Security: An Essentially Contested Concept? Week 2 - 4 October 2017 - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Security: An Essentially Contested Concept?

PSI 330 International Security

Week 2 - 4 October 2017

Security as an Academic Subject

• Everything began after the Second World War in the Anglo-American

World.

• They study of Security was located within the International Relations

(which also has its roots in the Western World - the United Kingdom)

• National Security Studies (in US), Strategic Studies (in UK/later in US),

War Studies (in KCL), Defense Studies

• According to Joseph S. Nye, Jr. and Sean M. Lynn-Jones (1987)

International Security is not a discipline, but a problem, developed around military capabilities and East-West issues (p.6)

• The field is necessarily interdisciplinary.

Security as an Academic Subject

• Main Concerns: Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Deterrence, Armed Forces

(force structure, posture etc.), resource allocation and refining tools of crisis management

• The Cold War environment defined the area (Golden Years of Security

Studies: ‘50s and ‘60s - Lawrence Freedman)

• The subject matter is shaped according to the what is perceived as

imminent threat to the Global Power (in this case the United States)

Security as an Academic Subject

• Based on four pillars:
• State : inasmuch as they were considered (somewhat tautologically) to be both the

most important agents and referents of security in international politics.

• Strategy: inasmuch as the core intellectual and practical concerns revolved around

devising the best means of employing the threat and use of military force.

• Science (aspired to be): Inasmuch as to count as authentic, objective knowledge,

as opposed to mere opinion, analysts were expected to adopt methods that aped the natural, harder sciences such as physics and chemistry.

• The Status Quo: inasmuch as the great powers and the majority of academics who

worked within them understood security policies as preventing radical and revolutionary change within international society.

• Within the Cold War framework, critical perspectives did not make headway in the

study of security

Security as an Academic Subject

• The Crisis and Revival of the International Security Studies
• Reasons: the end of the Vietnam War (doubts about the early work in the

field, unfashionable in universities), Nuclear Détente, and reduction of the danger of nuclear war.

• Realization that there are other threats to the security of states. While the

prism of a single discipline is not enough to understand, conflict between the states are key to the many critical issues in the international security (Nye & Lynn-Jones, 1988, p.6).

• New issues include international economy because US economy was

threatened by the Oil Crisis (1973) and the realization that US economy is not independent.

• Domestic politics, bureaucratic politics and psychological aspects have

been introduced in the 1970s

Security as an Academic Subject

• Traditional approaches had certain weaknesses:
• Based solely on inter-state relations, while this is only one part of

security in the contemporary world politics

• IR, as a field, remained restricted and traditional ways are neither

neutral nor natural, as Cox puts it “for someone and for some purpose”

• Contemporary politics requires an inter-disciplinary and multi-faceted

approach to the problems.

• Ethnocentrism
• More Problems:
• Inadequate basic theoretical work – has become too much focused on

policy-oriented works (Nye & Lynn-Jones, 1988, pp.12-3)

Security as an Academic Subject

• Challenge: Barry Buzan’s Work 1983 (People, States and Fear) - Security

Sectors (in the mid-1980s)

• Military
• Political
• Economic
• Societal
• Environment
• Widening and Deepening of Security after the Cold War
• Cold War understanding of Security was not enough for the post-Cold

War challenges.

Security as an Academic Subject

• The Push Back:
• Inclusion of non-military issues, such as pollution, child abuse, or

economic recession, runs the risk of expanding “security studies”

• excessively. Defining the filed in this way would destroy its intellectual

coherence and make it more difficult to devise solutions to any of these important problems (Walt, 1991, p. 213)

• Security Studies should remain somewhere between political
• pportunism and academic irrelevance. Not like post-moderns, who

do not really propose any solutions to the real-world problems (Walt, 1991, p.223)

• Security becomes an Essentially Contested Concept

Essentially Contested Concepts

Gallie, W.B. (1955) “Essentially Contested Concepts” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 56, pp. 167- 198

• Seven Characteristics for an Essentially Contested Concept
• 1. The Concept must be appraisive (We can evaluate the concept)
• 2. The definition must be of an internally complex character.
• 3. There must be several factors/parts, which could be organized and ordered

according to their perceived importance.

• 4. There must be considerable modification in the light of changing

circumstances.

• 5. Parties should recognize that their definition is contested by others.
• 6. Acknowledgement of previous definitions.
• 7. Previous definition should be improved.

Essentially Contested Concepts

Who is the Champion?

Fundamental Questions

• What is Security?
• Whose security?
• What are the primary threats?
• How the subject of security can be protected?

What is Security?

• The basic definition: the protection of values we hold dear
• As a concept:
• Security = Survival
• Security is based on acquiring power. (Security as Commodity)
• Negative (freedom from): absence of threat
• Security = Survival +
• ‘the “plus” being some freedom from life-determining threats, and

therefore some life choices’. (Booth 2007)

• Security is about emancipation (concern with justice and the

provision of human rights)

• Positive (freedom to): enabling and making things possible

• Shift from people to state in traditional approaches.
• State as referent object - International and/or domestic dimensions.
• Reference to individual humans
• Reference to society
• Earth - Forget about the human societies?
• Levels of Analysis Problem

Whose Security?

What are the primary threats?

• How do we define what poses as a threat? Who decides?
• Related to the how we define the referent object.
• Armed Conflict and threat of military use?
• Issues that prevent people from pursuing their cherished values?

How the subject of security can be protected?

• There is no absolute security – all human life involves insecurities and

risks of one sort or another

• The Question becomes: what level of threat are actors willing to tolerate

before taking remedial action?

• Which actors can provide security? State? NGOs? Private Security

Contractors? Insurgents? Criminal Organizations?

Questions

• Why is security an essentially contested concept?
• Should security studies continue to be a part of International Relations?
• Should security studies be limited to study of military, armed conflicts and

threat perceptions of states?