reading

Table of Contents

Cover

Dedication

Title page

Figures and Tables

Figures

Tables

Acknowledgements

Introduction: The Challenge of the New Security Agenda

Aims and objectives

Content

The role of the security analyst

On to the study of international security . . .

Websites

PART I: Analytical Framework

CHAPTER 1 Thinking about Security after the Cold War

Debating the causes of the great power peace

From East–West to North–South: The state as the problem?

From bipolarity to empire, hegemony and multipolarity

Conclusion

Further reading

Websites

CHAPTER 2 Theorizing about Security after the Cold War

From neo-realism to constructivism

From state security to human and critical security

Conclusion

Further reading

Websites

PART II: The ‘New Wars’ and Intervention

CHAPTER 3 Understanding Contemporary War and Insecurity

Towards a historical sociological account

State formation and Northern security

State formation and Southern security

Statehood, civil society and globalization: The generation of insecurities

State formation and variations in the forms of insecurity

Conclusion

Further reading

Websites

CHAPTER 4 Dilemmas and Challenges of Intervention

The strategic context: From the Cold War to post-Cold War

Post-Cold War record of intervention

Post-intervention: The challenges of state reconstruction

Conclusion

Further reading

Websites

CHAPTER 5 Collective Security, Alliances and Security Cooperation

From collective defence to collective security?

Europe and the survival of NATO

Asia as a nascent security community?

Conclusion

Further reading

Websites

PART III: Environment, Resources and Migration

CHAPTER 6 Environmental Security

Are we ‘on the threshold’ of an environmental crisis?

Is environmental degradation a cause of violent conflict?

Conclusion: Environmental security and the new security agenda

Further reading

Websites

CHAPTER 7 The Struggle for Resources: Oil and Water

Water security

From water to oil security

Conclusion

Further reading

Websites

CHAPTER 8 People on the Move: Migration as a Security Issue

How serious is the migration crisis?

Europe and migration – the obstacles to internationalism

Returning to the legitimacy of migration as a security issue

Conclusion

Further reading

Websites

PART IV: Asymmetric Power and Asymmetric Threats

CHAPTER 9 International Terrorism and the Impact of 9/11

International terrorism: Its nature and pathologies

The ‘war on terror’ in practice

Conclusion

Further reading

Websites

CHAPTER 10 Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Proliferation in theory

Proliferation in practice

Assessing the nature of the threat

Conclusion

Further reading

Websites

CHAPTER 11 Cyber-Warfare and New Spaces of Security

Changing conflicts, changing technologies

Cyber-war and cyber-battlespace

Social networks, cyber-revolutions and security

Conclusion

Further reading

Websites

Conclusion: The Challenges for the Future

Anxieties for the future

Websites

References

Index

Introduction: The Challenge of the New Security Agenda

The subject of international security has been in ferment since the end of the Cold War. The concept of international security, rather than the more traditional concept of national security, is itself a product of the Cold War. It expressed the conviction that national security in the age of mutual nuclear vulnerability could only be achieved through international cooperation and a minimal degree of shared understandings. For those intellectually engaged in seeking to overcome the mutual threat of global destruction, the challenges and responsibilities were considerable. There was, though, an enviable clarity of purpose and academic endeavour. The focus for the study of international security was on clearly defined enemies, whether to the east or the west; the threat was of the use, or the threat of use, of deadly military force; the fear was of the uncontrolled escalation of military conflict to a nuclear level. The historical imagination was forged by the memory of the ideological confrontations and total wars of the twentieth century, with their untold brutalities and millions of dead, and the consequent need to avoid a third world war which could be fatal for the future of all humanity. The study of international security was effectively synonymous with military strategy and statecraft. It was the age of the intellectual dominance of ‘strategic studies’.

The end of the Cold War radically undermined this clarity of purpose and unity of intellectual endeavour. The collapse of the Soviet state, and its military power, dethroned the strategic centrality of the militarized and nuclearized bipolar confrontation. As with much else in international relations, the study of international security lost its focus and many of its seemingly fixed foundations. The assumption of the identification of the state with security was assaulted from many quarters: some argued that the individual’s security must be paramount and that the state is more of a threat than a guarantor of such individual security; others prioritized the security concerns of subnational communities and ethnic or identity groups or the threats posed to the global economy or the environment. The scope and subject matter of international security proliferated in a similarly expansive way. Although the fear of violent conflict never completely disappeared, there were increasingly non-military competitors for attention, such as the threat of environmental degradation, economic disparities and chronic poverty, diseases such as HIV/Aids, transnational crime and international migration.

This more diverse, seemingly chaotic and prolix subject area of ‘security studies’ is variously interpreted as evidence of deep intellectual confusion or as an act of intellectual liberation. Traditionalists, seeking to defend the gains of strategic studies during the Cold War period, condemn the excessive expansion of the field of security studies which threatens to ‘destroy its intellectual coherence and make it difficult to devise solutions to any of these important problems’ (Walt 1991: 213). Lawrence Freedman has similarly articulated the widespread concern, found not only among traditional scholars but also among many left and radical critics, about the dangers of dealing with a whole range of non-military topics in a ‘conceptual framework geared toward coping with military threats’ (Freedman 1998: 51; see also Deudney 1990). Wideners and other enthusiasts for a new security agenda generally reject these reservations and highlight the advantages in including and prioritizing non-military threats to international security. Richard Ullmann argued as early as 1983 that the traditional tendency to prioritize military threats ‘conveys a profoundly false image of reality’ which ‘causes states to concentrate on military threats and to ignore other and perhaps more harmful dangers … and contributes to a pervasive militarization of international relations that in the long run can only increase global insecurity’ (Ullmann 1983: 129; see also N. Brown 1989; Mathews 1989; Haftendorn 1991).

Aims and objectives

The debate between ‘traditionalists’ and ‘wideners’ has conventionally been framed as a debate over the meaning of the concept of security (Little 1981; Buzan 1991, 1997). But it is just as much a more parochial internal academic concern over the appropriate definition of the borders of the subdiscipline of security studies. Indeed, the claim that the concept of security is at stake in this debate is questionable. David Baldwin (1997) has convincingly argued that security as ‘the absence or low level of threats to acquired values’ is a relatively empty and meaningless concept unless the context of its usage is clearly specified and it is established which values are being protected, for whom, and against which threats. As such, whether something is properly a security issue, which should be included within security studies, should be determined not a priori but only through the empirical detail of the particular instance through which security concerns are raised. It is this more pragmatic approach which this book adopts, concentrating less on abstract theorizing, and more on engaging with the theoretically informed empirical detail of the arguments and their relative strength and cogency in promoting new priorities and perspectives in international security.

The guiding spirit of this book is to bring across some of the intellectual excitement and dynamism of the post-Cold War rethinking of international security. The key criterion for the selection of topics is the quality of the arguments and the ways in which these arguments have challenged our understanding of the outside world and of contemporary international security. This is not to eschew theoretical sophistication or to ignore the major theoretical debates, but to integrate theoretical analysis with key contemporary issues which have direct meaning for our everyday existence and for international politics more generally. There is also no cult of the ‘new’ in the proposed focus on the ‘contemporary security agenda’. The attribution of ‘newness’ to certain perceived threats is not that such threats have no parallel or historical antecedents but that they have normally been obscured or ignored during the Cold War and have gained a ‘new’ immediacy and prominence in the changing post-Cold War international environment. Indeed, the ‘newness’ of the ‘contemporary security agenda’ is often a rediscovery of deeper historical continuities which the strategic narrowness and exceptional nature of the Cold War ignored or marginalized. In this sense, this study supports and celebrates the widening of security studies, its liberation from the more narrow existential concerns of the Cold War, and its closer intellectual engagement with other parts of international relations and with other academic disciplines.

This book has, though, no pretensions to comprehensiveness. This is probably impossible for one book, unless one is willing to sacrifice substance for scope, and certainly impossible for one author, whose intellectual range and expertise is necessarily limited. The choice of topics is my own selection, which certainly follows my particular intellectual interests and concerns. But the choice is also guided by a desire to provide a genuine overview of contemporary international security and by focusing on issues and arguments which strike me as being of enduring importance and broader intellectual interest. The aim is to provide an inevitably personal but insightful overview of a dynamic and evolving subject.

Content

There are four main parts to the book. The first part provides a general overview of the changing nature and conditions of international security since the end of the Cold War. Chapter 1 argues that there have been three major shifts in our understanding and conceptualization of international security since that time. These are:

the significant reduction in the expectation of a major war between the great powers;
the shift of global focus and attention from the East–West to the North–South axis, along with a growing scepticism about the state’s role as the sole, or the most effective, security provider;
the shift from a bipolar system to a more indeterminate system which has characteristics of unipolarity, with the US as the dominant power, as well as being increasingly multipolar, most notably with the rising power of China.

Chapter 2 provides an overview of how international relations (IR) theory has sought to provide conceptual and analytical insights into understanding these shifting dynamics in the field of international security. This theoretically focused chapter examines the growth in popularity of constructivist, liberal internationalist and critical approaches to the study of IR, which have in particular brought out the subjective and ideational dimensions of international security. However, it is argued that the historical sociological approach and the realist normative tradition provide a useful corrective for an overoptimistic expectation of a radically transformative shift in international behaviour.

The remaining three parts provide a more empirical and focused analysis where the themes and issues raised in the first section are directly confronted. Part II addresses the core issues of war, intervention and security alliances in the post-Cold War context. It examines the claims of the emergence of distinctively new forms of warfare – the so-called new wars (chapter 3), the proposed emergence of a norm of humanitarian intervention (chapter 4), and the changing role of key alliances and security communities in managing conflict and war (chapter 5). These are major post-Cold War themes, reflecting the concerns over the rise of ethnic and religious-inspired wars in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere, and the complex debates over the justification and efficacy of military interventions, such as in Somalia, Kosovo and Libya, which have involved security organizations such as NATO and the UN.

Part III covers the broad area of environmental security, which has been a particularly dynamic and innovative post-Cold War area of research and concern. Chapter 6 provides an overview of the meaning and content of the concept of environmental security. The following chapter develops these general concerns with a comparative case-study of the implications for international security of the struggle for access to water and to oil. Chapter 8 deals with one of the most controversial ‘new’ security issues: the security implications of international migration.

The fourth and final part of the book focuses on the implications of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and how the issues of international terrorism (chapter 9), the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) (chapter 10), and the fears over cyber-warfare (chapter 11) have come to dominate the contemporary security agenda. Again, none of these issues is completely novel – terrorism and WMD have been with us for a long time, and use and control of information has always been critical – but the events of 9/11 and the dynamics of post-Cold War international developments do bring out distinctively new concerns and fears.

The role of the security analyst

But, before delving into these substantive topics, there is a need for some self-reflection on the nature and limitations of the task. International security is an inherently difficult and complex phenomenon to define and comprehend. Some very basic questions necessarily raise themselves and require some sort of answer, however imperfect that might be: What sort of role can the academic security analyst play? Is the subject a science or an art? Can one hope for objectivity or are the limitations of time, place and culture such as to make all judgement inevitably subjective and culturally limited? Should the security analyst be at the service of those who wield power or is it their proper role to be a tireless critic of the powerful and a defender of the marginalized and the powerless? It is these fundamental concerns and issues which the rest of this chapter addresses.

The security analyst as scientist

During the Cold War, there was certainly a tendency for the strategic studies community to perceive themselves as scientists and as an ‘epistemic community’ providing impartial technical expertise (Adler and Barnett 1998). Their subject matter was the relatively fixed and unchanging threats of the period, and the intellectual challenge was how best to describe this external threat environment and promote the most effective and appropriate responses. But throughout the Cold War this claim of scientific objectivity never went unchallenged. It was most brilliantly caricatured in Stanley Kubrick’s film Dr Strangelove, where the eponymous hero, reportedly drawn from the eminent nuclear strategist Herman Kahn, is the embodiment of the irrational and amoral logic of nuclear strategy, personal insecurities and a subordination of scientific objectivity to the interests of the military-industrial complex. Within academic studies, this scepticism of mainstream strategic studies developed into a strong alternative radical view, most notably in critical security studies, which eschewed claims of scientific objectivity and whose research agenda concentrated on exposing the underlying power structures and interests behind politically powerful constructions of international security (for example, see Booth 1991; Krause 1998; Wyn Jones 1999).

However, the radical claim that the security analyst cannot hope to make objective statements or be able to provide a rigorous understanding of external phenomena is not one that is supported in this book. This does not imply, as a result, a commitment to a crude empiricism but rather a defence of the need, following Kant, to treat the external world ‘as if’ it were real, for otherwise there is no alternative to relativism. The radical subjectivist approach does, though, correctly reveal that security is not just about ‘threats out there’, but that it is also about how such threats are also ‘threats in the mind’ and are subjectively interpreted and understood. As such, international security is a constructed reality, forged through a necessarily interactive process, where mutual perceptions and intersubjective understandings frame converging and competing conceptions of international behaviour. Arnold Wolfers, in his seminal article on national security, captured well these competing subjective and objective elements: ‘The possible discrepancy between the objective and subjective connotation of the term is significant in international relations despite the fact that the chance of future attack never can be measured “objectively”: it must always remain a matter of subjective evaluation and speculation’ (Wolfers 1952: 485).

A further central insight of Wolfers is that security should not be considered an absolute value which one does or does not possess. The Soviet Union was one country which did attempt to achieve the illusory goal of ‘absolute security’ and where the costs in terms of repression, loss of freedom, human rights abuses and failed economic development are well known. A degree of insecurity is, therefore, a necessary precondition for other societal values to flourish. Security is best understood as a relative value where there are varying degrees of security and insecurity. The role of the security analyst is to try to find and promote the most appropriate balance between the two.

The radical critique of traditional strategic studies does, though, highlight an ingrained tendency or predilection to exaggerate or overemphasize security threats. As in military planning, there is an operational culture in security studies of focusing on the ‘worst-case scenario’, where a low probability but potentially catastrophic outcome becomes the centre of attention. The strategic debate during the Cold War about how to ‘win’ a nuclear war reflected this pessimistic and seemingly amoral mentality. The tendency towards making security studies a ‘gloomy science’ is also linked to the temptation for security analysts to reflect the interests of those who provide their funding, not least governments, who have a well-known proclivity to exaggerate security threats so as to distract attention from domestic problems.

The role of the security analyst as the fearless sceptic, who ‘speaks truth to power’ and exposes the exaggerated construction of external threats, is certainly a vital one. But there is also a danger of moving too far in the other direction and being excessively optimistic about the security environment, so underestimating potentially serious security threats. Governments often seek to highlight only security threats that they can deal with, while ignoring others which are just as serious but are more intractable and less able to be resolved. In addition, the historical lesson of appeasement, which was, it should be remembered, conceived as a security policy, is that wishful thinking can sometimes wilfully ignore real dangers. Liberal ideology and thought can often be complicit in this. Liberalism tends to explain societal violence and aggression as a form of irrationality, linked to outdated notions of power politics and state sovereignty, and to assume that peace will naturally flow from the progression of liberal norms and values. The prospect that some individuals or groups might have very rational reasons for engaging in violent conflict is sometimes difficult for the liberal imagination to comprehend (see Keen 1998). The wars of succession in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s provided the first strong antidote to an overoptimistic expectation of a conclusive post-Cold War international peace or the ‘end of history’ (Fukuyama 1992). The events of 9/11 have only confirmed this with greater vigour.

The security analyst as internationalist

The subject area of international security also raises the question as to how ‘international’ in perspective and outlook the security analyst can realistically expect to be. A self-critical security analyst has necessarily to be conscious of the possibilities of reflecting, rather than critically engaging and questioning, the prejudices and fears of his or her social grouping or cultural background. This is, to a certain extent, an unavoidable danger. The philosopher Thomas Nagel has argued that there is ‘no view from nowhere’ and that any attempt to define a view ex specie aeternatis, a view from the standpoint of eternity, is bound to fail (Nagel 1986). As social animals, we are all undeniably conditioned by our inherited cultural predispositions, traditions and particular processes of socialization. We are born into or become part of a particular community of values which helps to define the ways in which we understand and interpret reality. The fact that I am a white male from the periphery of Western Europe undeniably influences my outlook on international relations. Geography, history and culture have formed a distinctively British and European conceptualization of security which has undoubtedly influenced my own views.

Nevertheless, the ambition of the security analyst must be to transcend these limitations. In the field of international security, this is to recognize that there is no one privileged ‘Western’ standpoint or conception but that there are multiple conceptions, not only from the global South but from within the West as well. The related requirement is to recognize that international security, as against national security, is a necessarily multidimensional and complex phenomenon which resists simple categorization. One example of this, which is explored further in chapter 7, is the issue of energy or oil security. In the academic literature, there is almost an unquestioning assumption that energy security means the security of the Western oil importers and their concerns over the security of supply. Yet the issue of energy security has multiple other dimensions to consider as well. This includes, most notably, the security concerns of the oil exporters and the complex ways in which resource- and oil-rich countries frequently generate significant internal insecurities. It is also invidious to exclude the insecurities and concerns of the many millions of the poor in the world who simply do not have access to supplies of oil or other cheap and secure energy resources. Furthermore, a comprehensive security analysis should incorporate consideration of the global environment, as the rapid growth in demand for oil greatly increases environmental problems, most notably global warming. Even more fundamentally, the question of whether oil will eventually run out and bring to an end the era of cheap fuel, on which our modern fossil-fuel civilization is inordinately dependent, should not be ignored as a vital long-term security concern.

The security analyst needs therefore to attempt to provide a multidimensional and internationalist perspective, taking into account the security views and perceptions of others, but without dispensing with his or her own set of values and cultural predispositions. Thomas Nagel puts this challenge well as the need to ‘combine the recognition of our contingency, our finitude, and our containment in the world with the ambition of transcendence, however limited may be our success in achieving it’ (Nagel 1986: 9).

The security analyst as moralist

One aspect of this ‘recognition of our contingency’ is the understanding that international security policy, as with national or other security policies, is an inherently normative exercise. Given that, as argued above, security is a relative value, there is continually the question of exactly how much value to accord to security as against other values. This is essentially a moral or normative task. Again, Arnold Wolfers identified well this dimension: ‘The 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 to an accepted end – or moral, the best or least evil course of action’ (1952: 483–4).

This normative dimension, viewing security as one value among other competing values, places international security firmly in the realm of the political. This goes against the grain of some contemporary accounts of security which tend to separate the realm of security from that of politics, and where security is evoked essentially to bring to an end political debate. This understanding of security is found in the concept of securitization (discussed more fully in chapter 3), where security is presented as a movement ‘into the realm of “panic politics”, where departures from the rules of normal politics justify secrecy, additional executive powers and activities that would otherwise be illegal’ (Buzan 1997: 14; see also Waever 1995). This is, certainly, a legitimate definition in that it highlights how security policy is quintessentially about the prioritization of values and the appropriate allocation of scarce resources to secure those values. But its disadvantage is to limit the scope of security to the exceptional and existential and to restrict its use as an integral and everyday part of general political discourse. In practice, security concerns pervade the political, whether in terms of individual concerns for personal security, the security concerns faced by firms and large organizations, the security of supplies of food, energy or water, or the ensuring of the security of external borders. Many of these security concerns are dealt with in the mundane world of politics, and the fact that they do not necessarily generate exceptional responses, such as the mobilization of military forces, does not a priori negate their relevance as concerns over security.

The more general point is that the security analyst should constantly be aware of the essentially normative political challenge of the complex interrelationship between security and other core values which a society deems to be critical to the ‘good life’. To some extent, at least, the security analyst needs to engage as a political philosopher. This is because the value of security is in constant tension and interdependence with other values, most prominent of which are the values of freedom, prosperity and justice.

The linkages and trade-offs between security and freedom or liberty are probably the most apparently obvious. It is a legitimate concern for all concerned citizens that the values of freedom and liberty should not be sacrificed to the demands of security. It is unexceptional to note, but still of vital importance for any security analyst, that the pursuit of security has costs in terms of freedom. Civil liberties are eroded at times of heightened security and, even in peace and in liberal democratic societies, the security forces are significantly less open to demands of accountability and transparency than other government actors. Excessive security measures undermine freedom and thus, if freedom is to be defended and preserved, a significant degree of insecurity has to be accepted. Kenneth Waltz captures this well: ‘states, like people, are insecure in proportion to the extent of their freedom. If freedom is wanted, insecurity must be accepted’ (1979: 112). But the understanding of security as a force constantly eroding freedom is only a partial one. Political philosophers have also noted that security is itself a precondition of freedom, if one is to avoid what Hobbes described as the ‘useless liberty’ of the state of nature, in which conditions of anarchy lead to a generalized insecurity where all are fearful for their life and survival. The security–freedom relationship is, therefore, a complex one, and many of the substantive debates in political theory, such as the distinction between negative and positive freedom, are debates about the amount of freedom which is compatible with the security of individuals within society. The security analyst cannot help but make substantive judgements in this regard, seeking to establish the point at which security enhances the exercise of freedom rather than being an obstacle to that freedom.

The relationship between security and the pursuit of prosperity, a core value for all societies, is similarly complex and interdependent. Insecurity, conflict and war are uncontroversially destroyers of economic value, and security measures normally entail significant non-productive economic costs. But, as with preserving the value of freedom, so the prospects for economic improvement, which is itself dependent on permitting a relatively free flow of goods, services and people, require a significant degree of insecurity. The liberal doctrines of free trade, on which the dynamics of globalization depend, are themselves arguments against the security impediments constructed by states to inhibit such trade. Countries which spend too much on military preparation, such as the Soviet Union, ultimately pay a high economic cost. But it is also recognized that economic interdependence, with its modern incarnation in globalization, has ambiguous effects and that, as much as it benefits honest and productive businesses, it also strengthens the capacities and malign influence of global mafias and international terrorists. In addition, economic liberalization and deregulation periodically lead to economic crises which have negative global impacts, such as the 2008–9 financial crisis.

There is also a more fundamental interrelationship between security and global prosperity. This is the relatively uncontroversial link between conditions of global poverty and inequality, on the one hand, and insecurity, on the other. Development and security are, to a significant degree, mutually supportive processes, so that the richer a society becomes the more secure it should be. Liberal thought is again premised on the assumption that economic liberalization contributes to the process of political democratization which itself consolidates the ‘liberal peace’. But these correlations are again more disputed and controversial than conventional wisdom suggests. Globalization and economic liberalization can themselves breed significant societal insecurities and potentially entrench the non-productive and illiberal powers of the army and the security forces.

The final part of the ‘value jigsaw’ is between security and justice. This is arguably the most critical and pressing of the normative challenges facing the security analyst, since it brings out most clearly the inherent inequalities of the global structure of international security. The tension here is between the claim that overcoming the injustices of the international system – most notably the enormous differentials in wealth and political power – is a precondition for international security and the claim that the demands of international security require subordinating the claims of justice to the exigencies of security. This tension is central to the ‘English School’ tradition in international relations where, for Hedley Bull and many of his followers, the need for order, and by implication international security, has a higher priority than claims for justice, which are, by their very nature, destabilizing for international security and, if pursued for their own sake, can lead to endemic conflict and instability (see Bull 1977). It is this consequentialist ethic that the great powers utilize to justify their preponderant power as a necessary precondition for assuming their responsibilities for ensuring international security. The countervailing perspective, though, is that it is the structural injustices which underpin these claims for hegemonic leadership that are the deeper sources of global insecurity. The underlying paradox is that justice is in continual tension with order and that in international politics injustice is both a source of insecurity and a necessary precondition for international security.

On to the study of international security …

The principal challenge for the analyst in the field of international security is, therefore, one of making critical judgements, both empirical and normative. It is a challenge to understand both the nature of the perceptions and the reality of the dominant security threats and concerns; to exercise judgement as to their significance and prioritization without falling into the trap of either exaggeration or underestimation, and with due attention to their multidimensional character; and to exercise moral judgement as to how security policies can promote the needs not only of international security but also of other critical values, such as freedom, prosperity and justice. This is a significant and demanding challenge, but it is also what makes the study of international security so rewarding and exciting.

Questions for Research and Discussion

1 Why has the end of the Cold War led to a ‘widening’ of the international security agenda?

2 What do you see as the key role and challenges of being a security analyst?

3 What are the potential areas of conflict between security and liberty? What examples can you provide?

Websites

www.e-ir.info

The world’s leading website for students of international relations and a good site for recent debates and contemporary analyses.

www.ciaonet.org

Columbia International Affairs Online – a very comprehensive source for theory and research in international relations, which has published a wide range of scholarship from 1991 onwards. This website requires an institutional subscription.

www.worldmapper.org

A useful collection of maps where territories are resized according to subjects such as population, income, wealth and violence.