, it has stemmed from a relatively stronger focus on the social and economic processes of globalization. This essay explores how the processes of globalization have fundamentally changed the way we think about security. It argues that non-physical security, diversification of threats, and the salience of identity are key effects of globalization in the security realm. These security effects translate into certain behavioral tendencies in a state's foreign policy that have thus far not been studied in the literature. First, globalization creates an interpenetration of foreign and domestic ('intermestic') issues such that national governments increasingly operate in spaces defined by the intersection of internal and external security. Second, globalization puts unprecedented bureaucratic innovation pressures on governments in their search for security, and creates multilateralist pressures to cooperate with substate and transnational partners rather than traditional allies. Third, globalization makes the calculation of relative capabilities extremely complex and non-linear. Finally, globalization compels contemplation of new modes of fighting as well as renders commonly accepted modes of strategic thinking and rational deterrence increasingly irrelevant. The 'new' security environment in the 21st century will operate increasingly in the space defined by the interpenetration between two spheres: globalization and national identity.

Victor D. Cha

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" To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war " are among the first very words of the UN Charter (in its Preamble), and those words were the main motivation for creating the United Nations, whose founders had lived through the devastation of two world wars by 1945. Since the UN's creation on 24 October 1945 (the date its Charter came into force), the United Nations has often been called upon to prevent disputes from escalating into war, or to help restore peace following the outbreak of armed conflict, and to promote lasting peace in societies emerging from wars.

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Building lasting peace in war-torn societies is a daunting challenge for global peace and security. Peacebuilding requires sustained international support for national efforts across the broadest range of activities. For instance, peacebuilders monitor ceasefires, demobilize and reintegrate combatants, assist the return of refugees and displaced persons, help to organize and monitor elections of a new government, support justice and security sector reforms, enhance human rights protections, and foster reconciliation after past atrocities.

Peacebuilding involves action by a wide array of organizations of the UN system, including the World Bank , regional economic commissions, NGOs and local citizens’ groups. Peacebuilding has played a prominent role in  UN operations  in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Kosovo, Liberia and Mozambique, as well as more recently in Afghanistan, Burundi, Iraq, Sierra Leone and Timor-Leste. An example of inter-state peacebuilding has been the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Recognizing that the UN needs to better anticipate and respond to the challenges of peacebuilding, the  2005 World Summit approved the creation of a new Peacebuilding Commission. In the resolutions establishing the  Peacebuilding Commission , resolution 60/180 and resolution 1645 , the UN General Assembly and the Security Council mandated it to bring together all relevant actors to advise on the proposed integrated strategies for post-conflict peacebuilding and recovery; to marshal resources and help ensure predictable financing for these activities; and to develop best practices in collaboration with political, security, humanitarian and development actors.

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Promoting the  rule of law at the national and international levels is at the heart of the United Nations’ mission. Establishing respect for the rule of law is fundamental to achieving a durable peace in the aftermath of conflict, to the effective protection of human rights, and to sustained economic progress and development. The principle that everyone – from the individual to the State itself – is accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated, is a fundamental concept which drives much of the United Nations work. The main United Nations organs, including the General Assembly and the Security Council, play essential roles in supporting Member States to strengthen the rule of law, as do many United Nations entities.

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Women and Children in Conflict

In contemporary conflicts, up to 90 per cent of casualties are civilians, mostly women and children. Women in war-torn societies can face specific and devastating forms of sexual violence, which are sometimes deployed systematically to achieve military or political objectives. Moreover, women continue to be poorly represented in formal peace processes, although they contribute in many informal ways to conflict resolution.

However, the UN Security Council in its  resolution 1325 on women, peace and security has recognized that including women and gender perspectives in decision-making can strengthen prospects for sustainable peace. The landmark resolution addresses the situation of women in armed conflict and calls for their participation at all levels of decision-making on conflict resolution and peacebuilding.

Since the agenda was set with the core principles of resolution 1325, the Security Council has adopted seven supporting resolutions —  1820 ,  1888 , 1889 , 1960 ,  2106 ,  2331  and  2467 -. All the resolutions focus on two key goals: strengthening women’s participation in decision-making and ending sexual violence and impunity.

Since 1999, the systematic engagement of the UN Security Council has firmly placed the situation of children affected by armed conflict as an issue affecting peace and security. The Security Council has created a strong framework and provided the Secretary-General with tools to respond to violations against children.  The Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict serves as the leading UN advocate for the protection and well-being of children affected by armed conflict.

Peaceful uses of outer space

The UN works to ensure that outer space is used for peaceful purposes and that the benefits from space activities are shared by all nations. This concern for the peaceful uses of outer space began soon after the launch of Sputnik — the first artificial satellite — by the Soviet Union in 1957 and has kept pace with advances in space technology. The UN has played an important role by developing international space law and by promoting international cooperation in space science and technology.

The Vienna-based  United Nations Office for Outer Space serves as the secretariat for the  Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and its subcommittees, and assists developing countries in using space technology for development.

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Article contents

Critical theory, security, and emancipation.

• K.M. Fierke K.M. Fierke School of International Relations, University of St Andrews
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.138
• Published in print: 01 March 2010
• Published online: 30 November 2017

Critical theory in International Relations originated from the Marxist tradition which, during the mid- to late Cold War, formed the basis of dependency and world systems theory. In the years before and after the Cold War, critical theory became part of a larger post-positivist challenge to the discipline and to the development of critical security studies. At the heart of contestation within the broader arena of critical security is the concept of emancipation, developed by members of the Frankfurt School such as Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Several key debates have been at the center of critical security studies relating to the construction of threats, identity and difference, human security, and emancipation. In particular, critical security analysts have addressed the question of how, given the range of threats or risks that exist in the world, some threats come to have priority over others and become the focus of discourses of security. Also, some scholars have disputed the idea that identity is dependent on difference. The concept of human security shifts attention away from states to individuals, emphasizing human rights, safety from violence, and sustainable development. In the case of emancipation, critical theorists have expressed concern that the concept is too closely linked with modernity, meta-narratives, especially Marxism and liberalism, and the Enlightenment belief that humanity is progressing toward a more perfect future. What is needed is not to avoid emancipation per se, but to pay close attention to its underlying assumptions.

• critical theory
• Frankfurt School
• critical security studies
• emancipation
• human security

Introduction

Critical theory in International Relations can mean several things. Critical theory refers to a body of thought growing out of the Marxist tradition, which, during the mid- to late Cold War informed dependency and world systems theory. In the decade prior to and following the end of the Cold War, critical theory, informed by Gramsci and the Frankfurt School, both of which have a Marxist lineage, became part of a larger post-positivist challenge to the discipline and to the development of critical security studies. In this context, the word critical was also used in relation to a much broader array of approaches, including postmodern, feminist, and postcolonial accounts. At the heart of this widespread critique was a concern for those outside established structures of power, who had been excluded from accounts of international relations, or, more specifically, discussions of security. In this respect, the attempt to dismantle the dominant state and Eurocentric assumptions of international relations and security studies was part of an attempt to allow a space for the voices of the marginalized and the suffering to be heard within a discipline and a subfield that had prioritized questions relating to the threat and use of force by states. For critical theory, and critical security studies as its offshoot, theory and practice are closely intertwined. The theorist does not observe the world objectively, but rather is always situated in a historical context and responding to a set of historically specific circumstances. In this respect, the critical developments within international relations have to be understood against the backdrop of critical social movements in the world. Emancipation is a specific concept, developed by members of the Frankfurt School, such as Adorno and Horkheimer, which has been at the heart of contestation within the broader arena of critical security studies.

Classical and Older Literatures

The discussion of classical literatures of critical theory has to be distinguished from the discussion of classical literatures of security in so far as the two did not merge until the 1990s, with the development of critical security studies. Up to this point in time, development, a central concern of critical theory, and security, largely informed by realist thought, were separate areas of study and practice. Marxist and neo-Marxist international relations theories, which emerged during the Cold War, focused their critique primarily on dominant realist and liberal views of the international system. Like the Marxist tradition from which they derived, critical theories emphasized questions of hierarchy. Development studies addressed questions of inequality and poverty, while security studies focused on conflict and war. The latter was, during the first two decades of the Cold War, more often referred to as strategic or national security studies.

The critical Marxist literature presented a critique of the more liberal model of development, which assumed that societies in the South could replicate social and economic changes experienced by the North since the eighteenth century . The liberal model located the lack of development within individual states, ignoring the embeddedness of these states in historical, more global relationships. By contrast, the critical Marxist literature was premised on the idea that globalization is not a new phenomenon. The underdevelopment of the South went hand in hand with the development of the North in a capitalist world economy. Critics of European imperialism in the early part of the twentieth century , and not least Lenin ( 1939 / 1988 ), argued that capitalism was fueled by the need to expand in search of profit. Imperialism was a manifestation of this global expansion in pursuit of wealth. In the period following decolonization, these arguments were adapted to explain less formal structures of control. Immanuel Wallerstein’s ( 1974 ) world systems theory provided a framework for understanding the relationship between the development of the industrial core, the underdevelopment of a periphery, which provided raw materials, and a semi-periphery, which produced luxury goods and provided a buffer against revolutionary transformation. Dependency theorists further examined how links between elites in North and South reproduced a relationship of Southern dependence and underdevelopment (Cardoso and Faletto 1979 ).

From the 1950s to the 1970s, a critical discourse of development became popular in areas of the periphery that had been historically exploited. This critical framework, like critical theory, placed the backwardness of the economies of the former colonies in a larger global context, in which the formal imperial relationship had, since decolonization, been replaced by less formal processes of exploitation. For instance, Northern companies purchased raw materials and labor power in the South below their true cost. Cheap labor and cheap Southern raw materials were transformed into manufactured goods in the North. In this critical discourse, the exploitative relationship was simply a new expression of the hierarchy that had constituted the capitalist world economy for centuries. It wasn’t that the South was undeveloped, but rather that it had been deliberately underdeveloped within a global relationship. Poverty was a direct consequence of how wealth was produced. This provided a global structural argument about the cause of poverty and legitimized practices on the part of Southern governments to intervene in the economy in order to lead the development process. At the time, many third world states joined together in calling for a New International Economic Order, or a reorganization of the global economy so that they would no longer be disadvantaged.

Critical Theory and Security

The 1980s saw the emergence of a neoliberal free market agenda, which pushed the critical arguments about underdevelopment into the background. At the same time, other offshoots of critical theory began to assume a place within International Relations, a development which was not unrelated to events in the world of Cold War security relations. US President Reagan’s rhetoric about limited nuclear war and demonstration shots over Europe revived fears of nuclear war, which spawned a political debate over the meaning of security, particularly in Europe. While NATO argued that nuclear weapons had blessed Europe with an unprecedented period of peace, peace and disarmament movements mobilized around arguments that the increasing likelihood of nuclear war made these weapons a source of insecurity rather than security. Reagan’s early policy, in the name of nuclear deterrence and mutually assured destruction, was one inspiration for this fear. However, against the background of these debates, in 1983 , he introduced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or “Star Wars,” followed, in subsequent years, by arguments that SDI would replace deterrence and make the “world sleep more secure.” After Soviet Premier Gorbachev came to power in 1985 , he also entered into the debate, arguing the need for New Thinking, to conceive of security in political terms, and to emphasize the importance of common security. Against this background, the two superpowers began to engage in a peace competition that led to face-to-face talks in Reykjavik and discussions, for the first time during the Cold War, of disarmament and not merely arms control. In 1989 , “velvet” revolutions shook Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union watched as the communist regimes were dissolved, not by force but by popular demand.

The Cold War was declared over with the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, well before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 . Almost no one, and least of all the practitioners of security studies, saw the end of the Cold War coming. They were shocked both by the rapid course of events and by the fact that these changes did not fit with the realist assumptions of security studies. Not disarmament, nor velvet revolutions, nor a state relinquishing its sovereignty could be explained within a framework that defined security in terms of the threat and use of force by states. The sudden lack of a security problem, in addition to the apparent declining utility of military force, stimulated reflection and critical evaluation within the academy on the meaning of security.

These dramatic changes in the political world added momentum to the critique of international relations theory more generally, and security studies more specifically, which had been under way in the academy. In the post–World War II period, security studies, as well as conflict analysis, had been preoccupied with the attempt to develop the scientific status of the field, with a focus on deductive formal modeling, particularly of nuclear strategy (see, for instance, Schelling 1966 ), or the creation of empirical databases, such as the Correlates of War project, respectively. This emphasis on science in the academy, or, in the political world, on force structure, planning, and other technical problems related to nuclear and conventional weapons (Crawford 1991 :289), went hand in hand with a distancing from the more political aspects of security. This demise of the political was also evident in the prominence of neo-realism by the 1980s. Neo-realists, such as Waltz ( 1979 ), criticized earlier realisms for being reductionist, that is, for reducing the problem of insecurity to the level of the individual or the state instead of the system of anarchy. In the search for elegance and parsimony, neo-realism removed any traces of the human, the political, or the cultural from international relations and provided instead a general theory of international relations, and a set of categories for formulating causal hypotheses that could then be tested against the world.

While the preoccupation with force structures, neo-realism, and social science created distance from the politics of security, this was also the point at which it began to be reintroduced. The period leading up to the end of the Cold War gave rise to a more fundamental attack on the scientific pretensions of the field, which was related to a larger Third Debate between positivists and post-positivists in international relations theory. One early expression of this emerging debate was Robert Cox’s ( 1981 ) distinction between problem solving and critical theory, which questioned the politics of power that underpins dominant theories. Cox argued that problem solving theory takes the world as it is, and attempts to find solutions to problems within it; critical theory, by contrast, raises questions about the historical location of both the theorist and his or her theory. As he famously stated, “Theory is always for some one and for some purpose” ( 1981 :128). Around the same time, Barry Buzan ( 1983/1991 ) introduced the idea that security is an “essentially contested concept.” Somewhat later, post-structuralists, such as Richard Ashley ( 1984 ) and R.B.J. Walker ( 1987 ) exposed the absence of the political in international theory, the scientific pretensions of neorealism and the disciplining effect of the discourse of sovereignty. Constructivists, such as Nicholas Onuf ( 1989 ) and Alexander Wendt ( 1992 ) questioned the static view of anarchy, arguing that the world of international politics is not given but always in the process of being made. Analysts of gender, such as Cynthia Enloe ( 1989 ), Ann Tickner ( 1993 ), and Spike Peterson ( 1992 ), began to uncover the gendered assumptions embedded in the theories, concepts, and practices of international security. The application of security to a range of new and different threats, and the analysis of how threats are constructed, gave rise to a burgeoning literature on critical security studies.

Critical analysts of security were often accused of lacking either empirical pretensions or ability. Yet security studies had been plagued by this problem from the beginning. As Nye and Lynne-Jones ( 1988 :13) pointed out: “In the fortunate absence of empirical data on nuclear exchanges, the field [of security studies] encourages non-empirical analyses.” Given the dramatic changes in international politics, the questions raised by critical security studies, and the attempts to develop new approaches and answers, arguably were more in tune with a changing world than their counterparts in the mainstream. As Krause and Williams ( 1997 ) document, critical security studies gave rise to a large number of studies within a fairly short period of time. The main problem was that these scholars did not define “empirical” in a way that fits with the research program of the mainstream. The difference regards a question of how scholars might know the world they are analyzing.

While rationalists treat the identities of actors – as self-interest maximizers – as given, critical analysts argued that identities, threats, and interests are constructed in historically specific circumstances. The shift to an understanding of security as a social and political construction expands the potential for formulating questions relating specifically to processes of change, including how enemies transform their relationship into one of friendship, how threats are defined and how the use of force is constructed. These questions were more empirically relevant to the changing contexts of the post–Cold War world than general theory that assumes the sameness of security across time.

Changing Debates

Critical security studies is distinguished from a longer tradition of security studies by the adoption of a critical approach. However, the meaning of critical has itself been at the heart of the evolving debate. Since Cox formulated the distinction between critical and problem solving theory in 1981 , critical theorists, such as Ken Booth ( 1991 ; 2005 ) and Richard Wyn Jones ( 1999 ) have identified critical security studies (CSS) with Marxist traditions of critical theory, such as the Frankfurt School or Gramsci. Keith Krause and Michael Williams ( 1997 ) have argued that CSS is a useful way to categorize a range of approaches that have challenged the narrow metatheoretical assumptions of traditional security studies. Reinforcing the multiplicity of critical approaches, Fierke ( 2007 ) analyzed a range of concepts and debates that have defined critical security studies, and their relevance to real world problems. While the Copenhagen School does not claim to be critical, its important work on the securitization of threats (Buzan et al. 1998 ) or discourse analysis (Hansen 2006 ), has an important place in this literature. Critical security studies has grown in leaps and bounds over the last decade, and the arguments are often complex, drawing on a range of philosophical traditions, including, in addition to the Frankfurt School and Gramsci, Wittgenstein, Schmitt, Bourdieu, Foucault, and Derrida. The following explores a few key debates that have been at the center of critical security studies relating to the construction of threats, identity and difference, human security, and emancipation.

The Construction of Threats

Traditional security studies asked a question about how to respond to objective threats. Critical security analysts have begun with a different question about how, given the range of threats or risks that exist in the world, from the destruction of the environment to nuclear weapons to terrorism or human rights, some threats come to have priority over others and become the focus of discourses of security. The question can be asked more broadly in terms of how specific objects or phenomena come to be constituted as one type or another, that is, as “threats” (Wæver 1995 ), “crises” (Weldes 1996 ), “problems” (Dalby 2002 ) or “risks” (Beck 2003 ). These ascriptions of meaning are not always self-evident and any one has consequences for how actions or policy responses are constituted. Critics often confuse the issue by assuming that social construction of any of these is equivalent to fabrication, that is, if threats are constructed they don’t really exist. However, to call a threat a social construction is not, for instance, to deny that nuclear weapons exist or that they can maim or kill millions. The question, as posed by Weldes et al. ( 1999 :12) is rather one of “how one gets from here to such widely shared propositions as these: that the U.S. is threatened by Russian, but not British nuclear weapons; that Third World states are more likely to use nuclear weapons than Western countries; that Iraq’s nuclear potential is more threatening than the U.S. nuclear arsenal; and the U.S. is safer with nuclear weapons than without them.” The focus is the process by which objects embedded in one set of relationships are given meaning as threatening, while in another they are understood to be benign.

Conventional approaches to security start with an objective threat, which is assumed to exist independent of the routines, procedures, discourses and knowledge brought to bear by security agencies (Huysmans et al. 2006 :44). More critical approaches emphasize that threats are a product of a politics of representation. Far from being a purely external phenomenon, to which security agencies merely react, a potential threat is transformed into a security question through the active intervention of security agencies. Measurements of the scope and seriousness of threats are shaped by social, cultural, and political processes that produce some phenomena as “security” threats while largely ignoring others. In the process of reification, a human-made object or situation comes to be understood as a factual given that exists externally and independently of the agencies that produced it. It is not that weapons or threats of one kind or another have been made up but rather that the meaning attached to them, and the subsequent practice, has been molded in discourses. In this way, the actors and insecurities taken for granted in conventional security studies are called into question, thereby denaturalizing the state and its insecurities, demonstrating how both are culturally produced (Weldes et al. 1999 :10).

Critical scholars of security (Campbell 1998 ; Weldes et al. 1999 ; Huysmans et al. 2006 ) focus on the background assumptions and discourses belonging to a culture from which threats are defined. Their intent is to denaturalize what has come to be assumed in order to open a space for alternatives. The Copenhagen School has distinguished itself from the broader category of critical security studies, which it identifies with critical theorists and post-structuralists. While the latter through a process of denaturalization attempt to show that change is possible, the Copenhagen School emphasizes that social constructions often become sedimented and relatively stable practices. Thus the task is not only to criticize this sedimentation but also to understand how the dynamics of security work and thus to change them (Buzan et al. 1998 :35). The Copenhagen School brings greater nuance to the constructivist argument that security is not an objective condition but an outcome of a specific kind of social process, an argument which tends to grow out of a critique of the realist focus on state security. Ole Wæver ( 1995 ) embraces the latter but for a different reason. Security, he argues, is a concept with a history and connotations that can’t be escaped. The core of this concept is defense of the state. The alternative to denaturalizing related discourses of security, as is characteristic of critical security studies, is to take the realist concept seriously and to examine its dynamics. Broadening the concept of security raises an unanswerable question of where to stop, that is, security potentially relates to everything that is potentially threatened. The alternative is to examine how security is used , that is, to examine it as a field of practices and how it typically works.

Security is typically about survival and about an existential threat to a particular object, which legitimizes the use of extraordinary measures. It opens the way for the state to justify the taking of special powers to handle the threat. The problem of security arises from an emergency condition, which establishes the right to use whatever means are necessary to block a threatening development. In and of itself, there is nothing in this depiction of security that is contrary to the realist picture, which focuses on the state; rather, it represents how security typically works for states. The concept of securitization highlights the dynamics by which some threats as opposed to others come to be understood under the rubric of security and the significance of this naming as an act of construction.

The Copenhagen School argues that security is a speech act. The speech act, which was elaborated by John Austin ( 1962/1975 ), begins with the idea that saying something is doing something. Saying “I do” in the context of a wedding is not mere language or description. It is an act that brings a marriage into being. Promising or threatening are not labels that refer to objects in the world, but rather acts that involve an exchange in relation to others which, to be meaningful, must rest on certain shared understandings and some degree of credibility. The credibility of a threat will cease in the absence of a consistent pattern of following through on threats. Because the shared understanding attached to security is one of existential threat, uttering the word security is an act that constitutes a threat as existential. Threats that are securitized have been identified as existential threats that require an emergency response and the suspension of normal politics.

For instance, before September 11, 2001 , terrorism was a category of criminal activity, and remains so for many international actors. However, after September 11, terrorism became an existential threat to the United States. The threat was existential insofar as the survival of America and American identity was seen to be at stake, and thus the threat had absolute priority. Use of the word security and the language of war constituted an emergency condition, where elites claimed the right to use whatever means are necessary to block the threat, including a policy of preemption against states that harbor terrorists. In so doing, they broke free of the rules that would normally constrain their actions. Since September 11, increasing surveillance and powers of arrest have been justified in the name of security. In the argument of the Copenhagen School, securitization is different from “normal” politics. The politicization of an issue brings it into the open and makes it a matter of public choice and something to be decided upon, that is, a part of the normal politics of public deliberation in a democracy. The securitization of an issue, by contrast, removes it from the political haggling of normal politics and justifies its prioritization over other issues, as well as decisive action by leaders. This may work to silence opposition, as leaders exploit threats for domestic purposes and act without democratic control or constraint. In this respect, security becomes a negative term that points to the removal of an issue from the realm of politics.

The Copenhagen School distinguishes itself from more critical security studies by its acceptance of certain realist themes, including attention to the processes by which state security practices are sedimented. Other critical analysts go beyond the Copenhagen School’s claim that securitization represents the suspension of normal politics to explore the role of securitization as a continual technique of governance, its role in the suspension of the political, such that the “state of exception becomes the norm” (Muller 2004 ; Shapiro 2004 ; Bigo 2006 ; Dillon 2007 ).

Michel Foucault ( 1976 ) argued that in modernity the legal authority of the state, accompanied by a view of individuals as citizens, represents a form of biopolitics. Biopolitics is the transformation of state power from the power of death to the management of populations and power over life. This reduces the citizen to what Giorgio Agamben ( 1998 ) refers to as “bare life.” The citizen of “normal politics,” derived, for instance, from Aristotle’s conception, engages in political debate and decision making. In Foucault’s argument, sovereign power revolves around the governance of populations and biological life rather than political life. The subject of politics is no longer the potential agency of the citizen, but the management of life itself. In this respect, the founding political image of the West has shifted from “Athens to Auschwitz” (Agamben 2004 :169).

Auschwitz is a symbol of depoliticization, where survival is elevated over questions about the nature and continuation of a specific form of political life. The suspension of normal politics, as discussed by the Copenhagen School, becomes, in this view, a permanent “state of exception” (Agamben 2005 ). In the state of exception the sovereign becomes both the law and outside the law, insofar as it has the power to suspend the law, imposing extrajudicial exceptional powers or a permanent state of emergency, which becomes an important technology of government control. The state of emergency need not always be openly declared in a technical sense, yet statutory amendments and changes in the background speak directly to the permanence of the state of exception. The suspension of conventional legislative and judicial powers and the concentration of power in the hands of the core executive constitute the state of exception.

While the initial questions about the meaning of security were often situated within arguments about the need to expand the concept to cover new areas, such as the environment or poverty, the Copenhagen School argued that we cannot so easily escape a history of meaning and use in which security is associated with states and military power (Wæver 1995 ). What is important, in this argument, is the analysis of how a concept of security is put to use in the construction of threats. Post-structuralists go a step further to examine a more structural process by which insecurity is reproduced. The dilemma, according to Anthony Burke ( 2002 :20) is that “security is bound into a dependent relation with ‘insecurity,’ it can never escape it: it must continue to produce images of ‘insecurity’ in order to retain its meaning.” While both rely on some notion of the “exceptional,” the Copenhagen School presents the exception as a deviation from “normal” deliberative and democratic politics, which are suspended in the face of a threat; by contrast, post-structuralists implicate liberal governance in the production of a long-term or permanent “state of exception.” All of these approaches depart from the assumption of traditional security studies that threats exist as objective phenomena separate from processes of making meaning.

Identity and Difference

The critical literature on threats goes beyond the assumption of traditional security studies that threats exist as objective phenomena in the world to examine how threats are constructed. Threats thus do not exist in a static field and their construction presumes a corresponding definition of the subject and object of threats. Thus, not only threats but identity are problematized by critical security analysts. In neo-realist accounts, states are assumed to be unitary and rational actors and thus identity is not an issue. The concept of identity, by contrast, opens up the possibility of multiple identities, and change between them. According to Goff and Dunn ( 2004 ), identity has four dimensions: alterity, fluidity, constructedness, and multiplicity. Discussions of identity within the literature on critical security studies have revolved around several aspects of identity. The first point, upon which critical analysts generally agree, is that identity exists in a relationship, an idea that is often captured in the concept of alterity. Identity is a social category that expresses not only the meaning any one actor attributes to the self; rather self-definitions are related to definitions that the self gives to others and others to the self. Categories are thus intersubjective and defining of a particular community of identity and practice; they are not purely in the minds of individuals.

The discussion of identity as a relationship suggests that it is to some degree constituted in difference. As William Connolly ( 1991 :64) argues, identity, whether of an individual, a state, or some other social group, is always “established in relation to a series of differences that have become socially recognized. These differences are essential to its being. If they did not coexist as difference, it would not exist in its distinctness and solidity.” Critical scholars inspired by Foucault and Derrida, among others, have highlighted several dimensions of the identity–difference relationship. The first is the role of identity and difference in constituting “insides” and “outsides” of states (Walker 1993 ; Campbell 1998 ). Notions of order, progress, democracy, and ethics have been presumed to be only possible “inside” the state, while the “outside” is a realm characterized by anarchy, war, and the primacy of power. David Campbell ( 1998 ) takes this logic a step further to demonstrate how US identity has been dependent on the production of danger from evil others outside. Another theme is the role of difference in constructing hierarchy and the legitimacy of intervention. Roxanne Lynn Doty ( 1996 ) explored practices of representation by Northern elites that constituted the “imperial encounter.” She analyzes the role of binary oppositions, characterized by reason/rationality, passion/emotion, parent/child, and good/evil, and the construction of regions such as the “South” or the “third world,” or more narrowly Kenya or the Philippines, in relation to the “North,” the United States or Britain. Doty argues that hierarchical representations legitimized intervention in these regions. Gender is also a site where identity is constructed in hierarchical difference. Gender discourse provides a system of meanings and a way of thinking that shapes how men and women experience, understand, and represent themselves, which also shapes many other aspects of human life and culture (Cohn, in Cooke and Woollacott 1993 :228–9). This discourse rests on dichotomies that construct mutually exclusive oppositions, including mind to body, culture to nature, thought to feeling, logic to intuition, objectivity to subjectivity, etc.

Whether deconstructing the “othering” of enemies or subordinates, all of these scholars emphasize the power inherent in constructions of knowledge based on difference. Most of them build on the Foucauldian idea that discourse not only contains linguistic expressions, to be judged in terms of the accuracy of representation, but also generates modes of power and exclusion. As Michael Shapiro (Der Derian and Shapiro 1989 :75) comments: “In deploying identities for actors and producing the overall meaning frame within which they operate, [discourses] constitute and reproduce prevailing systems of power and authority in general and direct the actions flowing from these systems to the particular.” The purpose of critical analysis, in this school of thought is to deconstruct the binary oppositions upon which power and exclusionary processes rest.

Some scholars have disputed the idea that identity is dependent on difference. Ole Wæver ( 1996 :122) points to contemporary Europe as an example that raises questions about this claim. Rather than constructing clear and dangerous others, post–Cold War Europe has, he argues, been “a pole of attraction with graduated membership so that Europe fades out but is not constituted against an external enemy.” Critical theorists in the tradition of Habermas, such as Linklater ( 1998 ), have argued that dialogue can be a path to some kind of universal consent against the background of particular differences. Linklater ( 1996 :85–7) claims that discourse ethics seeks to critique all forms of systematic inequality that prevent active participation in dialogue. Nonetheless, critical scholars who emphasize identity and difference have problematized the goal of universal consent. First, the goal of expanding the values of the polis to the international sphere is in conflict with the search for consent within sovereign states, insofar as democratic consent within sets the stage for practices of exclusion of others outside. While these critical scholars also seek dialogue that crosses lines of difference, they resist totalization in any form, including a totalized universal agreement. It is difference itself that is to be celebrated. Freedom is about speaking, listening, and being heard, and not being excluded from communication and conversation (Ashley and Walker 1990 :395). An ethical relationship between self and other requires contestation and negotiation. All ethics arises from a relationship to otherness, which entails a permanent critique of totalization and a struggle on behalf of difference rather than attempts to eliminate it.

In practice, processes of dialogue have been defined less by the search for universal agreement than the attempt to move beyond the stark identity–difference relationship, which is the foundation of conflict, toward some kind of common identity and language that would make talk – as distinct from fighting – possible. Before the end of the Cold War, the European dialogue between disarmament campaigns in the West and human rights initiatives in the Eastern Bloc constituted “citizens of a Europe whole and free,” in contrast to bifurcated Cold War identities of a divided Europe (Fierke 1998 ). Divided societies moving out of conflict have also often sought some kind of common identity. In South Africa, the notion that all citizens are South Africans provided a foundation of common identity for the truth and reconciliation process. In Northern Ireland, a common identity of this kind is by definition more problematic, given the conflict has been defined by allegiance to either the United Kingdom or Ireland. As a result, distinctions within the peace process between “men of violence” and those who had renounced violence played a larger role.

The shift within critical security studies to a focus on identity went hand in hand with a methodological shift away from the attempt, common within the social sciences, to fix the meaning of terms in order to test them against the world, to forms of discourse analysis. Given the fluidity of identity from one context to another or its changeability, it is imperative that the analyst examine how identities are formed in context and in relationship to other identities. The extent to which discourse analysis should be viewed as a “method” has been a subject of debate. As Jennifer Milliken (in Fierke and Jorgensen 2001 :136) points out, some discourse analysts within international relations avoid questions of rigor and systematic method given their association with positivism and an objective world “out there.” Others, such as Hansen ( 2006 ), have argued that it is imperative for discourse analysts to be clear in stating their assumptions and presenting their methods. The fact that discourse analysis rests on a more constitutive model of analysis, as distinct from a causal one, does not make it less rigorous by definition (Hansen 2006 :28).

The debate over identity and difference also flows over into debates over discourse analysis. While most who identify themselves with post-structuralism would focus analysis on the deconstruction of hierarchical oppositions, others conceive of discourse analysis as useful for a range of tasks. First, it may be useful for analyzing the multiple discourses for giving meaning to identities in a context undergoing change. For instance, in the aftermath of the Cold War, against the backdrop of conflict in the former Yugoslavia, and particularly Bosnia, Western observers placed the identities of the antagonists in several different frameworks of meaning, drawing on analogies to World War I, World War II, Vietnam, etc., each of which shaped a different understanding of the conflict and conclusions about the type of action to be taken (Fierke 1996 ; Hansen 2006 ). A second approach focuses on the distinct contours of different worlds across time. The subjects, objects, and practices that constituted the world of sixteenth century witch-hunts or eighteenth century slave-trading or twenty-first century terrorism are historically and culturally specific. Discourse analysis may be used to map the transition between worlds. Neta Crawford ( 2002 ) adopts a form of argument analysis to map the transition from a world in which slavery was legitimate to one in which it became an illegitimate practice. A third angle explores how meanings, shaped in one historical encounter, may carry over into future interactions, to be transformed within a new discourse. For instance, the concept of a safe haven, situated during the 1990s in a discourse of protecting refugees and civilians in war, has been transported, in the context of the War on Terrorism, into a discourse of terrorism (Fierke 2007 ). Despite changes in the discourse over time, the core of the safe haven, since it was defined in the 1949 Geneva Convention, has been the protection of vulnerable people. By contrast, in the National Military Strategic Plan for the War on Terrorism , published by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ( 2006 ), the safe haven is “one of the most important resources of extremists” ( 2006 :15). While this is not the first time that the term has been used in relation to nefarious activities, such as money laundering and fraud, there is an overlap between the use of safe haven in this context and the protection discourses of the 1990s. Both are embedded in a world of “failed states”; what changes is the identity of the subject, from that of “victim” to be protected to “terrorist” who is a source of fear.

Human Security

Global inequality was a theme of the early Marxist literature of international relations. This theme reemerged in the 1990s, in a somewhat different form, as “failed states,” many of which were a product of decolonization and bloody intrastate war, began to proliferate. The old concept of security, focusing on conflict between states, was of minimal use for understanding this phenomenon. Two developments in the mid-1990s provided an alternative point of departure. The first was a concept of human security, articulated in the 1994 UN Human Development Program report. Human security shifts attention away from states to individuals, emphasizing human rights, safety from violence, and sustainable development. The second was a rethinking of the relationship between security and development, previously two separate areas of analysis. This rethinking gave rise to a conclusion that underdevelopment is dangerous insofar as it correlates and coexists with violent conflict (Duffield 2001 ; Hampson et al. 2001 ). Achieving human security, in this argument, would require the transformation of entire societies into liberal democracies. These developments reinforced the idea that the international community, and the United States more specifically, had a responsibility to spread democracy to other areas of the world.

Human security was first popularized by the UN Development Program and was a response to an observation after the end of the Cold War that in today’s conflicts civilians are often the victims and even the primary targets of violence. Human security builds on the idea that people’s rights are at least as important as those of states. It had relevance in a context where, since the end of the Cold War, the majority of casualties in war had been civilian, where more than 30 million people had been displaced from their homes, where large numbers of child soldiers had been recruited or forced into violent conflict, and where rape had become a standard practice of warfare. The concept emerged from the fusion of several other concepts (Hampson et al. 2001 :152). The first, which was introduced by the Brundtland Commission in 1987 , was sustainable development. The Commission’s report argued that environmental protection was a necessary condition for the long-term survival of humanity and, subsequently, of any long-term development strategy (World Commission on the Environment and Development 1987 ). The second, introduced by the first development report of the UN Development Program in 1990 , was human development. The report stated that “people must be at the center of all development [and] […] that while growth in national production (GDP) is absolutely necessary to meet all essential human objectives, what is important is to study how this growth translates – or fails to translate – into human development” (UNDP 1990 :iii). In the fifth Human Development Report in 1994 human development was merged with a significantly broadened security agenda to produce human security (Hampson et al. 2001 :153).

The core concern underpinning the human security concept is the inextricable interrelationship between freedom from want and freedom from fear (Thomas 2004 :353). This rests on a holistic understanding in which the vulnerability of individuals poses a threat to – and thus the safety of individuals is key to – global security (Hampson 2004 :350). One major focus of the human security agenda was a treaty that banned landmines, which are often left scattered around a landscape after war, and can be a source of harm to people going about their daily business. Other issues on the agenda include protecting civilians in armed conflict; reforming sanction regimes to mitigate some of the more negative effects on civilians; the rights of women; humanitarian intervention to protect against future Rwandas or Srebrenicas; and the demobilization and rehabilitation of combatants, and particularly child soldiers. The International Criminal Court has also been an important item on the human security agenda, as has the “responsibility to protect,” a proposal of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) which incorporates a concept of human security over more narrow definitions of national security. The ICISS proposal represents a rethinking of the conflictual relationship between sovereignty and non-interference, on the one hand, and human rights on the other. Sovereignty comes with an obligation of the state to provide protection to its population. When the latter is not forthcoming or the state becomes a source of harm, the responsibility to protect transfers to the international community.

Human security is a critical concept in so far as it raises questions about the focus and assumptions of realist security studies. Scholars have, however, complained about the existence of over thirty definitions of human security (Alkire 2004 :359). The lack of clear boundaries has been useful for political actors who seek to organize as broad a coalition as possible behind the concept, and for anthropologists who seek to uncover how it is used in different contexts. Scholars of human security have, on the one hand, sought a more precise category in order to improve its analytic strength, and, on the other hand, have been troubled by the difficulty of fixing the definition of human security. Kyle Grayson ( 2004 ) raises a concern about the politics of conceptualizing human security. He asks who, what, and where is marginalized when “experts” provide a precise/scientific definition that is of practical use, and argues that the focus of attention should be the power–knowledge nexus that the concept constitutes.

The methodological issue points to questions about the concept’s critical potential in practice. On the one hand, despite its distance from liberal notions of possessive individualism, as noted by Thomas ( 2000 :xi), human security does have links to a liberal model of development. In this respect, many of its assumptions are in conflict with more critical theories of development. On the other hand, the concept has been used to present a critical challenge to current practice. Human security has been a key concept of NGOs and others who are interested in actually transforming global economic structures. As Thomas ( 2000 :9) notes, “the shift to human security […] highlights the importance of scrutinizing global processes that may impact on, even jeopardize security and the global governance structures which drive these processes.” Whether human security is understood to be part of a new regime of power or a challenge to existing regimes, the concept rests on a recognition that the traditional means of providing safety and security to civilians, that is, the nation-state, is no longer – if it ever was – effective in many parts of the world.

Liberal discourses of development and democracy have focused on individual states, ignoring the embeddedness of these states in historical relations that are global. This focus has been maintained in the merging of development and security discourses. Mark Duffield ( 2001 ) provides a critical analysis of the relationship between security and development, which, he argues, has increasingly been addressed within a liberal governance model. Since the mid-1990s there has been a change of policy based on the conclusion that underdevelopment is dangerous and is a source of conflict. In this respect, “want” perpetuates “fear.” This conclusion, which is an extension of the liberal model, does not locate underdevelopment or “failed states” in an unjust global system, which emerged along with a capitalist world economy and a history of imperialism, but instead internalizes the causes of conflict and political instability. Conflict is a result of underdeveloped and dysfunctional war-torn societies. The solution to underdevelopment is to be found in the transformation of individual societies rather than the global system in this liberal logic. The policy of international organizations has thus shifted from humanitarian assistance and aid, per se, to the process of reconstructing post-conflict societies along liberal lines (Duffield 2001 :11). As a result, an increasingly complex array of UN agencies, donor governments, NGOs, and military establishments work together to bring about a change in societies so that problems of the past don’t reemerge. Their practice rests on an argument that development is impossible without stability and that security isn’t sustainable without development (Duffield 2001 :16).

Duffield examines human security as part of a Foucauldian strategy of biopolitics, whereby a strategic complex of global actors and governing agencies, through a newly formed public–private relationship, shapes and controls civil populations. He argues that the nature of power and authority has changed radically. This new power, expressed in the globalized structures of liberal peace, differs from old imperial structures. Rather than the brute imposition of power, or the direct control of territory, we see partnership and participation, which implies a mutual acceptance of shared normative understandings. Inclusion in global structures means buying into the norms that underpin these structures. This development is a response to the demise of political alternatives in the South, since the end of the Cold War and the demise of the socialist project. On the part of the West, it is an attempt to stem refugee flows and to transform entire societies, replacing indigenous values and modes of organization with liberal ones.

The marriage of development and security discourses reinforced a liberal agenda of transforming entire societies into liberal democracies. This agenda is problematic for two reasons. First, as already discussed, it represents a new regime of power, albeit “softer” than the old imperialist regime. Marxists view human security as a repackaging of liberal humanitarianism, with its routine failure to address underlying social causes (Thomas 2004 :353). Second, the discourse failed to problematize the role of historical global relations in the production of “failed states” and, subsequently, in the production of fear and want. The discourse localizes agency in the “international community” and some Western states, which have taken on the role of “fixing” the problem of human insecurity. The resulting practices have the potential to reproduce historical relationships of power.

On the one hand, human security embodies a number of liberal assumptions and has reinforced a liberal agenda. On the other hand, it contains a potential for questioning and rethinking these assumptions. Liberal approaches ask how security is to be provided to the individual, given the failure of states. More critical analyses look to the global historical context, and the assumptions underpinning it, to the processes by which “failed” states, and subsequently human insecurity are produced and reproduced.

Critical Theory and Emancipation

The Frankfurt School originated in 1930s Germany with Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer , who articulated a technique of immanent critique and the concept of emancipation. Immanent critique begins with the idea that the critical theorist stands within time and within a historical context, rather than outside time as an objective observer, as assumed by problem solving theories. The critical theorist creates a critical distance from his or her historical context in order to explore its origins, development, institutions, and potential for change (Booth 2005 :11). Critical theory presents a more three-dimensional world containing not only the powerful but others as well. Immanent critique relies on a clear link between theory and practice and, as Richard Wyn Jones ( 1999 :6, 56) argued, “critical theory stands or falls by its ability to illuminate the possibilities for emancipatory transformation.” If problem solving theory reinforces the position of the powers that be, critical theory and immanent critique make suffering humanity the prism through which problems are viewed. This means focusing on the men, women, and communities for whom the present order is a cause of insecurity. If all theory is theory for someone, then critical theory, or critical security studies, is for the voiceless, the unrepresented, the powerless, and its purpose is their emancipation (Wyn Jones 1999 :159). Edward Said ( 1994 :84) further suggests that critical intellectuals “are always tied to and ought to remain an organic part of an ongoing experience in society: of the poor, the disadvantaged, the voiceless, the unrepresented, the powerless.” Consistent with a Gramscian argument, intellectuals are the agents of critique, who engage specialist information and expertise to the end of challenging prevailing hegemonic discourses (Wyn Jones 1999 :160).

In everyday language, emancipation is associated with struggles for freedom from domination, such as the emancipation of American slaves or the emancipation of women. The word is derived from the Latin emancipare , meaning the action of setting free from slavery or tutelage ( Wyn Jones , in Booth 2005 :216). The theoretical roots of the concept are found in Marxist theory. In his “Theses on Feuerbach,” Marx claimed that the point is to change the world, not merely to interpret it. While originally equating emancipation with the need to be freed from the vicissitudes of nature, Adorno and Horkheimer later rethought the problem as they struggled to make sense of the barbarism of the Holocaust, arguing that it represented the deification of instrumental reasoning, which had been essential to nature’s domination. They instead envisioned emancipation as a “reconciliation” with nature, suggesting a more non-instrumental relationship with it. Several decades later, Habermas ( 1984 ; 1987 ) discussed emancipation in relation to interaction and community, and identified emancipation with the potential to be freed from those institutions and practices that stand in the way of unconstrained communication.

Within international relations, Andrew Linklater ( 1998 ) adapted the discourse ethics of Habermas to an argument about the potential for global dialogue as a path to more universal agreement and thus a more universal culture and identity. Ken Booth ( 1991 ) further identified two elements of the relationship between security and emancipation, defining security as the absence of threats, and presenting emancipation as freeing people from the physical and human constraints that stop them from carrying out what they freely choose to do. War and the threat of war are constraints, as are poverty, poor education, and oppression. He later ( 1999 :41–2) defined what emancipation is not. In his argument, it is not a universal, timeless concept, nor can it be gained at the expense of others. Emancipation is not synonymous with westernization. These arguments point to a larger concern, expressed by other critical theorists, that the concept of emancipation is too closely linked with modernity, meta-narratives, especially Marxism and liberalism, and the Enlightenment belief that humanity is progressing toward a more perfect future.

Protagonists in this debate fear that the codification of positive alternatives, based on the search for universal consensus, as suggested by Habermas or Linklater, will only buttress new regimes of power, as was the case with Marxist communism in the former Eastern Bloc. They point to Western discourses of universalism that are implicated in the production of a particular conception of politics and society. In this conception, negative representations of non-European peoples contribute to the construction of Western identity as the highest civilization, and legitimize its project of global domination (Linklater 1998 :47). From this perspective, the critique of universalist concepts, including emancipation, is fundamental to eradicating hegemonic representations of the non-Western world that have been part of the construction of Western power. One related argument is that the agents of emancipation are invariably from the West, whether in the form of Western-dominated international institutions, a Western-led global civil society, or the “ethical foreign policies” of leading Western powers (Barkawi and Laffey 2006 : 350). Even when the concrete agents of emancipation are not themselves Westerners, they are conceived as the bearers of Western ideas. This does not mean that emancipation needs to be avoided per se, only that, like any other phenomenon in international relations, critical attention to its underlying assumptions is required.

Emancipation begins with critique and is primarily about the act of freeing, whether from the assumptions that blind us to alternatives or from the structures of power that constrain human potential. Wyn Jones (in Booth 2005 :216) argues that some concept of emancipation is a necessary element of any form of analysis that attempts to problematize and criticize the status quo. Hayward Alker (also in Booth 2005 :200) discusses the need to include multiple Western and non-Western perspectives on freedom without “giving up the distinctive and attractive appeal to human improvement and emancipatory development that is so central to the ethical/global concerns of the critical security studies project.” Even Jacques Derrida ( 1996 :82) has expressed a commitment to the “great classical discourse of emancipation,” while avoiding inscription of the discourse into “a teleology, a metaphysics, an eschatology.” He goes so far as to state that there “is no ethico-political decision or gesture without […] a ‘yes’ to emancipation.” Emancipation is a process rather than an end point, a direction rather than a destination. Immanent critique is one step in this process and the point of departure for identifying the emancipatory potential of a context. Emancipation can more generally be understood in relation to the critical imperative of freeing security studies from those assumptions that blind scholars to concerns outside its narrow definition, which focuses on statecraft and force, thereby opening a space to consider alternatives. Emancipation further refers to freeing those outside established structures of power from the constraints that hold them back from realizing their potential.

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Links to Digital Materials

The Responsibility to Protect, Report of the International Commission on International and State Sovereignty, 2001. At www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/iciss-ciise/report-en.asp , accessed Jul. 2009.

Acknowledgments

This essay is heavily indebted to my book Critical Approaches to International Security ( 2007 ). Readers wishing a more detailed treatment of this topic are encouraged to consult this source.

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Understanding the Islamic State—A Review Essay

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Daniel Byman; Understanding the Islamic State—A Review Essay. International Security 2016; 40 (4): 127–165. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_r_00235

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This article reviews several recent books on the Islamic State in order to understand its goals, motivations, strategy, and vulnerabilities. It argues that the Islamic State's ideology is powerful but also highly instrumental, offering the group legitimacy and recruiting appeal. Raison d'etat often dominates its decisionmaking. The Islamic State's strength is largely a consequence of the policies and weaknesses of its state adversaries. In addition, the group has many weaknesses of its own, notably its brutality, reliance on foreign fighters, and investment in a state as well as its tendency to seek out new enemies. The threat the Islamic State poses is most severe at the local and regional levels. The danger of terrorism to the West is real but mitigated by the Islamic State's continued prioritization of the Muslim world and the heightened focus of Western security forces on the terrorist threat. A high-quality military force could easily defeat Islamic State fighters, but there is no desire to deploy large numbers of Western ground troops, and local forces have repeatedly shown many weaknesses. In the end, containing the Islamic State and making modest rollback efforts may be the best local outcomes.

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Prize for Best Essay in Technology and International Security Policy

The prize for Best Essay in Technology and International Security Policy is a newly established competition starting in AY 2023-2024. The prize is made possible by a generous donor. Awarded up to once annually, this prize offers recognition for the best essay that considers the impact of technology on prospects for peace or war, and/or the ways in which conflict may shape technology.

The essay should be 2500 – 5000 words in length, before references, and may be a term paper or other writing assignment. The deadline for submissions to the 2023-24 competition is May 20, 2024. 

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How Successful Has the UN Been in Maintaining International Peace and Security?

This year, the United Nations (UN) is celebrating its 75 th  year. Born out of war, the UN has sought to curtail plagues of a past characterized by two world wars. Based on the idea of liberal institutionalism where multilateral institutions are to facilitate inter-state cooperation, the UN intended to bring the major military powers together with the main task of maintaining international peace and security (Weiss 2018: 174, Hanhimaki 2015: 18). This has, however, been fraught with difficulties that this essay will address along with the challenges and opportunities with different peace and security initiatives, in an attempt to evaluate the UN’s success in its main task. It will specifically focus on peace operations, nuclear disarmament and humanitarian intervention, some of the main areas through which the UN is maintaining international peace and security (UN 2020a). As one main actor in global governance, I conclude that the real success of the UN has been in its role as a normative power, guiding the global understanding of acceptable behavior.

UN’s Role in Maintaining Peace and Security – A Tense Security Council and Ambiguous Peace Operations

The UN Security Council (UNSC) is the organ with the primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. Outlining its structure and function is an essential first step for determining its success. It consists of 15 members, 5 of which are permanent and have veto power (the P5), namely the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China and France. These were considered the main military powers when the UN was founded and their veto right would prevent them from going to war against each other, while creating a necessary balance when taking decisions on security issues that would be collectively enforced (Goodrich 1965: 430). This illustrates how the constellation itself was based on peace and security considerations, and there has in fact never been a direct physical war between the P5 since the UN’s beginning. Despite a period of inaction during the Cold War, many UNSC resolutions have also been passed to support peace processes, solve disputes, respond to illegitimate uses of force and enforce sanctions in situations where peace and security has been threatened. This involvement ranges from Bosnia in 1993 to Afghanistan in 2001 to its Anti-Piracy resolution in 2008 (Mingst and Karns 2011: 108). UNSC resolutions have been central for tackling conflict situations and have also demonstrated that extensive joint action can be taken to respond to crisis, such as in the case of Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait in 1990 where it condemned its action and authorized states to “use all necessary means” to stop the occupation (Mingst and Karns 2011: 105). Such examples would challenge the realist assumption that there is an inherent collective action problem in international relations and the system of anarchy. Nevertheless, the UNSC has attracted vast criticism for upholding procedures that impede robust action in important situations where international law has been violated but the P5 disagree, such as in Syria (Nadin 2017), as well as for keeping an outdated permanent membership and for being undemocratic (Weiss & Kuele 2014). In the mentioned example of Iraq 1990, the agreed resolution authorized a US-led military operation, but UN oversight was weak and the autonomy of US action as well as the lack of inclusion of supportive states outside of the Council in the decision-making process is one example that points to the undemocratic structure of the Council as well as the continued importance of powerful states during interventions, rather than the UN itself (Ebegbulem 2011: 25). Furthermore, Security Council vetoes have not always managed to stop nations from proceeding with their endeavors, which was the case with the US’ invasion of Iraq, 2003 (Morris & Wheeler 2007: 221). This shows that the individual interests of some states make them deviate from institutional constraints, pointing to flaws in the theory of liberal institutionalism that laid the basis for the UN. Such examples spark doubt about the credibility of the UN and UNSC and disrupt the balance that the composition of UNSC is to uphold, which is one important obstacle to its success in maintaining peace and security. 

Beyond internal tensions, the UN has an active presence in the world through peace operations, which has become central for the UNSC and its approach to maintaining peace. The mandates range from protecting civilians to supporting state-building efforts, a list that has become more extensive in its attempt to improve the strategy towards sustainable peace. There is no mention of peace operations in the UN Charter, and the concept of peacekeeping has adapted in line with shifting nature of war and understanding of security, leading up to today’s multidimensional peace operations (Williams & Bellamy 2013: 415). Traditionally, the presence of UN forces was to be approved by all parties in the host country, they were to be impartial, lightly armed, with the main goal to maintain a truce. The peace has indeed been kept between states such as Israel-Syria or Iraq-Kuwait, indicating the success of UN deployment for preventing interstate conflict (Mingst and Karns 2011: 130). With the increase of intrastate wars in the 1990s however, conflicts had become more complex, requiring a more complex response. Peacekeepers were deployed in situations where there was no peace to keep, and they encountered atrocities that put both them and civilians in danger, demanding greater military response (Bellamy & Hunt 2015: 1277, Doyle & Sambanis 2008: 2). Their mandate therefore expanded and started bordering on enforcement, as was the case of Bosnia in the 1990s. One problem was the discrepancy between the expectations of the operations and the actual capabilities in form of manpower or resources, showing a political unwillingness to transform the operations to more robust ones (Thakur 2006: 62, Autesserre 2019). Bosnia was a clear example of the failure that can ensue when undertaking  ad hoc  responses to a situation that does not match the original mandate, as it might lead to the inability to perform the envisioned tasks entrusted upon peacekeepers as they are prevented by nation state reluctance (Crossette 1999). This shows the importance of broad member state support of missions in today’s complex conflict situations and the need for nations to be willing to adapt to challenges that might arise.

Underlying UN peace operations is the ideal of a liberal democratic peace, which has been a further hindrance to success in some contexts. Afghanistan is a telling example, where democratization, rule of law and economic restructuring was promoted (Saikal 2012: 219), showing a disregard for every state’s right to “choose its political, economic, social and cultural system” (UN Declaration 1965). The state-building efforts saw the quick establishment of governance structures based on Western ideals. It was a rushed affair that eventually failed as the government was neither representative nor accountable (Saikal 2012: 226). Postcolonialism offers a valid critique of the ideational dominance of Western values and understandings, and its failure to recognize imperialist tendencies in the vision that liberal peace is universally applicable and desirable (Nair 2017). Imposing structures in a top-down fashion can have important consequences in fragile situations where society is multidimensional. The conception of peace should not be equated with liberalism but rather promoted in a balanced effort through combined considerations for basic democratic principles with local understandings of governance. This is called hybrid peacebuilding by authors such as Richmond (2009: 578). Only then will the UN enable long-term success as it would empower the local community through an inclusive bottom-up approach. 

Beyond Peacekeeping – Recognizing the Normative Power of the UN

The active presence of the UN in the world through its different missions has resolved disputes, inhibited escalation of conflict and spurred peace in some situations, but the inherent problems that were highlighted continue to attract criticism. The failure of the UN to foster long-term peace in settings with complex conflict-dynamics shows an important limitation to the claim to success (Sambanis 2008: 29). An alternative area in which its role as a peace and security defender has been more successful, and in my view most successful, is through the spread important norms that have ranged from expanding the security agenda to upholding a nuclear taboo. A telling example is the role of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). As authors such as Scott Sagan argue, norms embedded in the NPT shape “states’ identities and expectations and even powerful actors [become] constrained by the norms they [have] created” (Sagan 1997: 76). The NPT regime helped establish shared understandings of what was considered prestigious, legitimate or delegitimate and states thereby chose to disarm rather than be classified as rogue nations by the international community (Sagan 1997: 80). It has also constrained both Russia and the US in their attempts to modernize their arsenals. Even in cases where the norm has been contested, such as when US recognized India as a nuclear weapons state, it never seriously challenged the core assumptions of the nuclear non-proliferation norm (Carranza 2019: 14). Critics would disagree and argue that the accomplishments in the area of nuclear disarmament has been weak, as with collective security (MacKenzie 2015: 489), but the UN’s efforts have evidently hindered armament and possible escalation, pointing to a major success for maintaining peace and security in the world.

Beyond nuclear disarmament, there is also the shared understanding of illegitimate and legitimate uses of force. The UNSC holds strong authority in this realm, which again points to the normative power of the UN in its role for maintaining international peace and security (Mingst and Karns 2011: 100). Even though tensions can run high between states in the Security Council, this shared understanding has enhanced the risks that an aggressor might face when “breaking” these norms, as the response from the international community can take the form of international condemnation, coordinated sanctions or even humanitarian intervention. This last point particularly derives from the enhanced focus on human rights and human security within the UN, as well as the shifting nature of war after the Cold War (Bellamy 2013: 488). The principles of sovereignty and non-interference came into question with the atrocities committed during intrastate conflicts such as in Rwanda and Bosnia. The “responsibility to protect” principle (R2P) was thereby born during the 2005 World Summit, which came to mean that all states have a responsibility to protect civilians from genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes or crimes against humanity (UN 2020b). In cases where a state couldn’t or wouldn’t fulfil this function, humanitarian intervention by the international community would be legitimate. This is in line with the human security agenda that was promoted by the UN in the 1990s, as the security of individuals was to be prioritized over the protection of the state (Hampson 2013: 279). While it contradicts the thesis of realism with its focus on self-interested states, there have been debates on this new role for the UN and how successful it has actually been to use force to support human security objectives (Hampson 2013: 286). One main criticism is about the questions of interpretation. Who dictates when this responsibility is to be invoked? There have also been instances where unlawful intervention has been done in the name of R2P, such as in the case of Russia’s intervention in Georgia where they claimed to protect Russian citizens (Allison 2009: 178). However, the jointly accepted humanitarian intervention in Libya 2011 based on the R2P norm is an important example that illustrates how normative shifts driven by the UN can bring nations together to protect peace and security in the world. Both China and Russia agreed to humanitarian intervention, despite their traditional opposition to it, which stopped Qaddafi from proceeding with possible crimes against humanity (Bellamy 2013: 500). Beyond operational successes, the fact that the international community has agreed to legitimize action to protect human beings as such rather than states, and that there is a general understanding that states should not stand idly by while atrocities are committed, remain two key achievement for the UN in the realm of peace and security. 

Conclusion – A Tale of Success?

The naiveté that liberal institutionalism has been charged with is confirmed by the difficulty to cooperate in areas that are so clearly still part of the realm of national interests (Weiss 2018: 178). Despite this, history has shown that UN nations, and the P5, are agreeing on important resolutions and overcoming their differences. States have also acted in line with the normative frameworks that the UN has promoted. The UN can be and should be criticized for its inability to act where needed or for its inability to stop action deemed damaging to peace and security, but it has an ability to adapt and reinvent itself in line with emerging global challenges that shouldn’t be undermined (MacKenzie 2015: 490). Such adaptability gives constructivism right in its understanding that process affects interests, which thereby transforms structure (Wendt 1992: 393). This understanding explains how the UNCS has been able to legitimize certain norms and practices, even when they intrude into the realm of national sovereignty (Williams & Bellamy 2013: 416). The UN is indeed the sum of its parts, composed of member states with their individual interests, but state interaction in this institutional context continue to shape states’ evolving interest, enabling policy change that corresponds with its task of maintaining peace and security. 

References:

Allison, R., 2009. The Russian case for military intervention in Georgia: international law, norms and political calculation,  European Security , 18(2), 173-200.

Autesserre, S., 2019.  The Crisis of Peacekeeping: Why the UN Can’t End Wars  [online]. Foreign Affairs. Available at:  https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2018-12-11/crisis-peacekeeping  [Accessed 19 August 2020].

Bellamy, A., 2013. The Responsibility to Protect. In: ed. Williams, P.  Security Studies, An Introduction . Routledge: New York, 2013, 486-503.

Bellamy, A., and Hunt, C., 2015. Twenty-first century UN peace operations: protection, force and the changing security environment.  International Affairs  91(6), 1277–1298.

Carranza, M., 2019. The stability of the nuclear nonproliferation norm: a critique of norm-contestation theory  The Nonproliferation Review , 26(1-2), 7-22.

Crossette, B., 1999.  U.N. Details Its Failure to Stop ’95 Bosnia Massacre  [online]. The New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/16/world/un-details-its-failure-to-stop-95-bosnia-massacre.html  [Accessed 19 August 2020].

Doyle, M., and Sambanis, N., 2008.  Peacekeeping Operations . In: Daws, S., and Weiss, T. The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Ebegbulem, J., 2011. The Failure of Collective Security in the Post World Wars I and II International System.  Transcience , 2(2), 23-29.

Goodrich, L., 1965. The Maintenance of International Peace and Security.  International Organization,   19 (3), 429-443. 

Hampson, F., 2013. Human Security. In: ed. Williams, P.  Security Studies, An Introduction . Routledge: New York, 2013, 279-294.

Hanhimaki, J., 2015.  The United Nations: a very short introduction. Oxford University Press: New York.

MacKenzie, D., 2015. Forever adaptable: The United Nations system at 70.  International Journal,   70 (3), 489-498. 

Mingst, K., and Karns, M., 2013. The United Nations in the 21 st  Century. Westview Press: Boulder.

Morris, J., and Sheeler, N., 2007. The Security Council’s Crisis of Legitimacy and the Use of Force.  International Politics , 44, 214–231.

Nadin, P., 2017.  How the UN Security Council failed Syria  [online]. The Interpreter.   Available at:  https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/how-un-security-council-failed-syria  [Accessed 19 August 2020].

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Richmond, O. P., 2009. A post–liberal peace: eirenism and the everyday.  Review of International Studies , 35 (3), 557–580.

Sagan, S., 1997. Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons?: Three Models in Search of a Bomb.  International Security,  21(3), 54-86. 

Saikal, A., 2012. The UN and Afghanistan: Contentions in Democratization and Statebuilding.  International Peacekeeping , 19(2), 217-234.

Sambanis, N., 2008. Short- and Long-Term Effects of United Nations Peace Operations.  The World Bank Economic Review , 22(1), 9-32.

Thakur, R., 2006.  The United Nations, Peace and Security . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Weiss, T., and Kuele, G., 2014.  The Veto: Problems and Prospects  [online]. E-International Relations. Available at:  https://www.e-ir.info/2014/03/27/the-veto-problems-and-prospects/  [Accessed 19 August 2020].

Weiss, T., and Thakur, R., 2010.  Global Governance and the UN: An Unfinished Journey . Indiana University Press: Bloomington.

Wendt, A. (1992). Anarchy is what States Make of it: The Social Construction of Power Politics.  International Organization,   46 (2), 391-425.

Williams, P., and Bellamy, A., 2013.  UN Security Council and Peace Operations . In: eds. Weiss, T., and Wilkinson, R., 2013, 1 st  ed. International Organizations and Global Governance. Routledge: London.

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Written at: Nottingham Trent University Written for: Sagarika Dutt Date written: 08/2020

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International Terrorism: The Challenge to Global Security Essay

Introduction, international terrorism as a global challenge, discussion and conclusion.

The damaging effect of terrorism on modern society was brought to the world’s attention following the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington in September 2001. This acts by the Al-Qaeda terror network demonstrated that international terrorism has the power to disrupt social life even in the world’s super power.

Since then, a wide-ranging debate has developed about the level of threat that international terrorism poses to the global community. While some people regard international terrorism as a marginal threat, others see it as an existential threat to society.

This paper will argue that international terrorism is the main challenge facing the world in the context of international security and therefore, measures should be taken to address this issue and safeguard global security.

International terrorism has become the greatest danger to world security, overtaking the threats of military confrontations from rival great powers. Stewart (2006) observes that the international security threat posed by military confrontations between rival great powers has reduced dramatically since the Second World War.

Most Western nations have formed alliances such as NATO, which makes it almost impossible for them to engage in aggressive military confrontation against each other. The possession of nuclear weapons by the major powers such as Russia and China acts as a deterrence from any major confrontation (Lutz & Brenda 2004).

Nations are therefore more likely to resort to diplomacy instead of risk military confrontation with each other. However, international terrorists attack nations without fear of retaliation since they do not have a well established base or economic resources that they hope to protect.

The activities of international terrorist organization have made the world unsafe. Terror activities have not been limited to US targets and the rest of the world has suffered from the actions of terrorists. The international terror organization, Al Qaeda did not limit its attacks to US targets and on March 11, 2004, it carried out the Madrid train bombings.

London also experienced terrorist attacks in July 2005 when the London Underground was bombed by Islamist extremists (UK Defence and Security Report 2010). Indonesia experienced terrorist attacks in 2002 that killed 202 people while a hotel in Jakarta was bombed in 2003 killing 12 people.

Thieux (2004) asserts that these attacks prove that international terrorism is a serious and potential threat not only for the United States but also for EU member states and the rest of the world.

International terrorism presents the most significant risk to global nuclear non-proliferation efforts. Presently, all functioning Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) including nuclear weapons are in the hands of legitimate governments.

However, intelligence reports indicate that terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda have made efforts to obtain WMDs especially from weak states such as Pakistan. Bowen and Cottee (2012) state that if international terrorists obtain WMDs, they will be able to inflict major damages to targets all over the world.

International terrorism has increased the vulnerability of nations to attacks from their own citizens. Thieux (2004) documents that in addition to the Islamic radicals who joined the Al Qaeda network in the past, this terror organization now attracts members who are well integrated in the society.

International terrorist organizations are able to radicalize citizens of a country leading to the development of home-grown terrorists. For example, individuals can access jihadi websites and obtain information on suicide bombing (The UK Defence & Security Report 2010). Tackling this threat has proved to be a major challenge for most nations.

Thieux (2004) notes that international terrorism has led to a blurring between foreign and domestic affairs as nations have to deal with issues such as home-grown terrorists and sleeper cells. The difficulty of identifying terrorists increases the risk that these elements pose to the global community.

International terrorists are spread all over the world and it is difficult for law enforcement agencies to correctly identify all potential suspects. Stewart (2006) notes that unlike in a conventional war where the enemy combatants are easy to identify, the diverse pool of individuals involved in international terrorism makes the threat hard to identify.

International terrorism presents a major challenge since these actors do not follow any international laws of combat. There are well-established rules that can be used by nations when dealing with traditional security threats. These laws include rules of engagement that forbid soldiers from attacking unarmed civilians.

Diplomacy can also be used to resolve the differences between nations without resorting to armed confrontation. With international terrorism, there are no rules of engagement and terror organizations target civilians in order to spread fear (Engene 2004). The traditional tools of military deterrence and diplomacy are not effective in dealing with the threat of international terrorism.

International terrorism has led to the development of poor relationships between Western countries and the Arab world. Since most international terrorist organizations are operated by radical Islamists, the policies adopted by countries such as the US to counter them focus on these radical elements. The fight against terrorism has therefore focused on tackling the issue of Islamic extremism (Victoroff 2005).

This has proved to be problematic since terrorism organizations are not disparate and therefore cannot be handled using a uniform policy response. Hammond (2008) asserts that the overemphasis on Islamic extremism has led to the strengthening of the misperception especially in the Middle East that “the anti-terror campaign is actually a war on Islam” (p.220).

This situation has threatened to divide the world on religious basis. Hammond (2008) suggests that the division based on religious differences fostered by international terrorism is proving to be the greatest threat to international unity since the cold war.

International terrorism has contributed to the unpopularity of the US in many countries all over the world and the subsequent inclination of terrorists to attack US targets. Meyer (2009) states that terrorism threatens global security by disrupting the “peace of mind” of citizens and prompting aggressive retaliation by individual states.

Hammond (2008) reveals that following the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration engaged in controversial security policies and effectively declared that America was at war with international terrorists. Due to the Bush policies, the US carried out military activities against terrorists and their affiliates and used economic means to influence the behaviours or interests of nations that harbour terrorists.

Terrorism threatens to disrupt international relations among traditional allies. Due to globalization, the movement of people from country to country has increased. Many international companies have established themselves in foreign countries and global trade is at a high level. International terrorists target Western citizens in foreign countries leading to immense political and psychological impact.

Tan (2007) documents that in 2002, the Al Qaeda affiliated network in South East Asia, Jemmah Islamiah, planned to carry out a terror attack against American targets in Singapore. If this attack had succeeded, it would have deteriorated the good relationship between the US and Singapore and greatly contributed to the growth of insecurity in the region.

The relationship between Pakistan and the UK has suffered due to international terrorism. The UK has accused Pakistan of not doing enough to prevent terrorism. In 2009, the UK arrested 12 Pakistani students in UK on suspicion of involvement in terrorism (UK Defence and Security Report 2010).

International terrorism undermines the good relationships between nations, and without this amicable relationship, global peace and security cannot be achieved.

The global community considers terrorism to be a significant threat to international peace. Following the events of 9/11, most nations, led by the US, have made a public declaration of war against international terrorism. The potential damages that international terrorists can cause, especially if they acquire WMD has led to arguments that terrorism is an “existential threat” for modern society (Meyer 2009).

With this realization, Western nations have tried to come up with a common and coordinated way of dealing with the threat of international terrorism. However, Thieux (2004) notes that the efforts have not been adequate and terrorism is still a major international threat.

This paper set out to demonstrate that international terrorism is the greatest threat to international security that the global community faces today. It begun by nothing that the global security threat posed by conventional military confrontations between nations is very low. However, the threat presented by international terrorism to global security is on the rise.

This threat has led to the deterioration of relationships especially between the West and Arab countries. The influence of terrorists has spread into many countries all over the world and various attacks have been carried out. For this reason, many countries view international terrorism as a threat to their security. Fighting global terrorism should therefore be a key priority for all nations.

Bowen, W & Cottee, M 2012, ‘Multilateral cooperation and the prevention of nuclear terrorism: pragmatism over idealism’, International Affairs , vol. 88, no. 2, pp. 349–368.

Engene, O 2004, Terrorism in Western Europe: Explaining The Trends Since 1950, Edward Elgar Publishing, NY.

Hammond, A 2008, ‘Two countries divided by a common threat? International perceptions of US and UK counter-terrorism and homeland security responses to the post-September 2001 threat environment’, Place Branding and Public Diplomacy , vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 218–239.

Lutz, J & Brenda, J 2004, Global Terrorism , Routledge, NY. Print.

Meyer, C 2009, ‘International terrorism as a force of homogenization? A constructivist approach to understanding cross-national threat perceptions and responses’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs , vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 647-666.

Stewart, P 2006, ‘Weak States and Global Threats: Fact or Fiction?’, Washington Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 27-53.

Tan, A 2007, ‘Singapore’s Cooperation with the Trilateral Security Dialogue Partners in the War Against Global Terrorism’, Defence Studies , vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 193-207.

Thieux, L 2004, ‘European Security and Global Terrorism: the Strategic Aftermath of the Madrid Bombing’, Central European Review of International Affairs , vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 59-74.

UK Defence and Security Report 2010, Domestic Security Overview , Business Monitor International Ltd, London.

Victoroff, J 2005, ‘The Mind of the Terrorist: A Review and Critique of Psychological Approaches’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution vol. 49, no.1, pp. 3-42.

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October 2003  

In the context of conflict resolution, the definition of "security" depends on one's perspective. At the simplest level, security may be defined as "the quality or state of being secure," "freedom from danger," or "freedom from fear or anxiety." Of the many other levels on which one can analyze security, the most relevant here are individual, group, regional, national, and global. Our task is then relatively simple; we consider how security is defined at these different levels. What emerges is a framework upon which security agreements are constructed and implemented.

Individual Security

On the individual level, security is most often understood as safety. This safety includes freedom from harm, whether physical or psychological. Threats to an individual's security can produce the fear or anxiety mentioned above. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that all people are entitled to "security of person." This declaration reinforces the concept of freedom from physical and psychological harm. Yet, what measures will be taken to protect an individual from harm? The most common forms of protection are legal structures that protect individuals from threats to their security. These include, but are not limited to, laws against murder, sex crimes, bodily harm, theft, and psychological harm such as coercion. The state assumes responsibility for constructing and implementing these legal regulations. In addition, security can be related to one's ability to attain the fundamental physical needs of a home, food, and socio-economic needs such as a job. The concept of individual security can therefore be linked to an individual's perception of her or his standard of living. The individual may thus equate security with a high standard of living.

Group Security

Discussing regional security requires us to first define the extent of the "region." Since we have placed the regional beneath the national level in this hierarchy, we are speaking of a physical area within a nation, which could be a collection of provinces, cities, or states. If there were certain religious, national, or ethnic groups that dominated a region, we would still speak of their security at the group level. What is regional security, then?

The simplest concept of security at the regional level could be economic, implying protection of regional interests. Perhaps a regional association with, or ownership of, a valued resource could provoke desires for security, and the responsibility for protecting that security would rest on the region. For example, labor or trade unions perform this function. Other notions of security at this level could be to maintain a certain standard of living. In this realm, members of a regional group might want to protect themselves from mass immigration, which could occur due to the region's coveted resources. The region might seek to ensure its security by campaigning against this immigration. Threats to security are often cited here, usually connected to issues of lowered living standards. On a more subtle level, religious, national, or ethnic groups may shrewdly promote their interests under the guise of regional security, and may elevate their group security to a regional priority level.

National Security

The definition of security at the group level shares many similarities with the definition of individual security; as the individual expects to have security of person, so does the group. But at the group level, an important aspect of security is freedom from discrimination . While an individual certainly can be mistreated for her or his affiliation with a religious, national, or ethnic group, this mistreatment is more obvious and perhaps more successfully prevented when an entire group is subject to the same mistreatment. We can define the group, i.e., why that group IS a group. Is it due to the similar nationality of its members? Are they a group because they share similar religious beliefs? Whatever the reason, group security may be interpreted as safety from threats to the group's identity . As with ensuring individual security, laws help ensure group security, although laws can also be discriminatory, which is actually one source of intractable conflict.

Regional Security

The national level of security is probably the most often examined and contentious definition of security. The nation-state often assumes the role of guarantor for individual security, group security, and perhaps regional security; for example, agricultural subsidies or steel tariffs are one way in which a nation-state protects a region within its boundaries from a foreign threat.

After ensuring individual, group, and regional security, how does the state define its own security? Lasso and Gonzalez state that "the entirety of conditions -- political, economic, military, social, and cultural -- necessary to guarantee the sovereignty, independence, and promotion of national interest..."[1] defines security. We can then ask what threatens those five conditions. Security from the military viewpoint is highly visible, and a nation will act when it is threatened militarily. Economic threats can also be simply defined, although domestic protectionism can often clash with international trade agreements signed by the same nation. A nation's claim that its protectionism helps ensure national economic security can cause international uproar. (For example, see the essay on Development and Conflict .)

Tension is introduced when a nation defines what in particular guarantees its political, socio-economic, and cultural security. For example, actions undertaken to protect cultures can easily be interpreted as discriminatory or racist. Cultural security is especially difficult to define and protect in heterogeneous, democratic societies such as the United States.

Socio-economic security can also assume controversial definitions and interpretations. Surely a rapidly aging population can threaten socio-economic security. A further question is what measures the state will undertake to solve the problem. Tension can again be introduced if the state or the society chooses to blame a specific group for the threat to socio-economic security. Here, security definitions are at odds since the state is protecting its own security by threatening a group's security.

Perhaps the most ambiguous aspect of security is that of political security, which may be very broadly defined. Often, a nation will react to threats to its political philosophies, as well as threats to its culture, society, or economy. The term "national security" has recently been used to justify "security" procedures within the United States as well as military action outside its borders. This widens the parameters for national security definitions, and implies a wide range of actions available to a nation.

Global Security

Global security is a relatively new concept, and conjures up images of organizations such as the United Nations. Global security, however, may be undermined by national security concerns; if one nation feels threatened by another, then global security cannot exist since members of the world are in disagreement. Global security is also undermined by negative judgment by one nation of another's philosophy of government. If nation A decides that nation B's governing methods are wrong, nation A will not submit to a global authority that allows nation B's methods to continue. Global security is thus a weak concept, since it assumes a supranational entity to whose judgment nations would yield in matters of disagreement. This is obviously a far-fetched goal, which is unlikely to be realized in the near future. As resources such as land, water, and oil are increasingly coveted by nations, global security has little chance to emerge as a durable concept in international relations.[2]

The Security Dilemma

At the national and global level, providing security creates a dilemma. It is generally thought that security is provided with a strong military that can deter attack. Yet, the development of military strength can be seen as a threat by the other side, which then increases its own military investment. This, then, actually decreases both sides' security, rather than increasing it. Security is actually a positive-feedback system. The more security I feel, the more secure my opponent(s) will feel, because I won't have to arm myself against them. But the less secure I feel, the more I will arm, and the less secure my opponent will feel as well. This security dilemma is what fueled the Cold War, the nuclear arms race, and indeed, it is much of what is fueling the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, Indians and Pakistanis and North and South Korea. (There are other factors in all of those conflicts as well, but security is a big issue.)[3]

The concept of security, on all levels, is related to basic concepts of human psychology. If threatened, people will react and take necessary defensive measures. At the individual level, one can sometimes ward off threats by exercising caution in his or her daily life. He or she may arrange additional security measures, such as alarm systems, weapons, or perhaps changing residences. This same type of reaction may occur on the group or regional level. On the national and global levels, more formal structures of defense and security agreements exist. Nations might activate defense systems to react to overt threats, but this can threaten the other side, thereby reducing security, rather than increasing it. Furthermore, they might cooperate to create security agreements such as NATO, which foster cooperation and collaborative defense and security measures in the face of a perceived threat.

[1] L.H. Lasso, G. Gonzalez, in B.M. Bagley, S.A. Quezada, Eds. Mexico in Search of Security, (University of Miami Press, 1993), 4. < http://www.amazon.com/Mexico-Security-Bruce-M-Bagley/dp/1560006862 >; see also Brian J. Bow,  and Arturo Santa Cruz, The State and Security in Mexico: Transformation and Crisis in Regional Perspective (Routledge, 2012). < http://books.google.com/books?id=Am9r_7ftVdoC >.

[2]. For further discussion of global security, including applications to the War in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, and Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), see: Peter Hough, Understanding Global Security , (Routledge, 2008). < http://books.google.com/books?id=c_B-qty22m8C >.

[3] This paragraph was added by Heidi Burgess. It was not part of the author's original essay, but as editor, I took the liberty of adding it.

Use the following to cite this article: Kanji, Omario. "Security." Beyond Intractability . Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Information Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: October 2003 < http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/security >.

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