Security Studies

A Reader

Christopher W. Hughes, Yew Meng Lai

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781134341634
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This reader brings together key contributions from many of the leading scholars in the field, offering students an informed overview of the most significant work in security studies.

The editors chart the development of the key theoretical and empirical debates in security studies in the Cold War and post-Cold War periods, introducing the ideas of the most influential 'past masters' and contemporary thinkers on security in the UK, US and elsewhere.

The book is divided into five areas:

• 
  
  

• What is Security?

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• Security Paradigms

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• Security Dimensions and Issues

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• Security Frameworks and Actors

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• The Future of Security.

In order to guide students through the issues, the book has a substantial critical introduction exploring the development of security studies, as well as introductory essays that provide an overview of each section, highlighting clearly how the readings fit together. Suggestions for further reading and key questions for discussion are also included.

Security Studies is an invaluable resource for all students of security studies and international relations.

PART 1

What is Security?

Introduction

ARNOLD WOLFERS’S CLASSIC ESSAY from 1962 starts off this section, providing an insight into competing definitions of security prevalent during the Cold War. Wolfers’s key point is that while security is a crucial concept in international relations, it is also (even at the height of the Cold War) extremely subjective in nature. States and nations will tend to perceive differently their ‘acquired values’ and the degree of danger they face; the degree to which they seek to protect ‘core’ and ‘marginal’ values, given resource trade-offs; and the means by which they provide for security, ranging from alliance and arms races to neutrality and the pacifist non-use of force. Hence, Wolfers reminds us that it is a ‘sweeping generalisation’ that all states tend to pursue a ‘uniform and imitable policy of security’; as well as highlighting the malleability of the term and how it is important to be aware of the term’s manipulation by policy-makers. Richard Ullman, writing in the latter stages of the Cold War, follows up on these themes, arguing that traditional security conceptions have been too narrow and military-oriented. He reminds us that security is not necessarily an absolute value, and needs to be balanced against other key values, and most particularly potential infringements of liberty in the name of the pursuit of security. Ullman’s analysis is prescient in pointing to a number of non-military threats, including resource scarcity and basic human needs, which have subsequently become the focus of the post-Cold War security agenda. However, Ullman argues that the redefinition of security in these terms can only be made possible through a change in the conceptual mindset of policy-makers and the engagement of civil society.

Barry Buzan’s contribution moves forward the debate on security in the early post-Cold War period by acknowledging that, while security is an essentially contested concept, it should be possible to offer categorisations and greater analytical coherence to the evolving security agenda. Buzan innovates by presenting a systematic list of sectors: military, political, economic, environmental and societal security. He further points out the importance of thinking of how these sectors apply to a range of different referent objects of security, and how the security of one sector or referent cannot be thought of in isolation from the others, thus laying the ground for thinking of security in holistic terms. David Baldwin counters Buzan’s assertion that security is a contested concept and instead posits that it has simply been inadequately explicated. He then proceeds to specify security in terms of ‘security for whom’ and ‘security for which values’; plus he offers additional specifications such as ‘how much security’, ‘from what threats’, ‘by what means’, ‘at what cost’ and ‘in what time period’. Baldwin agrees that security is a subjective term and concludes that its relative importance can only be assessed through a marginal value approach – asking how far security can be traded off against other important values in order to mobilise policy resources.

Ken Booth picks up on the themes above by advocating further new definitions of security. Booth, writing in 1991, and although eschewing the term post-Cold War for the alternative the ‘interregnum’, points out the decline in inter-state conflict but the continuance of intra-state violence. Consequently, he argues that, instead of the traditional notions of power and order, security should be understood in terms of ‘emancipation’ – the freeing of people from all types of constraints on their freedom, including not just war, but also issues of poverty, education and political oppression. Indeed, Booth asserts that the prime object of security should be the individual, and that states are simply a means, not an end in security, thus pointing the way towards the widening of security current in the present day. J. Ann Tickner adds a further corrective to traditional notions of security by introducing the importance of feminist perspectives. Tickner demonstrates how the study of International Relations and security has often been a male-centric domain with the concomitant marginalisation of women’s experiences. She argues that these biases need to be redressed by embracing the voices of the oppressed ‘Others’, including women, with the result that new insights can be offered on issues such as militarism and structural violence; fundamental international relations concepts often dominated in the past by ‘patriarchal’ perspectives; and traditional binary oppositions of domestic and foreign, and order and anarchy.

Amitav Acharya highlights and seeks to redress another past failing of Security Studies, namely the tendency towards a ‘Eurocentric’ view of conflict. Acharya argues that the experience of the so-called ‘Third World’ has been marginalised in the mainstream of the discipline, despite the fact that this is where most world conflicts occur. The result has been that Security Studies pays insufficient attention to the intrastate conflict and to non-military sources of conflict. Acharya adds another corrective in stressing the need to understand that much of the conflict originates from local regional conditions rather than simple international system transformation, and hence that much of structural realism may need to be rethought. All in all, Acharya demonstrates again the need to redefine and broaden conceptions of security in the post-Cold War period.

Jessica Tuchman Matthews adds depth to these calls for redefinition with an early call to take the environment seriously as a security issue. Tuchman Matthews argues that the environment deserves attention due to its potential for generating armed conflict, as well as in its own right as a threat to human quality of life. Similarly, Roland Paris pushes forward attempts to redefine security and its referent objects by grappling with the current concept of Human Security. Paris offers a somewhat sceptical view of the often overly broad Human Security concept, but in doing so still demonstrates the importance of a new research agenda concerned with non-military threats to the safety of societies, groups and individuals.

The penultimate chapter of this part, however, points out some counter-arguments and also the risks of redefining security. Stephen Walt contends that any attempt to expand the concept of security to include topics such as poverty, the environment, infectious diseases, runs the risk of over-expanding the field to the point that it loses intellectual coherence. Walt argues that the outcome could be to hamper attempts to deal with these policy issues as well as more traditional military security concerns. Walt stresses that the possibility of inter-state conflict, if declining, has not been eliminated, and thus the core agenda of security studies should remain military, although there is room to expand this agenda to include variables in conflict generation such as domestic politics and the power of ideas. Finally, Ole Wæver introduces the concept of ‘securitization’ whereby policy-makers through the ‘speech act’ identify and place issues within the category of security. In turn, securitisation empowers policy-makers to mobilise all necessary resources in pursuit of their objectives. Wæver points out the risk of securitisation in removing issues from the normal realm of policy discussion in the name of national security, and that in fact, the desecuritisation of politics may help us to perceive certain types of public policy issues more clearly.

1.1

Arnold Wolfers

National Security as an Ambiguous Symbol

Source: Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962), pp. 147–65.

TODAY [ … ] THE FORMULA of the national interest has come to be practically synonymous with the formula of national security. Unless they explicitly state some other intent, spokesmen for a policy which would take the national interest as its guide can be assumed to mean that priority shall be given to measures of security, a term to be analyzed.¹ […]

The term national security, like national interest, is well enough established in the political discourse of international relations to designate an objective of policy distinguishable from others. We know roughly what people have in mind if they complain that their government is neglecting national security or demanding excessive sacrifices for the sake of enhancing it. Usually those who raise the cry for a policy oriented exclusively toward this interest are afraid their country underestimates the external dangers facing it or is being diverted into idealistic channels unmindful of these dangers. Moreover, the symbol suggests protection through power and therefore figures more frequently in the speech of those who believe in reliance on national power than of those who place their confidence in model behavior, international co-operation, or the United Nations to carry their country safely through the tempests of international conflict. For these reasons it would be an exaggeration to claim that the symbol of national security is nothing but a stimulus to semantic confusion, although used without specifications it leaves room for more confusion than sound political counsel or scientific usage can afford.

The demand for a policy of national security is primarily normative in character. It is supposed to indicate what the policy of a nation should be in order to be either expedient – a rational means toward an accepted end – or moral, the best or the least evil course of action. [Besides] [t]he value judgments implicit in these normative exhortations […], attention should [also] be drawn to an assertion that is implicit if not explicit in most appeals for a policy guided by national security. Such appeals usually assume that nations have made security their goal except when idealism or utopianism of their leaders has led them to stray from the traditional path. If such conformity of behavior actually existed, it would be proper to infer that a country deviating from the established pattern of conduct would risk being penalized. This would greatly strengthen the normative arguments. The trouble with the contention of fact, however, is that the term “security” covers a range of goals so wide that highly divergent policies can be interpreted as policies of security.

Security points to some degree of protection of values previously acquired. In Walter Lippmann’s words, a nation is secure to the extent to which it is not in danger of having to sacrifice core values, if it wishes to avoid war, and is able, if challenged, to maintain them by victory in such a war.² This definition implies that security rises and falls with the ability of a nation to deter an attack, or to defeat it. This is in accord with common usage of the term.

Security is a value, then, of which a nation can have more or less and which it can aspire to have in greater or lesser measure.³ It has much in common, in this respect, with power or wealth, two other values of great importance in international affairs. But while wealth measures the amount of a nation’s material possessions, and power, its ability to control the actions of others, security, in an objective sense, measures the absence of threats to acquired values, in a subjective sense, the absence of fear that such values will be attacked. In both respects a nation’s security can run a wide gamut from almost complete insecurity or sense of insecurity at one end, to almost complete security or absence of fear at the other.⁴

The possible discrepancy between the objective and subjective connotations of the term is significant in international relations although the chance of future attack can never be measured “objectively”; it must always remain a matter of subjective evaluation and speculation. […] It is well known that nations, and groups within nations, differ widely in their reaction to one and the same external situation. Some tend to exaggerate the danger while others underestimate it. With hindsight it is sometimes possible to tell exactly how far they deviated from a rational reaction to the actual or objective state of danger existing at the time. Even if for no other reason, this difference in the reaction to similar threats suffices to make it probable that nations will differ in their efforts to obtain more security. Some may find the danger to which they are exposed entirely normal and in line with their modest security expectations while others consider it unbearable to live with these same dangers. […]

Another and even stronger reason why nations must be expected not to act uniformly is that they are not all or constantly faced with the same degree of danger. […]

This point, however, should not be overstressed. There can be no quarrel with the generalization that most nations, most of the time – the great powers particularly – have shown, and had reason to show, an active concern about some lack of security and have been prepared to make sacrifices for its enhancement. Danger and the awareness of it have been and continue to be sufficiently widespread to guarantee some uniformity in this respect. But a generalization that leaves room both for the frantic kind of struggle for more security which characterized French policy at times and for the neglect of security apparent in American foreign policy after the close of both world wars throws little light on the behavior of nations. The demand for conformity would have meaning only if it could be said – as it could under the conditions postulated in the working hypothesis of pure power politics – that...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• What is Security?
• Introduction
• National Security As an Ambiguous Symbol
• Redefining Security
• The National Security Problem in International Relations
• The Concept of Security
• Security and Emancipation
• Feminism and Security
• The Third World and Security Studies
• Redefining Security (2)
• Human Security
• The Renaissance of Security Studies
• Securitization
• Discussion Questions
• Security Paradigms
• Introduction
• The Nemesis of Utopianism
• A Realist Theory of International Politics
• The Concept of Order in World Politics
• Anarchic Orders and Balances of Power
• Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma
• The False Promise of International Institutions
• Economics and the Moral Case for War
• Neoliberal Institutionalism
• Democratic Peace
• Neo-Kantian Perspective
• The Social Construction of Power Politics
• Norms, Identity, and National Security
• Discussion Questions
• Security Dimensions and Issues
• Introduction
• Nuclear Deterrence
• Arms Races
• Why do States Build Nuclear Weapons?
• New Military Conflict
• Technology and War
• Resources and Conflict
• Migration and Security
• Transnational Crime and Security
• AIDS/HIV and Security
• Economics and Security
• Discussion Questions
• Security Frameworks and Actors
• Introduction
• The Long Peace
• The Unipolar Illusion
• Alliance Politics
• Alliance Futures
• Multilateralism
• Regimes
• Security Communities
• Interventionism
• Economic Sanctions
• Private Military Companies
• Discussion Questions
• The Future of Security
• Introduction
• Security in the Twenty-First Century
• Instabilty in Europe?
• Security Dilemmas in East Asia?
• Structural Realism Redux
• Security and Global Transformation
• Globalization and Security
• Terrorism
• The War on Terrorism
• Discussion Questions
• Suggestions for Further Reading
• Index