Constructing International Security

Constructing International Security PDF Author: Brett V. Benson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139789775
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Constructing International Security helps policy makers and students recognize effective third-party strategies for balancing deterrence and restraint in security relationships. Brett V. Benson shows that there are systematic differences among types of security commitments. Understanding these commitments is key, because commitments, such as formal military alliances and extended deterrence threats, form the basis of international security order. Benson argues that sometimes the optimal commitment conditions military assistance on specific hostile actions the adversary might take. At other times, he finds, it is best to be ambiguous by leaving an ally and adversary uncertain about whether the third party will intervene. Such uncertainty transfers risk to the ally, thereby reducing the ally's motivation to behave too aggressively. The choice of security commitment depends on how well defenders can observe hostilities leading to war and on their evaluations of dispute settlements, their ally's security and the relative strength of the defender.

Constructing International Security

Constructing International Security PDF Author: Brett V. Benson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139789775
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book

Book Description
Constructing International Security helps policy makers and students recognize effective third-party strategies for balancing deterrence and restraint in security relationships. Brett V. Benson shows that there are systematic differences among types of security commitments. Understanding these commitments is key, because commitments, such as formal military alliances and extended deterrence threats, form the basis of international security order. Benson argues that sometimes the optimal commitment conditions military assistance on specific hostile actions the adversary might take. At other times, he finds, it is best to be ambiguous by leaving an ally and adversary uncertain about whether the third party will intervene. Such uncertainty transfers risk to the ally, thereby reducing the ally's motivation to behave too aggressively. The choice of security commitment depends on how well defenders can observe hostilities leading to war and on their evaluations of dispute settlements, their ally's security and the relative strength of the defender.

(In)Security and the Production of International Relations

(In)Security and the Production of International Relations PDF Author: Jonas Hagmann
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134616163
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
This book provides a framework for analysing the interplay between securitisation and foreign affairs, reconnecting critical security studies with traditional IR concerns about interstate relations. What happens to foreign policymaking when actors, things or processes are presented as threats? This book explains state behaviour on the basis of a reflexive framework of insecurity politics, and argues that governments act on the knowledge of international danger available in their societies, but that such knowledge is organised by markedly varying ideas of who threatens whom and how. The book develops this argument and illustrates it by means of various European case studies. Moving across European history and space, these case studies show how securitisation has projected evolving and often contested local ideas of the organisation of international insecurity, and how such knowledges of world politics have then conditioned foreign policymaking on their own terms. With its focus on insecurity politics, the book provides new perspectives for the study of international security. Moving the discipline from systemic theorising to a theory of international systematisation, it shows how world politics is, in practice, often conceived in a different way than that assumed by IR theory. By the same token, by depicting national insecurity as a matter of political construction, the book also raises the challenging question of whether certain projections of insecurity may be considered more warranted than others. This book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, European politics, foreign policy and IR, in general.

International Security Studies

International Security Studies PDF Author: Peter Hough
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317811755
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 811

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Book Description
This new textbook provides students with a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the subject of security studies, with a strong emphasis on the use of case studies. In addition to presenting the major theoretical perspectives, the book examines a range of important and controversial topics in modern debates, covering both traditional military and non-military security issues, such as proliferation, humanitarian intervention, food security and environmental security. Unlike most standard textbooks, the volume also offers a wide range of case studies – including chapters on the USA, China, the Middle East, Russia, Africa, the Arctic, the Middle East, Europe and Latin America – providing detailed analyses of important global security issues. The 34 chapters contain pedagogical features such as textboxes, summary points and recommended further reading and are divided into five thematic sections: Conceptual and Theoretical Military Security Non-Military Security Institutions and Security Case Studies This textbook will be essential reading for all students of security studies and highly recommended for students of critical security studies, human security, peace and conflict studies, foreign policy and International Relations in general.

Constructing International Security

Constructing International Security PDF Author: Brett V. Benson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107027241
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
Constructing International Security identifies effective third-party strategies for balancing deterrence and restraint in security relationships.

Critical Approaches to International Security

Critical Approaches to International Security PDF Author: Karin M. Fierke
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509501673
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
During the Cold War the concept of international security was understood in military terms as the threat or use of force by states. The end of EastÐWest hostilities, however, brought ‘critical’ perspectives to the fore as scholars sought to explain the emergence of new challenges to international stability, such as environmental degradation, immigration and terrorism. The second edition of this popular and highly respected text offers a wide-ranging and comprehensive analysis of the growing field of critical security studies. All the chapters have been fully revised and updated to map the on-going evolution of debates about international security since 1989, including the more recent shift in emphasis from critiques of the realist practices of states to those of global liberal governance. Topics covered include the relationship between security and change, identity, the production of danger, fear and trauma, human insecurity and emancipation. The book explores the meaning and use of these concepts and their relevance to real-life situations ranging from the War on Terror to the Arab Spring, migration, suffering in war, failed states and state-building, and the changing landscape of the international system, with the emergence of a multipolar world and the escalation of global climate change. Written with verve and clarity and incorporating new seminar activities and questions for class discussion, this book will be an invaluable resource for students of international relations and security studies.

Regions and Powers

Regions and Powers PDF Author: Barry Buzan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521891110
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 598

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Book Description
This book develops the idea that since decolonisation, regional patterns of security have become more prominent in international politics. The authors combine an operational theory of regional security with an empirical application across the whole of the international system. Individual chapters cover Africa, the Balkans, CIS Europe, East Asia, EU Europe, the Middle East, North America, South America, and South Asia. The main focus is on the post-Cold War period, but the history of each regional security complex is traced back to its beginnings. By relating the regional dynamics of security to current debates about the global power structure, the authors unfold a distinctive interpretation of post-Cold War international security, avoiding both the extreme oversimplifications of the unipolar view, and the extreme deterritorialisations of many globalist visions of a new world disorder. Their framework brings out the radical diversity of security dynamics in different parts of the world.

Ecological Security

Ecological Security PDF Author: Matt McDonald
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009021486
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
Climate change is increasingly recognised as a security issue. Yet this recognition belies contestation over what security means and whose security is viewed as threatened. Different accounts – here defined as discourses – of security range from those focused on national sovereignty to those emphasising the vulnerability of human populations. This book examines the ethical assumptions and implications of these 'climate security' discourses, ultimately making a case for moving beyond the protection of human institutions and collectives. Drawing on insights from political ecology, feminism and critical theory, Matt McDonald suggests the need to focus on the resilience of ecosystems themselves when approaching the climate-security relationship, orienting towards the most vulnerable across time, space and species. The book outlines the ethical assumptions and contours of ecological security before exploring how it might find purchase in contemporary political contexts. A shift in this direction could not be more urgent, given the current climate crisis.

Culture and Security

Culture and Security PDF Author: Michael Williams
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134315538
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
This book examines the role of culture in contemporary security policies, providing a critical overview of the ways in which culture has been theorized in security studies. Developing a theoretical framework that stresses the relationship between culture, power, security and strategy, the volume argues that cultural practices have been central to transformations in European and US security policy in the wake of the Cold War – including the evolution of NATO and the expansion of the EU. Michael C. Williams maintains that cultural practices continue to play powerful roles in international politics today, where they are essential to grasping the ascendance of neoconservatism in US foreign policy. Investigating the rise in popularity of culture and constructivism in security studies in relation to the structure and exercise of power in post-Cold War security relations, the book contends that this poses significant challenges for considering the connection between analytic and political practices, and the relationship between scholarship and power in the construction of security relations. Culture and Security will be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of international relations, security studies and European politics.

The Evolution of International Security Studies

The Evolution of International Security Studies PDF Author: Barry Buzan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139480766
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
International Security Studies (ISS) has changed and diversified in many ways since 1945. This book provides the first intellectual history of the development of the subject in that period. It explains how ISS evolved from an initial concern with the strategic consequences of superpower rivalry and nuclear weapons, to its current diversity in which environmental, economic, human and other securities sit alongside military security, and in which approaches ranging from traditional Realist analysis to Feminism and Post-colonialism are in play. It sets out the driving forces that shaped debates in ISS, shows what makes ISS a single conversation across its diversity, and gives an authoritative account of debates on all the main topics within ISS. This is an unparalleled survey of the literature and institutions of ISS that will be an invaluable guide for all students and scholars of ISS, whether traditionalist, 'new agenda' or critical.

Regional Orders

Regional Orders PDF Author: David A. Lake
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271043261
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Conflict among nations for forty-five years after World War II was dominated by the major bipolar struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. With the end of the Cold War; states in differing legions of the world are taking their affairs more into their own hands and working out new arrangements for security that best suit their needs. This trend toward new &"regional orders&" is the subject of this book, which seeks both to document the emergence and strengthening of these new regional arrangements and to show how international relations theory needs to be modified to take adequate account of their salience in the world today. Rather than treat international politics as everywhere the same, or each region as unique, this hook adopts a comparative approach. It recognizes that, while regions vary widely in their characteristics, comparative analysis requires a common typology and set of causal variables. It presents theories of regional order that both generalize about regions and predict different patterns of conflict and cooperation from their individual traits. The editors conclude that, in the new world of regional orders, the quest for universal principles of foreign policy by great powers like the United States is chimerical and dangerous. Regional orders differ, and policy artist accommodate these differences if it is to succeed. Contributors are Brian L. Job, Edmund J. Keller, Yuen Foong Khong, David A. Lake, Steven E. Lobell, David R. Mares, Patrick M. Nlotgan. Paul A. Papayoanou, David J. Pervin, Philip G. Roeder, Richard Rosecrance and Peter Schott, Susan Shirk, Etel Solingen, and Arthur A. Stein.