Barry Buzan and Lene Hansen - The Evolution of International Security Studies-Cambridge University Press (2009) 9618ea92e7b21cf9c5950565045ad9eb - Direito (2025)

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<p>http://www.cambridge.org/9780521872614</p><p>This page intentionally left blank</p><p>THE EVOLUTION OF</p><p>INTERNATIONAL</p><p>SECURITY STUDIES</p><p>International Security Studies (ISS) has changed and diversified in many</p><p>ways since 1945. This book provides the first intellectual history of the</p><p>development of the subject in that period. It explains how ISS evolved from</p><p>an initial concern with the strategic consequences of superpower rivalry</p><p>and nuclear weapons, to its currrent diversity in which environmental,</p><p>economic, human and other securities sit alongside military security, and</p><p>in which approaches ranging from traditional Realist analysis to Feminism</p><p>and Post-colonialism are in play. It sets out the driving forces that shaped</p><p>debates in ISS, shows what makes ISS a single conversation across its</p><p>diversity, and gives an authoritative account of debates on all the main</p><p>topics within ISS. This is an unparalleled survey of the literature and</p><p>institutions of ISS that will be an invaluable guide for all students and</p><p>scholars of ISS, whether traditionalist, ‘new agenda’ or critical.</p><p>barry buzan is Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at</p><p>the London School of Economics and Honorary Professor at the Universi-</p><p>ties of Copenhagen and Jilin. His books include: The United States and the</p><p>Great Powers: World Politics in the Twenty-first Century (2004); Regions and</p><p>Powers: The Structure of International Security (2003, with Ole Wæver);</p><p>The Arms Dynamic in World Politics (1998, with Eric Herring); Security:</p><p>A New Framework for Analysis (1998, with Wæver and Jaap de Wilde);</p><p>People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the</p><p>Post-Cold War Era (1991) and An Introduction to Strategic Studies: Military</p><p>Technology and International Relations (1987).</p><p>lene hansen is an Associate Professor of International Relations in the</p><p>Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen. She is</p><p>the author of Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War</p><p>(2006) and the co-editor of European Integration and National Identity:</p><p>The Challenge of the Nordic States (2002, with Ole Wæver).</p><p>THE EVOLUTION OF</p><p>INTERNATIONAL</p><p>SECURITY STUDIES</p><p>BARRY BUZAN</p><p>Department of International Relations</p><p>London School of Economics and Political Science</p><p>LENE HANSEN</p><p>Department of Political Science</p><p>University of Copenhagen</p><p>CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS</p><p>Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore,</p><p>São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo</p><p>Cambridge University Press</p><p>The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK</p><p>First published in print format</p><p>ISBN-13 978-0-521-87261-4</p><p>ISBN-13 978-0-521-69422-3</p><p>ISBN-13 978-0-511-65179-3</p><p>© Barry Buzan and Lene Hansen 2009</p><p>2009</p><p>Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521872614</p><p>This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the</p><p>provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part</p><p>may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.</p><p>Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy</p><p>of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,</p><p>and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,</p><p>accurate or appropriate.</p><p>Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York</p><p>www.cambridge.org</p><p>Paperback</p><p>eBook (NetLibrary)</p><p>Hardback</p><p>http://www.cambridge.org</p><p>http://www.cambridge.org/9780521872614</p><p>CONTENTS</p><p>Foreword ix</p><p>List of abbreviations xii</p><p>List of figures xv</p><p>List of tables xvi</p><p>Introduction 1</p><p>1 Defining International Security Studies 8</p><p>Four questions that structure ISS 10</p><p>Security and its adjacent concepts 13</p><p>The disciplinary boundary of ISS 16</p><p>The Western-centrism conundrum 19</p><p>2 The key questions in International Security Studies: the</p><p>state, politics and epistemology 21</p><p>From medieval to sovereign states 22</p><p>The French Revolution and domestic cohesion 26</p><p>The conception of politics in ISS 30</p><p>Epistemology and security debates 32</p><p>Mapping concepts of security 35</p><p>3 The driving forces behind the evolution of International</p><p>Security Studies 39</p><p>A post-Kuhnian sociology of science 40</p><p>Internal versus external factors 44</p><p>The theoretical status of the driving forces framework 47</p><p>The five driving forces as general analytical categories 50</p><p>Great power politics 50</p><p>The technological imperative 53</p><p>Events 54</p><p>The internal dynamics of academic debates 57</p><p>Institutionalisation 60</p><p>v</p><p>vi contents</p><p>4 Strategic Studies, deterrence and the Cold War 66</p><p>Great power politics: the Cold War and bipolarity 68</p><p>The technological imperative: the nuclear revolution in military</p><p>affairs 73</p><p>The pressure of current affairs and ‘events’ 83</p><p>The internal dynamics of academic debates 87</p><p>Institutionalisation 91</p><p>Conclusions 98</p><p>5 The Cold War challenge to national security 101</p><p>Peace Research and Arms Control 104</p><p>Great power politics: the Cold War and bipolarity 106</p><p>The technological imperative: the nuclear revolution in military</p><p>affairs 109</p><p>Positive peace, integration and societal cohesion 118</p><p>Structural violence, economics and the environment 123</p><p>The internal dynamics of debates in Peace Research 129</p><p>From peace to security: Common Security, Feminism and</p><p>Poststructuralism 135</p><p>Foregrounding ‘security’ 135</p><p>Women as a particular group: the birth of Feminist Security</p><p>Studies 138</p><p>Linguistic approaches and Poststructuralism 141</p><p>Institutionalisation 145</p><p>Conclusions 153</p><p>6 International Security Studies post-Cold War: the</p><p>traditionalists 156</p><p>The loss of a meta-event: surviving the Soviet Union 159</p><p>Internal academic debates: state-centrism and epistemology 162</p><p>Great power politics: a replacement for the Soviet Union? 165</p><p>The technological imperative 170</p><p>Regional security and non-Western events 176</p><p>Institutionalisation 182</p><p>Conclusions 184</p><p>7 Widening and deepening security 187</p><p>Constructivisms: norms, identities and narratives 191</p><p>Conventional Constructivism 192</p><p>Critical Constructivism 197</p><p>Beyond the (Western) state 200</p><p>Post-colonialism 200</p><p>contents vii</p><p>Human Security 202</p><p>Critical Security Studies 205</p><p>Feminism 208</p><p>Discursive security: the Copenhagen School and Poststructuralism 212</p><p>The Copenhagen School and its critics 212</p><p>Poststructuralism 218</p><p>Institutionalisation 221</p><p>Conclusions 224</p><p>8 Responding to 9/11: a return to national security? 226</p><p>Traditionalist ISS post-9/11 229</p><p>The traditionalist response to the Global War on Terrorism 229</p><p>Continuities in traditionalist ISS after 2001 234</p><p>Widening perspectives and the Global War on Terrorism 243</p><p>Discourses and terrorist subjects 243</p><p>Information technology, bio-security and risk 248</p><p>Institutionalisation and the Global War on Terrorism 251</p><p>Conclusions 253</p><p>9 Conclusions 256</p><p>The changing shape of ISS 258</p><p>Driving forces reconsidered 261</p><p>The state and future of ISS: conversation or camps? 262</p><p>The outlook for ISS 265</p><p>Great power politics 266</p><p>Events 268</p><p>Technology 269</p><p>Academic debates 270</p><p>Institutionalisation 271</p><p>References 273</p><p>Author index 365</p><p>Subject index 368</p><p>FOREWORD</p><p>There is a long as well as a short story as to why we wrote this book.</p><p>The short story begins in 2005 when Lucy Robinson at SAGE asked</p><p>Barry Buzan whether he would be interested in editing a four-volume</p><p>reader on International Security. Barry thought it a nice idea to add</p><p>Lene Hansen to the project, thereby bringing in someone with both a</p><p>different perspective and a closer eye on the Poststructuralist–Feminist–</p><p>Critical scene. The discussions and readings that went into selecting the</p><p>articles for that reader, spanning Wolfers and Kennan from the 1940s</p><p>and 1950s to recent Post-colonial and Feminist analyses of the Global</p><p>War on Terrorism, led us to believe there was a book to be done on the</p><p>evolution of International Security Studies (ISS) as an academic field. In</p><p>the process of re-reading, we were struck by Nye and Lynn-Jones’s (1988)</p><p>observation that the intellectual history of ISS was yet to be written,</p><p>and even more struck</p><p>to have a good understanding of these</p><p>issues. Specific approaches to security always presume answers to these</p><p>questions, even if they are not explicitly argued. These answers set crucial</p><p>boundaries not only for how security is defined, but also for what kind</p><p>of research projects and analyses are carried out. The dominant concept</p><p>of security in ISS has been the one of ‘national’/‘international’ security,</p><p>it has been the concept of Realist Strategic Studies and it has been the</p><p>concept that critical, widening perspectives have had to struggle with.</p><p>This concept of security defines the state as the referent object, the use</p><p>of force as the central concern, external threats as the primary ones, the</p><p>politics of security as engagement with radical dangers and the adoption of</p><p>emergency measures, and it studies security through positivist, rationalist</p><p>epistemologies. But where does this concept come from? This chapter is</p><p>devoted to an account of the historical processes and traditions of political</p><p>thought that have been significant for producing this concept of security.</p><p>Having a sense of these processes is important not only as a nice historical</p><p>backdrop to the concrete perspectives and debates laid out in chapters 4–8,</p><p>but because these perspectives provide particular resolutions to Classical</p><p>political and normative problems.</p><p>The tendency within ISS to construct its choices in dichotomous terms</p><p>means that security approaches have tended either to make the state or the</p><p>21</p><p>22 the key questions in international security studies</p><p>individual the referent object; to construct security as either military or</p><p>non-military; to draw a rigid line between external and internal security</p><p>problems; and to see international – and national – politics as either</p><p>inherently conflictual or as susceptible to non-violence and emancipation.</p><p>Contemporary debates usually relate to these Classical stances and there is</p><p>undoubtedly a Classical response to ‘new’ positions. This chapter shows,</p><p>however, that some of these dichotomies have deeper historical ties and</p><p>therefore should be seen as connected rather than opposed: there is a link</p><p>between individual conceptions of security and collective ones; there is a</p><p>connection between external and internal threats; and an understanding</p><p>of security politics as a rational account of material capabilities exists in</p><p>tandem with one based on the need to make decisions in an ‘irrational’</p><p>environment.</p><p>This chapter starts with a more thorough account of the role of the state</p><p>in ISS with a particular view to how the sovereign state was formulated</p><p>in the attempt to provide security domestically and abroad. This under-</p><p>standing of the state still stands at the heart of debates over the referent</p><p>object in ISS. The second section examines the impact of the French Rev-</p><p>olution on questions of societal cohesion and the understanding of the</p><p>relationship between internal and external as well as military and non-</p><p>military threats. The third section lays out the constitution of the state</p><p>and the way in which it presupposes a particular form of politics. The</p><p>fourth section presents the major epistemological approaches in ISS. The</p><p>fifth section provides a brief overview of the most frequently mentioned</p><p>approaches to ISS and plots their responses to the five questions that guide</p><p>security.</p><p>From medieval to sovereign states</p><p>It is impossible to understand the way in which debates in ISS have evolved</p><p>without having a good sense of its key referent object: the state. This is not</p><p>because there is agreement on what ‘state security’ implies, but because all</p><p>debates on what security can be and who it should be for evolve around</p><p>the status of the state.</p><p>The concept of national security as it took form after the Second World</p><p>War draws upon a conception of the state that reaches back hundreds of</p><p>years. As R. B. J. Walker and other political theorists have laid out, there</p><p>were two historical transformations that crucially impacted the formation</p><p>of the modern state. The first transformation was from a medieval to a</p><p>modern territorial state system, the second from a monarchical form of</p><p>from medieval to sovereign states 23</p><p>government to a national, popular one. The medieval world was organ-</p><p>ised through overlapping authorities rather than by a sovereign state,</p><p>which meant that it was governed by two sets of authorities: churches</p><p>(religious) and empires (political). In contrast to the modern state, which</p><p>has supreme sovereignty over its territory, medieval authorities had to</p><p>negotiate – and fight over – their claims to how a particular territory</p><p>should be run. Overlapping authority was not only a feature of the rela-</p><p>tions between religious and political powers, but also of how political</p><p>relations were organised. For large parts of the time, medieval Europe</p><p>was governed by empires, and the centre of the empire was often too far</p><p>away to project its authority effectively, at least compared to the modern</p><p>state. There were multiple levels of political organisation stretching from</p><p>the centre down to the village, and both authority and allegiances were</p><p>less clear-cut as regional and local levels of governance supported, but also</p><p>occasionally fought, higher powers. These overlapping, complex forms of</p><p>organising territory meant that states or duchies could be part of a larger</p><p>state or empire, giving some authority to the emperor or leader of the</p><p>strongest state while still deciding over other issues.</p><p>In terms of political identity the medieval system was characterised by</p><p>what Walker (1990: 10) calls the principle of hierarchical subordination:</p><p>‘an understanding of the world as a continuum from low to high, from the</p><p>many to the few, from God’s creatures to God, from the temporal to the</p><p>eternal’. All individuals were located at particular levels of society: at the</p><p>top stood God, and under God, the Pope and the Emperor. The Church</p><p>owned property and was thus a major economic and political player in its</p><p>own right, but it also functioned to provide the Emperor with religious</p><p>legitimacy: if God was at the top of the hierarchy of identities, and the</p><p>Pope right under him, it was crucial for political authorities to get the</p><p>Pope’s blessing.</p><p>The transformation from the medieval to the modern system was sig-</p><p>nificant in that it reorganised both the key principle of governance (from</p><p>overlapping authority to territorial sovereignty) and the way in which</p><p>political identity was understood. A central component in this trans-</p><p>formation was the formation of the sovereign territorial state, where</p><p>the interlocking levels of local, regional and empirical authorities gave</p><p>way to one sovereign centre and the territorial boundary became the</p><p>significant dividing line. This transformation was one where political</p><p>authorities gained ground compared to the religious ones. It meant that</p><p>the state became more secular and that this secularity was played out</p><p>in interstate relations as well as domestically. The rise of the sovereign</p><p>24 the key questions in international security studies</p><p>state was also connected to the emergence of private property (Ruggie,</p><p>1983, 1993). In the interstate arena, the birth of the territorial secular</p><p>state was closely linked to the religious wars that haunted Europe in</p><p>the wake of the Reformation. The Peace of Westphalia which concluded</p><p>the Thirty Years’ War in 1648 is dated as the founding moment when</p><p>states decided no longer to interfere in each other’s religious choices. One</p><p>should note, however, that Westphalia was the beginning of a long histor-</p><p>ical process that through twists and turns moved towards the sovereign</p><p>territorial state, not a complete break from one day to the next (Osiander,</p><p>2001).</p><p>As the international system evolved, the principle of non-interference</p><p>in domestic affairs retained its central status and was seen as the precon-</p><p>dition for creating international stability and order. Even if conflicts and</p><p>wars could not be fully prevented, they could be minimised. Moving into</p><p>the latter half of the twentieth</p><p>century, the principle of non-interference</p><p>was no longer tied to religious differences as in the mid seventeenth cen-</p><p>tury, but to ideological ones, most crucially the one between the capitalist</p><p>West and the communist East. By this time, domestically, the secular state</p><p>principle meant that individuals were given the right to practise their</p><p>(state sanctioned) religion, yet this was a private matter taking place in</p><p>the private sphere or in churches. Religion was not to be directly involved</p><p>in the governance of the state. What this implied, argues Michael C.</p><p>Williams (1998), was not only a shift in which institutions governed soci-</p><p>ety, but also in how politics was understood. Religious conflicts were</p><p>seen as faith-driven and based on emotional claims to conviction and</p><p>conscience. These were by their very nature based in immaterial entities</p><p>and defied logical reasoning and there was therefore no way in which</p><p>conflict between opposing religious positions could be solved. The clue</p><p>to early modern Liberal thinkers was therefore to separate private con-</p><p>viction from public deliberations and to argue that the latter should be</p><p>based on material, observable factors and hence on rational and objective</p><p>reasoning.</p><p>The creation of peaceful relations domestically was also expressed</p><p>through Hobbes’s famous understanding of the sovereign state as the</p><p>Leviathan providing the solution to the problem of individual security.</p><p>The individual, argued Hobbes, confronted the problem of the state of</p><p>nature: in the state of nature there was no authority to secure survival</p><p>and individuals lived in constant fear of other individuals seeking to steal</p><p>their possessions. Individuals had to sleep to survive, but sleep also made</p><p>them supremely vulnerable, hence the need for a sovereign institution</p><p>from medieval to sovereign states 25</p><p>that would guarantee security. The ‘contract’ between the individual</p><p>and the state is one where the individual grants the state the right to</p><p>protect – and define – individual security in exchange for an acknowl-</p><p>edgement of its sovereign authority. To Hobbes, argues Walker (1997: 67),</p><p>the fear of the state of nature was so strong that ‘whatever the sovereign</p><p>does cannot be as bad as the condition of unrestrained competition’. But</p><p>many others, including central Liberal thinkers such as John Locke, ‘have</p><p>been deeply skeptical of this judgement, and a large proportion of con-</p><p>temporary debate about security continues to oscillate around it’ (Walker,</p><p>1997: 67). Conceptions of individual and collective/state security are thus</p><p>inextricably linked: state security implies a particular resolution to the</p><p>problem of individual security, and individual security must, since the</p><p>individual is always located in relation to other individuals, assume a</p><p>collective authority. Security is thus ‘a condition both of individuals and</p><p>of states’ and ‘a condition, or an objective, that constituted a relationship</p><p>between individuals and states or societies’ (Rothschild, 1995: 61). Since</p><p>much of the widening debate in ISS has evolved around dichotomously</p><p>opposed individual concepts of security on the one hand and collective-</p><p>state defined concepts on the other, it is worthwhile keeping in mind that</p><p>there is no concept that does not, implicitly if not explicitly, comprise the</p><p>other.</p><p>Reading these early modern debates on the individual, the state and</p><p>interstate relations through the lenses of twenty-first-century debates in</p><p>ISS, one should note that there is often a move between different levels</p><p>of analysis. Hobbes’s understanding of the Leviathan as the solution to</p><p>the state of nature was an abstract, speculative thought experiment that</p><p>attempted to work through different solutions to questions of authority</p><p>and insecurity. Those challenging the privileged role accorded the state by</p><p>Hobbes and by Realists in ISS have usually done so on one of two empirical</p><p>grounds. One line of argument goes that many real existing states are</p><p>too weak or too failed to be able to provide ‘their’ individuals with the</p><p>promised security: think of Somalia, Afghanistan, Haiti or the Democratic</p><p>Republic of Congo. The other line goes that states, mainly but not only</p><p>undemocratic ones, often threaten their own citizens not only by making</p><p>arbitrary, harmful decisions (like going to war or allowing pollution), but</p><p>also directly by prosecuting them, detaining them or murdering them:</p><p>think of Burma (Myanmar), Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mugabe’s Zimbabwe</p><p>or almost any other dictatorship. From the point of view of these critiques,</p><p>to grant the state the Hobbesian, Realist privilege is not only to overlook</p><p>these empirical deficiencies in how concrete states fail to provide security,</p><p>26 the key questions in international security studies</p><p>but it is, perhaps even worse, to put it in a position where it is immune to</p><p>criticism and does not have to justify itself. The Hobbesian response is to</p><p>acknowledge that most states are far from ideal providers of security, but</p><p>that the alternative to the state is far worse, an argument that shifts the</p><p>empirical assessment of the state back to the speculative, abstract realm</p><p>of the state of nature. What is at stake in security debates is thus often that</p><p>empirical arguments and abstract ones challenge each other and this stacks</p><p>the arguments in such a way that it is hard to find a resolution or even a</p><p>common ground from which to debate. It also means, as Walker (1997)</p><p>has pointed out, that those approaches challenging the state need to come</p><p>up with alternative abstract answers to the problem of political identity</p><p>and who is going to provide security in the absence of the sovereign</p><p>state.</p><p>The French Revolution and domestic cohesion</p><p>The second historical transformation that is crucial to understanding the</p><p>conception of the state in ISS is the birth of modern nationalism with</p><p>the French and American revolutions. The transition from the medieval</p><p>to the early modern state heralded a significant beginning of the dis-</p><p>mantling of a hierarchy of identities, but early modern territorial states</p><p>were still governed by largely non-democratic rulers. The French and</p><p>American revolutions were thus a major shift in that the beheading of</p><p>the monarch, either concretely or symbolically, and the introduction of</p><p>popular sovereignty, accelerated the disintegration of hierarchies between</p><p>different categories of people inside the state. Nationalism as a modern</p><p>ideology heightened the emphasis not just on equality within the state, but</p><p>also on commonality, such that citizens would see themselves as bound by</p><p>a deeper sense of identity, community and belonging. The nation became</p><p>in Benedict Anderson’s words an ‘imagined community’, ‘a deep, horizon-</p><p>tal comradeship’ (Anderson, 1991: 7) whose members shared a common</p><p>social, cultural and political identity. This creation of a common historic</p><p>identity worked to stabilise further the distinction between the national</p><p>and the international domain. Inside the state, one had similarity, soli-</p><p>darity and progress, whereas the international domain was destined to be</p><p>ruled by relations of alienation, domination and conflict (Wight, 1966;</p><p>Walker, 1993). Nationalism also introduced new possibilities for social</p><p>mobility, particular as it was coupled to a burgeoning capitalist, indus-</p><p>trial society (Gellner, 1983). Individuals were not, as in early modernity,</p><p>the french revolution and domestic cohesion 27</p><p>confined by birth to a particular location within societal structures, but</p><p>could rise beyond the class into which they were born through cunning</p><p>and hard work.</p><p>The fusion of nationalism with the sovereign territorial state had sev-</p><p>eral implications for how security was conceptualised and thus how</p><p>debates have evolved within ISS. Nationalism was connected to popu-</p><p>lar sovereignty and eventually democracy, and therefore to the idea that</p><p>the legitimacy of the sovereign state was based not on divine or monar-</p><p>chical inherent rights, but on the government’s ability to rule according to</p><p>the values, interests and</p><p>identity of the people. This meant that the simple</p><p>Hobbesian solution to the problem of security was thrown into question:</p><p>the argument that the governors should not be questioned because the</p><p>alternative was the state of nature, was no longer sufficient. If the gov-</p><p>ernment did not act according to the interest of its people it should be</p><p>toppled.</p><p>From this followed an important shift in how the relationship between</p><p>the state and citizens was approached. Put simply, the territorial state</p><p>was concerned with threats to its territorial security and the ruler of the</p><p>state with contenders to the throne. Military capabilities and the use of</p><p>force were central in keeping external enemies at bay – or in conquer-</p><p>ing new territory – and in defeating domestic threats. The introduction</p><p>of nationalism and popular rule changes this by making the domestic</p><p>component of state security not only a matter of force and control but</p><p>one of legitimacy and societal cohesion. The extent to which society was</p><p>homogenous and supportive of ‘its’ government became a central security</p><p>concern for rulers on two grounds: first, because it impacted the security</p><p>of their own positions; second because it impacted the security of the state</p><p>domestically, most crucially in that the absence of cohesion might lead</p><p>secessionist parts of the state to seek independence or, as in the American</p><p>Civil War, cause violent ideological conflict. Torn societies would also be</p><p>more susceptible to fifth-column activities of enemy states. This concern</p><p>with societal cohesion runs through Classical Realist writings such as those</p><p>of Kennan (1947: 581), who warned that ‘exhibitions of indecision, dis-</p><p>unity and internal disintegration within this country have an exhilarating</p><p>effect on the whole Communist movement’, to Huntington’s post-Cold</p><p>War fear of immigration, decaying family values and the ‘internal rot’ of</p><p>American society (Huntington, 1996: 303–305). The emphasis on social</p><p>cohesion also implied a potential broadening of the concept of security</p><p>beyond the military. Since defence was not only a matter of defending the</p><p>28 the key questions in international security studies</p><p>territorial border, but also of securing domestic consensus, the internal</p><p>threats a society might face could, if severe enough, be considered security</p><p>problems.</p><p>The shift to a concern with societal cohesion also implied a change</p><p>in how territory was considered. The Peace of Westphalia had sought</p><p>to limit the number of wars through its codification of the principle of</p><p>non-interference. This, however, did not mean that states did not go to</p><p>war in the attempt to conquer or defend territories, ‘merely’ that these</p><p>wars were not fought on the basis of religious beliefs. Territories were</p><p>valued for their geopolitical and strategic importance and the material,</p><p>economic capabilities they generated, while the identities and allegiances</p><p>of the people inhabiting those territories were given little concern. From</p><p>the perspective of people of conquered territories this had the positive</p><p>effect that rulers, especially in large imperial states, often did not interfere</p><p>much in local cultural and political relations. The advent of nationalism</p><p>changed this. With its claim that nations had particular identities and that</p><p>they should rule the territories on which they lived, nationalism sacralised</p><p>territory (Mayall, 1990). As nationalist movements worked to install a</p><p>common identity amongst the members of ‘their’ nations, territories</p><p>could no longer be shifted around with no concerns for the status of the</p><p>people and nations who lived there. This made territorial acquisitions less</p><p>attractive as a hostile population would resist the ‘occupier’, but it also</p><p>provided justifications for the political centre to nationalise, coercively if</p><p>necessary, those on its territory. Although nationalism claimed that each</p><p>nation had its unique essence, there was far from agreement on which</p><p>nations were the right ones, who should be ruling whom and who indeed</p><p>had the right to be in a particular territory. This became particularly</p><p>outspoken in the social Darwinist beliefs of the nineteenth century, in</p><p>which more powerful nations gave themselves the right to subjugate –</p><p>through force or ‘civilising colonialism’ – less ‘advanced’ peoples.</p><p>For the majority of Cold War ISS, the focus was clearly on external</p><p>threats, as shown by the International in International Security Studies,</p><p>but this closer scrutiny of the roots of the state in ISS reveals this as</p><p>somewhat misleading. Realists have privileged the security of the state</p><p>and have understood security largely through the use of (military) force,</p><p>but they have also paid attention to a series of other issues and capabil-</p><p>ities, including domestic cohesion, that may impact the state’s ability to</p><p>project military force. The reason why the majority of Cold War ISS, at</p><p>least in the form of Strategic Studies, focused on the external dimension</p><p>of security was because domestic cohesion and the values to be protected</p><p>the french revolution and domestic cohesion 29</p><p>were largely taken for granted, at least in the Western world. There were,</p><p>however, also traditionalists such as Kennan pointing to the need to shore</p><p>up internal weaknesses and dissent in the face of the Soviet threat and</p><p>there was a good deal of concern in the US in the wake of the Second</p><p>World War about the domestic cohesion of Western European countries</p><p>with strong communist parties. Resources were put into keeping the Left</p><p>out of power in Italy, and Franco was tolerated in Spain. The reason why</p><p>the internal dimension of security was not emphasised by mainstream</p><p>approaches to ISS during the Cold War had therefore more to do with</p><p>the empirical, political context (one overwhelming, nuclear opponent</p><p>overshadowing all other concerns) than with an inherent trait within the</p><p>concept of national security. As the Cold War ended and ethnic conflict</p><p>and civil wars came to the fore, so did questions of domestic stability and</p><p>cohesion (Posen, 1993; Van Evera, 1994; Kaufmann, 1996). Many widen-</p><p>ing approaches also spoke directly to the question of societal cohesion,</p><p>as in the Copenhagen School’s concept of societal security (Wæver et al.,</p><p>1993; Buzan et al., 1998).</p><p>Nationalism was also significant in that it opened up several under-</p><p>standings of international security. It claimed in its classical revolution-</p><p>ary form that all men (and later women) were equal as citizens, and that</p><p>each individual had a set of universal rights. If the state was organised</p><p>in accordance with these rights and the ideals of democracy, then there</p><p>would be a move towards a better society within states. The Realist read-</p><p>ing held, however, that while progress – economically, politically and</p><p>culturally – was possible within states, abstaining from setting a common</p><p>normative/religious standard that the Peace of Westphalia entailed made</p><p>it impossible internationally (Walker, 1990). In this ideal-type Realist</p><p>understanding of the international, no durable ‘international security’ is</p><p>possible, only temporary accommodations within an essentially conflict-</p><p>ual international system. There is no normative or analytical conception</p><p>of the need to protect the security of other states (unless this improves</p><p>the security of one’s own) or the security of individuals or groups located</p><p>within other states (again, unless this can be used to improve one’s own</p><p>strategic position).</p><p>But this Realist conception of state sovereignty and national security</p><p>has not been uncontested. Looking at the claims to universal rights that</p><p>the French and American revolutions entailed, the universal–particular</p><p>tension can be argued in a way that emphasises the commonality between</p><p>all human beings, not only the ones with whom one shares a nation.</p><p>This implies the possibility of a referent object other than the state for</p><p>30 the key questions in international security studies</p><p>one’s own nation, to the extent that nation and state are not aligned, but</p><p>also of ‘individual security’ and ‘group/societal</p><p>security’, where others are</p><p>made insecure by their own states. This understanding of the universality</p><p>of individual rights also allows for a reading of the international as less</p><p>conflictual than in Realism. This Idealist tradition of thought, which</p><p>continues through Peace Research up to present Critical Security Studies,</p><p>argues that if individuals are granted the possibilities of security, freedom</p><p>and self-expression, then that will lead to the absence of violent conflict,</p><p>not only within, but also between communities: ‘global’ or ‘world’ security</p><p>is thus deemed possible. In this respect, we have a normative commitment</p><p>that reaches beyond one’s own state or fellow citizens and the beginning of</p><p>the debates over the referent object of security: whether the international</p><p>should be approached as a question of order or whether it is possible to</p><p>have an international concept of justice (Bull, 1977).</p><p>The conception of politics in ISS</p><p>The Peace of Westphalia was significant for how it sought to take religious</p><p>emotion out of politics, both between and within states. As Williams</p><p>(1998: 215) has argued, there was a Liberal, rationalist philosophy at work</p><p>which held that conflicts were more easily handled if understood in mate-</p><p>rial rather than ideational (religious) terms. ‘Defining threats in material</p><p>terms (like all other phenomena) was held to allow a reasoned discourse</p><p>surrounding them. To place the discourse of war and peace within the</p><p>bounds of physical threat and the capacity for it was a pacifying move’</p><p>(Williams, 1998: 215; see also Toulmin, 1990). Tracing this up to contem-</p><p>porary debates on security shows that the inclination of traditional ISS</p><p>approaches to adopt positivist epistemologies and methodologies, rooted</p><p>in material and empirically verifiable factors, has longer and thoroughly</p><p>political, normative roots (Deudney, 2007). It implies that the assump-</p><p>tions about whether the state is a rational actor and the epistemologies</p><p>that should be adopted in the study of security are linked to one another.</p><p>Clearly, the question of whether the state is a rational actor or not has</p><p>major consequences for security theories: since ‘international security’ is</p><p>at the most general level about the threats states (or other political entities)</p><p>face and the responses they can and should adopt to defend themselves,</p><p>it makes a huge difference what kind of actors those states are. If states</p><p>are rational, it is possible to predict their behaviour – and thus define</p><p>appropriate security policies – to a much greater extent than if they are not.</p><p>However, exactly what it means to be ‘rational’ is itself a contested issue in</p><p>ISS. Critics argue that to presume a rational actor is to claim that the state</p><p>the conception of politics in iss 31</p><p>is and should be acting according to Realist principles. These, however,</p><p>are neither objective, nor analytically or politically neutral. Theories of</p><p>security are trying to explain the behaviour of states, while they themselves</p><p>may have an impact on what they seek to explain. At its most basic, many</p><p>Classical Realists see their analysis as a disposition to understand politics</p><p>in the terms in which political actors understand themselves, and this</p><p>points towards a mainly historical and empirical form of analysis. But</p><p>in the period since the Second World War, IR Realism, particularly in</p><p>America, took on increasingly theoretical forms, first in the supposedly</p><p>timeless principles of power politics set out by Carr and Morgenthau,</p><p>and later in the more formalised Neorealism of Waltz. This development</p><p>paralleled that of ISS, and to the extent that ISS is, as we characterised</p><p>it above, ‘the specialist military–technical wing of the Realist approach</p><p>to IR’, it was these theoretical forms to which ISS mainly related. In its</p><p>theoretical forms, Realism imposes assumptions on reality and, to the</p><p>extent that it is influential, may therefore create the reality it assumes.</p><p>Rationality assumptions are intertwined with levels of analysis deci-</p><p>sions. Structural theories, most prominently Neorealism, assume a gen-</p><p>eral conception of the state that applies throughout the international</p><p>system. This does not mean that each and every state will always behave</p><p>rationally, but that those who do not will be punished by the structure,</p><p>and will eventually either fall by the wayside or learn how to behave.</p><p>Structural theories differ from those explanations that can be found at</p><p>the level of foreign policy-making or other domestic-factor issues. Here,</p><p>there is much greater room for asking whether states are rational or</p><p>not. An important Cold War deterrence debate evolved, for example,</p><p>around whether the rationality assumption held up. Could the Commu-</p><p>nist, or indeed the American, leadership be presumed to act ‘rationally’</p><p>in the face of nuclear escalation or would they follow a different logic</p><p>or no decipherable logic at all? The problem was that deterrence logic</p><p>required a certain modicum of rationality and predictability, but that</p><p>there was no sure way of knowing whether such logic existed beforehand,</p><p>or would continue to exist under the extreme conditions of nuclear war.</p><p>The question of rationality has arisen again after 9/11, as we shall see in</p><p>chapter 8.</p><p>Yet, while rational assumptions are central to many mainstream ISS the-</p><p>ories, there is simultaneously a tension between them and the other side</p><p>of ‘national security’ logic which is concerned with the drama, urgency</p><p>and exception in security. The latter tradition has more recently been</p><p>identified with Carl Schmitt, but it resonates with some of the harder</p><p>elements of Realism as well. The central elements of this tradition are,</p><p>32 the key questions in international security studies</p><p>argue Williams (2003) and Huysmans (2006b: 124–144), that security</p><p>is about making exceptional decisions, it is about that point of danger</p><p>where the distinction between Self and Other is made absolutely clear.</p><p>These decisions may be influenced by material capabilities – as laid out</p><p>in the account of the move to a rational security politics – but they are</p><p>not rational in the sense that those who make decisions have complete</p><p>information, nor are decision-makers able to fully predict what the con-</p><p>sequences of actions and non-actions will be. This underscores the deci-</p><p>sionist element in security politics, and the understanding of the political</p><p>as a field into which policy-makers – and others – must act forcefully even</p><p>under stress and without perfect information.</p><p>Epistemology and security debates</p><p>The historical processes that have underpinned the constitution of the</p><p>modern concept of security have, as laid out above, also had conse-</p><p>quences for how security should be studied. Going all the way back to</p><p>Westphalia, the attempt to make security a material and rational field</p><p>of deliberation was one that connected the attempt to pacify interstate</p><p>relations and how knowledge was defined. There is, in other words, as</p><p>argued by Williams (1998), a clear connection between the concept of</p><p>security and epistemology.</p><p>Epistemology concerns the principles and guidelines for how knowl-</p><p>edge can be acquired, and thus, in the context of ISS, the question of how</p><p>one should study security. ISS was not during the Cold War much con-</p><p>cerned with epistemological issues, although there were divisions spilling</p><p>over from ‘traditionalist’ vs. ‘behaviouralist’ debates about IR theory.</p><p>This, however, changed to some extent in the late 1980s and 1990s as</p><p>wider debates on epistemology within the social sciences flowed first into</p><p>IR and from there into ISS. Since epistemology is both a part of the Classi-</p><p>cal foundation of security and of the widening debates of the past twenty</p><p>years, it is useful to have some idea of how it has been discussed.</p><p>The first epistemological distinction central to ISS is the one between</p><p>objective, subjective and discursive conceptions of security. The definition</p><p>of objective and subjective security was laid out by one of the early classic</p><p>texts of ISS, ‘National Security as</p><p>an Ambiguous Symbol’, by Wolfers</p><p>(1952). Wolfers (1952: 485) argued that ‘security, in an objective sense,</p><p>measures the absence of threats to acquired values, in a subjective sense,</p><p>the absence of fear that such values will be attacked’. It was, continued</p><p>Wolfers, never possible to measure security ‘objectively’ in that subjective</p><p>evaluations played an inevitable part in states’ assessments. Yet, ‘[w]ith</p><p>epistemology and security debates 33</p><p>hindsight it is sometimes possible to tell exactly how far they deviated</p><p>from a rational reaction to the actual or objective state of danger existing</p><p>at the time’ (Wolfers, 1952: 485). Wolfers’s formulation illustrates well the</p><p>tension between an objective conception of security (the absence/presence</p><p>of concrete threats) and a subjective one (the feeling of being threatened</p><p>or not). This tension has run through ISS during the Cold War and after,</p><p>where Strategic Studies focused largely on assessing supposedly objective</p><p>security threats. Objective conceptions of security usually, but not always,</p><p>define security in material terms: the probability of states posing a threat</p><p>or being able to deter enemies is based on their material capabilities.</p><p>Subjective approaches to security emphasise the importance of history</p><p>and norms, of the psychologies of fear and (mis)perceptions, and of the</p><p>relational contexts (friends, rivals, neutrals, enemies) within which threats</p><p>are framed. States, like people, can reside anywhere on a spectrum from</p><p>paranoid (seeing threats where there are none), through rational (assess-</p><p>ing threats correctly), to complacent (not seeing, or not caring about,</p><p>actual threats). These approaches argue that at a minimum the tradi-</p><p>tional focus on material military capabilities should be supplemented</p><p>with non-material factors such as the culture of the armed forces, the</p><p>level of national cohesion or the norms about the legitimate use of, for</p><p>instance, chemical weapons or assassinations (Johnston, 1995; Kier, 1995;</p><p>W. Thomas, 2000; Tannenwald, 2005). These studies argue that both</p><p>material and ideational factors impact the actual (military) resources that</p><p>states have at their disposal. More broadly, the Liberal security dilemma</p><p>occurs because states misperceive each other’s intentions: each state is</p><p>merely striving to be defensively secure, but in doing so others falsely</p><p>perceive it as being threatening. To move, as did Walt, from a balance</p><p>of power to a balance of threat is itself to acknowledge the importance</p><p>of intersubjective processes (Walt, 1987). Yet, while a significant num-</p><p>ber of studies in ISS have integrated subjective conceptions of security,</p><p>primarily through acknowledging perceptions (Jervis, 1976), it is worth</p><p>noting that this conception is still tied to the objective one. The subjec-</p><p>tive understanding of security can be a more or less accurate reflection of</p><p>objective security as measured by material capabilities or objective threats.</p><p>Subjective approaches do not, in other words, dispense with an objective</p><p>definition of security, but contrast it with the ‘filter’ of the subjective.</p><p>Discursive approaches, in contrast, argue that security cannot be</p><p>defined in objective terms, and hence both the objective and subjective</p><p>conceptions are misleading. Security is, argues the Copenhagen School,</p><p>a speech act and ‘by saying “security,” a state representative declares</p><p>an emergency condition, thus claiming a right to use whatever means</p><p>34 the key questions in international security studies</p><p>Table 2.1. Epistemological distinctions</p><p>Objective conceptions Subjective conceptions Discursive conceptions</p><p>- The absence/presence</p><p>of concrete threats</p><p>- The feeling of being</p><p>threatened or not</p><p>- Security cannot be defined</p><p>in objective terms</p><p>- Usually defines</p><p>security in relative</p><p>material terms</p><p>- Emphasises social</p><p>context, history and the</p><p>psychologies of fear</p><p>and (mis)perceptions</p><p>- Security is a speech act</p><p>- Maintains an objective</p><p>reference</p><p>- Focuses on the</p><p>intersubjective process</p><p>through which ‘threats’</p><p>manifest themselves as</p><p>security problems on the</p><p>political agenda</p><p>are necessary to block a threatening development’ (Buzan et al., 1998:</p><p>21; see also Wæver, 1995). What is central to security analysis is thus</p><p>understanding the process through which particular ‘threats’ manifest</p><p>themselves as security problems on the political agenda. ‘Threats’ in that</p><p>sense are ‘objective’ when they are accepted by significant political actors,</p><p>not because they have an inherent threatening status. Security is, in short,</p><p>a self-referential practice (Buzan et al., 1998: 24). This does not imply</p><p>that anything can become ‘security’, first, because not all political issues</p><p>can be given the priority of ‘security importance’ at the same time, and</p><p>second, because the discursive construction of ‘security threats’ will be</p><p>influenced by a state’s history, its geographical and structural position,</p><p>and the (discursive) reactions it generates from others, internationally</p><p>and domestically. For security speech acts to be successful, they also need</p><p>to convince their relevant audiences.</p><p>The objective, subjective and discursive conceptions are summed up</p><p>in Table 2.1, and they concern the status that security has, how it can be</p><p>identified and studied. Another key epistemological distinction addresses</p><p>the principles that should be adopted for analysing security. Here, as in</p><p>IR in general, the major distinction runs between scientific and posi-</p><p>tivist approaches on the one hand, and philosophical, sociological and</p><p>constitutive ones on the other. Substantially, the debate between the two</p><p>approaches concerns the extent to which social science should mirror the</p><p>hard sciences, that is should seek to establish causal theories of (state)</p><p>behaviour. Causal theories require that variables are identified and ana-</p><p>lytically and temporally separated, so that if X causes Y, then Y has to</p><p>happen if X occurs, and if X does not happen then Y must not occur</p><p>mapping concepts of security 35</p><p>either (King et al., 1994). Since IR and ISS are not like a laboratory, they</p><p>can only approximate the positivist research programmes of Chemistry</p><p>or Physics, yet, argue positivists, one should strive to concord with pos-</p><p>itivist principles to the greatest extent possible. Post-positivists, on the</p><p>other hand, insist that many of the problems with which the social sci-</p><p>ences engage, including the one of security, are better dealt with through</p><p>the use of non-positivist theories. The process through which threats are</p><p>identified and given meaning is, for instance, better understood through</p><p>an analysis of identity building and institutional transformation that does</p><p>not lend itself to causality or quantification.</p><p>Most Realist and Liberalist approaches have followed the positivist</p><p>route, combining in what Keohane coined in 1988 as ‘rationalism’, while</p><p>Critical Constructivists, Poststructuralists and most Feminists have opted</p><p>for a post-positivist, ‘reflectivist’ approach (Keohane, 1988). But as with</p><p>the objective, subjective and discursive conceptions, one should be aware</p><p>that there are many who fall outside these neatly arranged camps. Large</p><p>parts of ISS during the Cold War were more concerned with the empirical</p><p>evolution of the arms race and the superpower relationship than with</p><p>establishing fully fledged theories. Classical Realists and Liberals were</p><p>writing before the turn to positivism gained force, and one does not find</p><p>causal research programmes in the seminal articles by Kennan (1947),</p><p>Herz (1950) or Wolfers (1952). Yet although consciousness of epistemol-</p><p>ogy is a fairly recent arrival in ISS, its presence and consequences have</p><p>been influential from the beginning.</p><p>Mapping concepts of security</p><p>The first two chapters have already mentioned the labels of a number</p><p>of approaches to ISS. Since we will be making much use of these labels</p><p>in what follows, we conclude this chapter by linking these and their</p><p>concepts of security to the discussions above. Readers might find it useful</p><p>to have both a glossary of terms, and</p><p>a quick guide to the similarities and</p><p>differences of the various approaches. We also indicate the geographical</p><p>focus of each approach, a theme we develop as we unfold the evolution</p><p>of ISS in chapters 4 to 8.</p><p>� Conventional Constructivism – presents a counterpoint to materialist</p><p>analyses by highlighting the importance of ideational factors, that is</p><p>culture, beliefs, norms, ideas and identity. Usually centred on analysing</p><p>state behaviour, includes positivist as well as post-positivist epistemolo-</p><p>gies and is primarily located within the US.</p><p>36 the key questions in international security studies</p><p>� Critical Constructivism – looks to other collectivities than the state, yet</p><p>mostly concerned with military security. Adopts narrative and sociolog-</p><p>ical post-positivist methodologies. Its origins are predominantly in the</p><p>US, but it has since the late 1990s gained a strong standing in Europe.</p><p>� The Copenhagen School – partly about widening the threats and ref-</p><p>erent objects, especially societal/identity security, partly about paying</p><p>more attention to the regional level, but mainly about focusing on</p><p>securitisation (the social processes by which groups of people construct</p><p>something as a threat), thus offering a Constructivist counterpoint to</p><p>the materialist threat analysis of traditional Strategic Studies. Partic-</p><p>ularly strong in Scandinavia and Britain, and influential in most of</p><p>Europe.</p><p>� Critical Security Studies – similar to Peace Research in its normative</p><p>aims, especially regarding the emphasis on human security over state</p><p>security, but using mainly post-positivist methodology. A branch of</p><p>Critical Theory in IR generally, with emancipation as a key concept.</p><p>Particularly strong in Britain.</p><p>� Feminist Security Studies – covers a variety of approaches ranging from</p><p>Peace Research to Poststructuralism. Holds that women support the</p><p>security policies of states through military as well as non-military func-</p><p>tions, and that they face a series of gender-specific security problems</p><p>that are never acknowledged within a state-centric conception of secu-</p><p>rity. Points to the role that hegemonic masculinity plays in sustaining</p><p>militaristic security policies. Originated in the mid-1980s in the US and</p><p>Britain and has grown to have a global presence.</p><p>� Human Security – closely related to Peace Research and Critical Security</p><p>Studies. Dedicated to the view that human beings should be the primary</p><p>referent object of security, and therefore that ISS should include issues</p><p>of poverty, underdevelopment, hunger and other assaults on human</p><p>integrity and potential. Seeks to merge the agendas of ISS and Develop-</p><p>ment Studies. Human Security has academic presence across the West</p><p>and Japan and has been embraced by the United Nations (UN), the</p><p>European Union (EU), and Canadian, Norwegian and Japanese gov-</p><p>ernments.</p><p>� Peace Research – the Classical normative counterpoint to Strategic Stud-</p><p>ies, looking to reduce or eliminate the use of force in international rela-</p><p>tions, to highlight and critique the dangers in the (especially nuclear)</p><p>strategic debate, and to give standing to individual security alongside,</p><p>or sometimes against, state (national) security. Overlaps with Strategic</p><p>Studies in its interest in arms control and disarmament, and arms racing,</p><p>mapping concepts of security 37</p><p>and in some branches also in the use of quantitative and game-theoretic</p><p>methods. Peace Research became quite strongly institutionalised in the</p><p>Scandinavian countries, Germany and Japan, and to a lesser extent in</p><p>Britain and, with different theoretical orientations, the US.</p><p>� Post-colonial Security Studies – points to the Western-centrism of ISS</p><p>and argues that the study of the non-Western world requires security</p><p>theories that incorporate colonial history as well as the attention to the</p><p>specific state formations in the Third World. As the First and Third</p><p>World are connected, Post-colonial Security Studies argues that it pro-</p><p>vides insight into the dynamics of both the First and the Third Worlds.</p><p>Usually critical of state-centrism and has been developed by Western as</p><p>well as non-Western scholars.</p><p>� Poststructuralist Security Studies – adopts the concept of discourse rather</p><p>than ideas, argues that state sovereignty and security are products of</p><p>political practices. Critical of how state-centrism constrains the possi-</p><p>bilities for other referent objects of security, but refuses the traditional</p><p>Peace Research turn to individual security. Began in North America in</p><p>the mid-1980s, but from the early 1990s stronger in Europe.</p><p>� Strategic Studies – the Classical, traditionalist literature that defines the</p><p>subject in political–military terms and focuses on military dynamics.</p><p>This includes its own sub-literatures, such as those on war, nuclear</p><p>proliferation, deterrence theory, arms racing, arms control, etc. Strongly</p><p>materialist in approach with a tendency to take a state-centric normative</p><p>position as given rather than as a subject of discussion. Generally strong</p><p>across the West, but particularly in the US and Britain, and with a</p><p>separate tradition in France.</p><p>� (Neo)Realism – Realist approaches generally have strong links to Strate-</p><p>gic Studies in that they underpin its essentially state-centric, materialist,</p><p>power-political and conflictual (and thus ‘objective’) assumptions about</p><p>the nature of international relations. Neorealist concepts, most notably</p><p>polarity (Waltz, 1979), played a big role in thinking about nuclear deter-</p><p>rence, arms control and arms racing. Mainstream in the US, influential,</p><p>but much more contested, in Europe.</p><p>Table 2.2. maps the way in which the ISS approaches above answer the</p><p>five questions laid out in this chapter.</p><p>Ta</p><p>bl</p><p>e</p><p>2.</p><p>2.</p><p>IS</p><p>S</p><p>pe</p><p>rs</p><p>pe</p><p>ct</p><p>iv</p><p>es</p><p>in</p><p>re</p><p>la</p><p>ti</p><p>on</p><p>to</p><p>th</p><p>e</p><p>fiv</p><p>e</p><p>qu</p><p>es</p><p>ti</p><p>on</p><p>s</p><p>V</p><p>ie</p><p>w</p><p>s</p><p>of</p><p>se</p><p>cu</p><p>ri</p><p>ty</p><p>IS</p><p>S</p><p>p</p><p>er</p><p>sp</p><p>ec</p><p>ti</p><p>ve</p><p>R</p><p>ef</p><p>er</p><p>en</p><p>t</p><p>ob</p><p>je</p><p>ct</p><p>In</p><p>te</p><p>rn</p><p>al</p><p>/e</p><p>xt</p><p>er</p><p>n</p><p>al</p><p>Se</p><p>ct</p><p>or</p><p>s</p><p>p</p><p>ol</p><p>it</p><p>ic</p><p>s</p><p>E</p><p>p</p><p>is</p><p>te</p><p>m</p><p>ol</p><p>og</p><p>y</p><p>St</p><p>ra</p><p>te</p><p>gi</p><p>c</p><p>St</p><p>u</p><p>d</p><p>ie</p><p>s</p><p>T</p><p>h</p><p>e</p><p>st</p><p>at</p><p>e</p><p>P</p><p>ri</p><p>m</p><p>ar</p><p>ily</p><p>ex</p><p>te</p><p>rn</p><p>al</p><p>M</p><p>ili</p><p>ta</p><p>ry</p><p>(u</p><p>se</p><p>of</p><p>fo</p><p>rc</p><p>e)</p><p>R</p><p>ea</p><p>lis</p><p>t</p><p>Po</p><p>si</p><p>ti</p><p>vi</p><p>st</p><p>(f</p><p>ro</p><p>m</p><p>qu</p><p>it</p><p>e</p><p>em</p><p>p</p><p>ir</p><p>ic</p><p>al</p><p>to</p><p>fo</p><p>rm</p><p>al</p><p>m</p><p>od</p><p>el</p><p>lin</p><p>g)</p><p>N</p><p>eo</p><p>(r</p><p>ea</p><p>lis</p><p>m</p><p>)</p><p>T</p><p>h</p><p>e</p><p>st</p><p>at</p><p>e</p><p>P</p><p>ri</p><p>m</p><p>ar</p><p>ily</p><p>ex</p><p>te</p><p>rn</p><p>al</p><p>M</p><p>ili</p><p>ta</p><p>ry</p><p>–p</p><p>ol</p><p>it</p><p>ic</p><p>al</p><p>R</p><p>ea</p><p>lis</p><p>t</p><p>R</p><p>at</p><p>io</p><p>n</p><p>al</p><p>is</p><p>t</p><p>Po</p><p>st</p><p>st</p><p>ru</p><p>ct</p><p>u</p><p>ra</p><p>lis</p><p>t</p><p>Se</p><p>cu</p><p>ri</p><p>ty</p><p>St</p><p>u</p><p>d</p><p>ie</p><p>s</p><p>C</p><p>ol</p><p>le</p><p>ct</p><p>iv</p><p>e–</p><p>in</p><p>d</p><p>iv</p><p>id</p><p>u</p><p>al</p><p>B</p><p>ot</p><p>h</p><p>(c</p><p>on</p><p>st</p><p>it</p><p>u</p><p>ti</p><p>on</p><p>of</p><p>bo</p><p>u</p><p>n</p><p>d</p><p>ar</p><p>ie</p><p>s)</p><p>A</p><p>ll</p><p>C</p><p>h</p><p>an</p><p>ge</p><p>of</p><p>R</p><p>ea</p><p>lis</p><p>m</p><p>p</p><p>os</p><p>si</p><p>bl</p><p>e,</p><p>bu</p><p>t</p><p>n</p><p>ot</p><p>u</p><p>to</p><p>p</p><p>ia</p><p>n</p><p>/I</p><p>de</p><p>al</p><p>is</p><p>t</p><p>D</p><p>ec</p><p>on</p><p>st</p><p>ru</p><p>ct</p><p>iv</p><p>is</p><p>t</p><p>an</p><p>d</p><p>d</p><p>is</p><p>cu</p><p>rs</p><p>iv</p><p>e</p><p>Po</p><p>st</p><p>-c</p><p>ol</p><p>on</p><p>ia</p><p>l</p><p>Se</p><p>cu</p><p>ri</p><p>ty</p><p>St</p><p>u</p><p>d</p><p>ie</p><p>s</p><p>St</p><p>at</p><p>es</p><p>an</p><p>d</p><p>co</p><p>lle</p><p>ct</p><p>iv</p><p>it</p><p>ie</p><p>s</p><p>B</p><p>ot</p><p>h</p><p>A</p><p>ll</p><p>C</p><p>h</p><p>an</p><p>ge</p><p>of</p><p>W</p><p>es</p><p>te</p><p>rn</p><p>d</p><p>om</p><p>in</p><p>an</p><p>ce</p><p>p</p><p>os</p><p>si</p><p>bl</p><p>e,</p><p>bu</p><p>t</p><p>d</p><p>if</p><p>fi</p><p>cu</p><p>lt</p><p>to</p><p>ac</p><p>co</p><p>m</p><p>p</p><p>lis</p><p>h</p><p>C</p><p>ri</p><p>ti</p><p>ca</p><p>lT</p><p>h</p><p>eo</p><p>ry</p><p>,</p><p>d</p><p>ec</p><p>on</p><p>st</p><p>ru</p><p>ct</p><p>iv</p><p>is</p><p>t,</p><p>h</p><p>is</p><p>to</p><p>ri</p><p>ca</p><p>l</p><p>so</p><p>ci</p><p>ol</p><p>og</p><p>y</p><p>Pe</p><p>ac</p><p>e</p><p>R</p><p>es</p><p>ea</p><p>rc</p><p>h</p><p>St</p><p>at</p><p>e,</p><p>so</p><p>ci</p><p>et</p><p>ie</p><p>s,</p><p>in</p><p>d</p><p>iv</p><p>id</p><p>u</p><p>al</p><p>s</p><p>B</p><p>ot</p><p>h</p><p>A</p><p>ll</p><p>(n</p><p>eg</p><p>at</p><p>iv</p><p>e:</p><p>p</p><p>re</p><p>do</p><p>m</p><p>in</p><p>an</p><p>tl</p><p>y</p><p>m</p><p>ili</p><p>ta</p><p>ry</p><p>)</p><p>Tr</p><p>an</p><p>sf</p><p>or</p><p>m</p><p>at</p><p>io</p><p>n</p><p>p</p><p>os</p><p>si</p><p>bl</p><p>e</p><p>Po</p><p>si</p><p>ti</p><p>vi</p><p>st</p><p>(f</p><p>ro</p><p>m</p><p>qu</p><p>an</p><p>ti</p><p>ta</p><p>ti</p><p>ve</p><p>to</p><p>M</p><p>ar</p><p>xi</p><p>st</p><p>m</p><p>at</p><p>er</p><p>ia</p><p>lis</p><p>ts</p><p>)</p><p>H</p><p>u</p><p>m</p><p>an</p><p>Se</p><p>cu</p><p>ri</p><p>ty</p><p>T</p><p>h</p><p>e</p><p>in</p><p>d</p><p>iv</p><p>id</p><p>u</p><p>al</p><p>P</p><p>ri</p><p>m</p><p>ar</p><p>ily</p><p>in</p><p>te</p><p>rn</p><p>al</p><p>A</p><p>ll</p><p>Tr</p><p>an</p><p>sf</p><p>or</p><p>m</p><p>at</p><p>iv</p><p>e</p><p>M</p><p>os</p><p>tl</p><p>y</p><p>h</p><p>ig</p><p>h</p><p>ly</p><p>em</p><p>p</p><p>ir</p><p>ic</p><p>al</p><p>or</p><p>so</p><p>ft</p><p>-c</p><p>on</p><p>st</p><p>ru</p><p>ct</p><p>iv</p><p>is</p><p>t</p><p>Fe</p><p>m</p><p>in</p><p>is</p><p>t</p><p>Se</p><p>cu</p><p>ri</p><p>ty</p><p>St</p><p>u</p><p>d</p><p>ie</p><p>s</p><p>In</p><p>d</p><p>iv</p><p>id</p><p>u</p><p>al</p><p>,</p><p>w</p><p>om</p><p>en</p><p>B</p><p>ot</p><p>h</p><p>A</p><p>ll</p><p>M</p><p>os</p><p>tl</p><p>y</p><p>tr</p><p>an</p><p>sf</p><p>or</p><p>m</p><p>at</p><p>iv</p><p>e</p><p>Fr</p><p>om</p><p>qu</p><p>an</p><p>ti</p><p>ta</p><p>ti</p><p>ve</p><p>to</p><p>Po</p><p>st</p><p>st</p><p>ru</p><p>ct</p><p>u</p><p>ra</p><p>lis</p><p>t</p><p>C</p><p>ri</p><p>ti</p><p>ca</p><p>lS</p><p>ec</p><p>u</p><p>ri</p><p>ty</p><p>St</p><p>u</p><p>d</p><p>ie</p><p>s</p><p>In</p><p>d</p><p>iv</p><p>id</p><p>u</p><p>al</p><p>B</p><p>ot</p><p>h</p><p>A</p><p>ll</p><p>Tr</p><p>an</p><p>sf</p><p>or</p><p>m</p><p>at</p><p>iv</p><p>e</p><p>(e</p><p>m</p><p>an</p><p>ci</p><p>p</p><p>at</p><p>io</p><p>n</p><p>)</p><p>C</p><p>ri</p><p>ti</p><p>ca</p><p>lT</p><p>h</p><p>eo</p><p>ry</p><p>(h</p><p>er</p><p>m</p><p>en</p><p>eu</p><p>ti</p><p>cs</p><p>)</p><p>T</p><p>h</p><p>e</p><p>C</p><p>op</p><p>en</p><p>h</p><p>ag</p><p>en</p><p>Sc</p><p>h</p><p>oo</p><p>l</p><p>C</p><p>ol</p><p>le</p><p>ct</p><p>iv</p><p>it</p><p>ie</p><p>s</p><p>an</p><p>d</p><p>th</p><p>e</p><p>en</p><p>vi</p><p>ro</p><p>n</p><p>m</p><p>en</p><p>t</p><p>B</p><p>ot</p><p>h</p><p>A</p><p>ll</p><p>N</p><p>eu</p><p>tr</p><p>al</p><p>Sp</p><p>ee</p><p>ch</p><p>ac</p><p>t</p><p>an</p><p>al</p><p>ys</p><p>is</p><p>C</p><p>on</p><p>ve</p><p>n</p><p>ti</p><p>on</p><p>al</p><p>C</p><p>on</p><p>st</p><p>ru</p><p>ct</p><p>iv</p><p>is</p><p>m</p><p>T</p><p>h</p><p>e</p><p>st</p><p>at</p><p>e</p><p>E</p><p>xt</p><p>er</p><p>n</p><p>al</p><p>M</p><p>ili</p><p>ta</p><p>ry</p><p>Tr</p><p>an</p><p>sf</p><p>or</p><p>m</p><p>at</p><p>io</p><p>n</p><p>p</p><p>os</p><p>si</p><p>bl</p><p>e</p><p>So</p><p>ft</p><p>-p</p><p>os</p><p>it</p><p>iv</p><p>is</p><p>t</p><p>C</p><p>ri</p><p>ti</p><p>ca</p><p>l</p><p>C</p><p>on</p><p>st</p><p>ru</p><p>ct</p><p>iv</p><p>is</p><p>m</p><p>C</p><p>ol</p><p>le</p><p>ct</p><p>iv</p><p>it</p><p>ie</p><p>s</p><p>M</p><p>os</p><p>tl</p><p>y</p><p>ex</p><p>te</p><p>rn</p><p>al</p><p>M</p><p>ili</p><p>ta</p><p>ry</p><p>Tr</p><p>an</p><p>sf</p><p>or</p><p>m</p><p>at</p><p>io</p><p>n</p><p>p</p><p>os</p><p>si</p><p>bl</p><p>e</p><p>N</p><p>ar</p><p>ra</p><p>ti</p><p>ve</p><p>an</p><p>d</p><p>so</p><p>ci</p><p>ol</p><p>og</p><p>ic</p><p>al</p><p>3</p><p>The driving forces behind the evolution of</p><p>International Security Studies</p><p>In chapters 1 and 2 we have sketched out what post-1945 ISS looks like as</p><p>a sub-field of IR, and surveyed the key debates and approaches that have</p><p>determined the shape and content of the subject. We have addressed our</p><p>central theme of evolution by identifying a branching out from narrow,</p><p>largely state-centric and military–political conceptions of the subject to</p><p>a much more diverse set of understandings which are often in contes-</p><p>tation with each other. In this chapter we look separately at the driving</p><p>forces behind the evolution of ISS. Why was it that different conceptions</p><p>of the scope, referent objects and epistemological understandings of ISS</p><p>emerged when they did? Why, indeed, did ISS coalesce as a distinct subject</p><p>and why did it thereafter evolve as it did? Why has there been so much</p><p>change and turbulence within this sub-field when its Realist underpin-</p><p>nings, with their emphasis on the permanence of the military threat in</p><p>world politics suggests that there should be a lot of continuity?</p><p>As we will show in later chapters, there are some significant continuities</p><p>in the ISS literature, but there are also many substantial changes. Some-</p><p>times the priority of a topic declines (as with arms control and deterrence</p><p>towards the end of the 1980s), and sometimes the direction changes when</p><p>wholly new topics become part of ongoing debates (as with economic,</p><p>environmental, societal and human security). Sometimes the content or</p><p>emphasis of ISS changes en bloc, but sometimes it evolves in different ways</p><p>in different places. This chapter discusses what explains the birth and the</p><p>evolution of ISS, both its continuities and its transformations. We suggest</p><p>that five forces are particularly central to this process: great power poli-</p><p>tics, technology, key events, the internal dynamics of academic debates,</p><p>and institutionalisation. These five work as drivers in two different senses.</p><p>Most obviously they drive ISS in the sense of shaping what it is that people</p><p>choose to write about under the ISS heading, what subjects and issues</p><p>they define as the main security problems of the day. Less obvious, but</p><p>39</p><p>40 the driving forces behind the evolution of iss</p><p>equally important, is that they shape how people write about these topics.</p><p>They help to shape which ontologies, epistemologies and methods carry</p><p>legitimacy, and what the societal, political and academic roles of security</p><p>scholars should be. Since we present our account as a historical narrative,</p><p>these two senses will be in play throughout.</p><p>The first section below presents the Kuhnian sociology of science frame-</p><p>work which supports this type of approach. The section also describes the</p><p>methodology behind the five forces framework as a combination of an</p><p>empirical inductive reading of the ISS literature and a deductive analysis</p><p>of the existing literature on the sociology of science and IR. The second</p><p>section moves from this general framework to the key discussion in the</p><p>still sparse literature on the sociology of IR, a discussion which concerns</p><p>the relative merits of internal and external explanations. Having made</p><p>the call for including both, section three argues how the internal and the</p><p>external may be further specified. The final section of the chapter con-</p><p>sists of a more detailed overview of the five driving forces as gen-</p><p>eral analytical categories, in preparation for using them as the lenses</p><p>through which to observe empirically the evolution of ISS in chapters 4</p><p>to 8.</p><p>A post-Kuhnian sociology of science</p><p>There has been no previous comprehensive analysis of the evolution of</p><p>ISS that comprises the period from the mid-1940s to the new post-9/11</p><p>millennium and which covers the whole gambit of ISS from traditional</p><p>Strategic Studies to Poststructuralist and Feminist approaches. Hence it is</p><p>not surprising that there is no readily available sociology of science model</p><p>especially fitted for ISS that we could draw upon. The five driving forces</p><p>framework that we eventually decided upon was built through a combina-</p><p>tion of two different methods. Along one track we operated empirically,</p><p>deriving the forces pragmatically from our reading of the literature of</p><p>ISS across six decades and spanning a large array of perspectives. In that</p><p>respect they can be seen as inductively generated from the ISS literature</p><p>itself. These five forces were the ones, we concluded after having tried and</p><p>rejected other potential candidates, which could most adequately account</p><p>for the major conceptual movements, for continuities as well as transfor-</p><p>mations. What we present is thus the best outcome of a series of possible</p><p>forces and models.</p><p>We also operated more deductively along the second methodological</p><p>track, bringing to our reading both our knowledge of what have been</p><p>a post-kuhnian sociology of science 41</p><p>the key themes and explanatory factors in IR and ISS as well as what is</p><p>generally pointed to in the sociology of science literature. From that more</p><p>general perspective one would expect any social structure to be shaped</p><p>by the disposition of material power (great powers), by knowledge (tech-</p><p>nology), by events (history and the shadows it throws into the future),</p><p>by the prevailing social constructions (academic debates), and by wealth</p><p>and organisational dynamics (institutionalisation). We use the five driv-</p><p>ing forces to highlight key themes that explain how and why ISS evolved</p><p>as it did. When taking a broad view of ISS, all of them are always in play,</p><p>yet, as one zooms in on particular periods and approaches, some may</p><p>be more significant than others. The five different forces concern very</p><p>different aspects of the social structure that impacts ISS, and the forces</p><p>are as a consequence neither easily empirically separable nor mutually</p><p>exclusive categories. The forces interact in important and complex ways,</p><p>sometimes reinforcing existing approaches, sometimes accelerating the</p><p>number and strength of newcomers. As a theoretical framework, the five</p><p>driving forces thus have a heuristic explanatory quality that allows us to</p><p>produce a structured, yet historically and empirically sensitive analysis.</p><p>But it is not a framework that seeks to make causal explanations where</p><p>the impact of one force is tested against that of the others. It might have</p><p>been possible to build a theoretical framework that identified more or dif-</p><p>ferent driving forces, yet the combination of the inductive and deductive</p><p>strategies seemed to provide us with a reasonably strong epistemological</p><p>footing. Ultimately, however, the ‘proof’ of non-causal frameworks is in</p><p>their ability to generate depth as well as overview, and in that respect the</p><p>utility of the driving forces framework lies in the substantial account they</p><p>allow us to produce in the chapters ahead.</p><p>If we think of the sociology of science task that was in front of us, it</p><p>may be conceived of as a three-layered pyramid with the sociology of ISS</p><p>and our five forces framework at the top and two layers supporting it.</p><p>Figure 3.1 provides a graphic presentation of these three sociology of</p><p>science layers that make up the approach that we take in this book.</p><p>At the bottom of the pyramid, we have our general history and sociology</p><p>of science built largely on a Kuhnian perspective. At the second level is</p><p>the sociology of science literature in Political Science and IR which has</p><p>centred on the question of whether external events or academic debates</p><p>better explain the evolution of these disciplines. We argue in favour of</p><p>incorporating both internal and external factors in our model, and that</p><p>the birth and identity of ISS provides a stronger link to external events</p><p>and political pressures than may be the case in Political Science as a whole.</p><p>42 the driving forces behind the evolution of iss</p><p>Five forces</p><p>framework:</p><p>ISS</p><p>Events</p><p>Great power</p><p>politics</p><p>Technology</p><p>Academic</p><p>debate</p><p>Sociology of science literature in Political Science</p><p>and IR</p><p>Internal and external factors</p><p>General history and sociology of science</p><p>(post-Kuhnian perspective)</p><p>Institutionalisation</p><p>Figure 3.1. Sociology of science approach</p><p>At the top layer of the model we define the five forces and the interplay</p><p>among them.</p><p>Beginning with the bottom level of the pyramid, the general sociol-</p><p>ogy of science provides a broad idea of how academic disciplines – and</p><p>fields and sub-fields – evolve. Kuhn’s (1962) starting point was the obser-</p><p>vation that scientific discovery failed to follow the model predicted –</p><p>and recommended – by Classical positivists. Positivism’s model of scien-</p><p>tific development claimed that knowledge production is (and should</p><p>be) a cumulative process where researchers gradually come closer to</p><p>the truth. Theories are developed and hypotheses are tested against a</p><p>series of measurable observations. Yet, as Kuhn convincingly showed,</p><p>scientists were quite reluctant to give up or fundamentally revise their</p><p>paradigms even when key assumptions were falsified and fundamental</p><p>assumptions seemed hard to justify. Kuhn argued that instead of seeing sci-</p><p>ence as cumulative, one should consider it as undergoing different stages.</p><p>Scientific disciplines start as pre-paradigmatic forms which develop into</p><p>a post-kuhnian sociology of science 43</p><p>paradigms based on a shared understanding of general laws, metaphysi-</p><p>cal assumptions of how ‘reality’ is structured, epistemological beliefs in</p><p>what constitutes good science, and respectable works and procedures.</p><p>The work that goes on inside a paradigm never fundamentally questions</p><p>key assumptions, research focus, epistemologies or world view; it is what</p><p>Kuhn described as ‘normal science’. Scientific revolutions – rather than</p><p>discoveries within existing paradigms – thus come when new paradigms</p><p>are launched in opposition to older ones, usually by a new generation of</p><p>scholars whose personal and professional investment is less than in the</p><p>case of more senior ones, or by researchers coming to a discipline from</p><p>a different field, hence also with less investment in a given paradigm. A</p><p>central point is that new and old paradigms differ on such fundamental</p><p>points that they are held to be incommensurable: there is no way of testing</p><p>one’s way out of disagreement since what is at stake is the entire framing</p><p>of the research topic, the question of what should be studied/tested and</p><p>how to interpret the results (Schmidt, 1998: 6–7). The important point</p><p>for ISS from a sociology of science perspective is that it may be difficult to</p><p>pin down exactly when paradigms are incommensurable. As Wæver notes</p><p>(1998: 716), having a debate – which may range from polite and construc-</p><p>tive dialogue to war – itself indicates a certain modicum of cohesion and</p><p>‘expresses a less than totally fragmented discipline’.</p><p>The key sociological point for our present exercise is that if knowledge</p><p>does not progress solely as a result of scientific evidence, then it is necessary</p><p>to try to take into account the other forces that play into the evolution of</p><p>any field of study. Kuhn made room for ‘progress’ within paradigms, but</p><p>stressed that what constituted scientific advances could only be judged by</p><p>a paradigm’s own standards, not by extra-paradigmatic ones. But if there</p><p>is no given scientific standard that theories should strive to maintain, how</p><p>is it possible to make judgements about the relative merits of competing</p><p>paradigms? This question points to a key feature of academic debates as a</p><p>driving force: that in the absence of absolute, objective standards scholars</p><p>will try to establish their own ones as hegemonic. Academics, politicians,</p><p>the media and a number of other societal actors make constant claims</p><p>about which role science should play in society based on a set of deeper</p><p>political and normative judgements, and influenced by the issues, ideas</p><p>and power structures around them. ISS is a highly politicised subject</p><p>in which questions about both what should be studied and the role of</p><p>scholars vis-à-vis the security apparatus of the state have been an ongoing</p><p>source of tension and debate. To understand its evolution we need to take</p><p>on board not just the peculiar dynamics of academic debates, but also the</p><p>44 the driving forces behind the evolution of iss</p><p>variety of material and ideational ways in which ISS has interacted with</p><p>the wider world.</p><p>Internal versus external factors</p><p>Academic perspectives are, argued Kuhn, quite resistant in the face of</p><p>‘facts’ that may challenge their basic assumptions and predictions. Theo-</p><p>ries are ‘filters’ through which particular facts and events are granted more</p><p>significance than others, and ‘facts’ are understood and analysed in accor-</p><p>dance with a paradigm’s basic conceptions and assumptions. Traditional</p><p>security scholars would, for instance, agree that the number of deaths</p><p>due to HIV/AIDS is documented, that it is very high in parts of Africa</p><p>and that this strains societal and economic relations in those countries</p><p>heavily affected. They would, however, not agree that this constitutes a</p><p>security problem, unless military security is directly at stake (Elbe, 2003).</p><p>Widening approaches may argue by contrast that HIV/AIDS constitutes</p><p>a threat to societal security, that global and regional actors have success-</p><p>fully securitised HIV/AIDS, or that the security problems of women and</p><p>children should be granted particular attention (Elbe, 2006). What is at</p><p>stake in the security debates over HIV/AIDS is thus not simply the death</p><p>rate as an external event, nor the material consequences thereof, but the</p><p>interpretation of these facts.</p><p>A Kuhnian understanding implies at the more concrete level that we</p><p>cannot expect to explain the evolution of academic disciplines as a causal</p><p>process through which observed facts seamlessly propel change. Exactly</p><p>how to adjudicate between internal explanations that focus on the debates</p><p>within an academic field and external explanations that point to events</p><p>and political developments has been a key theme in the (still sparse) lit-</p><p>erature on the evolution of IR. Schmidt (1998: 32–33) argues that ‘It is a</p><p>common belief that external events in the realm of international politics</p><p>have more fundamentally than any other set of factors shaped the develop-</p><p>ment of the field’. Taking issue with this approach, he (1998: 36) holds that</p><p>‘Developments in the field of international relations have been informed</p><p>more by disciplinary trends in political science and by the character of the</p><p>American university than by external events taking place in international</p><p>politics’ (p. 38; see also Wæver, 1998: 692; Jørgensen, 2000: 10). Some</p><p>events do not generate responses at all (which one would expect were</p><p>there a causal relation), and events that are responded to generate multi-</p><p>ple interpretations. Based on the political theorist Gunnell’s (1993) inter-</p><p>nal approach to the evolution of the sub-discipline of Political Theory,</p><p>internal versus external factors 45</p><p>Schmidt (1998: 37) makes the case for a critical internal discursive history</p><p>approach whose aim is ‘to reconstruct as accurately as possible the history</p><p>of the conversation that has been constitutive of academic international</p><p>relations’.</p><p>On the whole, while we acknowledge the need to draw attention to</p><p>the importance of internal dynamics in the evolution of IR and ISS, we</p><p>also find the sharp dichotomy between internal and external explanations</p><p>problematic for four reasons (Breitenbauch and Wivel, 2004: 416–417).</p><p>First, it overdraws the extent to which external explanations are actually</p><p>accepted wholeheartedly within ISS. It is hard to believe that not even</p><p>the strongest empirical policy analyst or the hardest rationalist (who</p><p>presumably are those advocating external explanations) would agree that</p><p>theories are analytical lenses that prevent events from having a seamless</p><p>or direct causal impact on disciplinary developments. Each theory</p><p>might</p><p>very well claim that it explains or understands the particular event better</p><p>than competing theories, but that is a different claim from arguing that</p><p>events causally impact the evolution of ISS as a whole.</p><p>Second, presuming that we were to adjudicate between internal and</p><p>external explanations, it would be difficult if not impossible to imagine</p><p>a research design that would allow for a testing of the explanatory status</p><p>of the two. How does one, for instance, compare the impact of the end</p><p>of the Cold War with the influence asserted by disciplinary trends? The</p><p>latter are obviously crucial for how the end of the Cold War is interpreted</p><p>and explained, but without this event itself there would not be this major</p><p>new question on the research agenda for theories to dissect and compete</p><p>over. Events may also be slightly less spectacular, but provide the ground</p><p>on which more detailed internally driven debates play themselves out, as</p><p>was the case of nuclear technology and Cold War deterrence theory. How</p><p>would we, for instance, separate the impact of nuclear bipolarity from</p><p>the import of game theory into ISS? Rather than embark on an arduous</p><p>attempt to design a test, we are better suited by acknowledging that it is</p><p>the interplay between internal and external factors that drives ISS.</p><p>Third, the inclusion of external explanations in our framework is sup-</p><p>ported by the general analytical claim that it is through external inputs</p><p>of different kinds that academic disciplines debate and change. To rely</p><p>exclusively on internal explanations would create an image of ISS – and</p><p>science – as socially and politically isolated (and self-absorbed). Not only</p><p>does this fit poorly, as chapters 4 to 8 will lay out, with how ISS evolved,</p><p>it would produce a model which would have severe difficulties explaining</p><p>change. If no inputs are made into the research process, how is it that both</p><p>46 the driving forces behind the evolution of iss</p><p>the balance between and the content of different ISS approaches changed</p><p>over the past sixty years?</p><p>Fourth, the debate over internal and external explanations may also</p><p>benefit from considering how the discipline, field or sub-field in ques-</p><p>tion is situated in relation to politics and policy-making institutions. This</p><p>relationship refers to the story of a discipline’s founding and to how its</p><p>institutional location and purpose has been debated. Academic disciplines</p><p>have to different extents linked themselves explicitly to crucial external</p><p>factors, including current events and political institutions. Think, for</p><p>example, of the difference between the disciplines of Comparative Liter-</p><p>ature, Political Science and Physics. Since Political Science is to a much</p><p>higher degree defined by a link to contemporary political events, it is also</p><p>quite reasonable to expect its development to be more influenced by this</p><p>factor than the other two disciplines would be. Even within the discipline</p><p>of Political Science, ISS is remarkable by being founded in response to</p><p>a set of (what was perceived as) very urgent ‘real world/external’ issues</p><p>linked to the growing threat posed by the Soviet Union, particularly as</p><p>it became a nuclear power. ISS definitely had a scientific ambition at its</p><p>core, and as Wæver (Wæver and Buzan, 2007) has laid out, an optimism</p><p>about the usefulness of science and the possibility of finding rational solu-</p><p>tions to societal problems. Yet it was also simultaneously a discipline that</p><p>aimed at delivering policy relevant knowledge. This dual ambition meant</p><p>that ISS was not exclusively driven by the process of internal scientific</p><p>discovery, but also by its engagement in the world of policy and by the</p><p>influence of the policy world upon it. ISS has ever since been (d)riven by</p><p>this intertwining of epistemological choices and a perceived obligation to</p><p>speak to major political decisions (Williams, 1998). Nowhere is this more</p><p>clearly illustrated than in the ‘inner–outer’ system in the US in which it</p><p>is common for ISS writers (not all of them American) to spend part of</p><p>their career in academia or think-tanks, and part of it in government. It</p><p>is hard to imagine that, for better or worse, this cycle does not influence</p><p>what people choose to write about and how they do so, even if not always</p><p>in any predictable fashion. Comparing ISS to the field of Political Theory,</p><p>for example, it may well be that the latter is explained to a higher degree</p><p>by internal factors, precisely because it has not been constituted around</p><p>an equally strong link with the policy world and hence does not have a</p><p>similarly strong sense of external responsiveness (Gunnell, 1993).</p><p>Our conclusion at the second layer of the sociology of science is that we</p><p>need a model that draws our attention to the interplay between internal</p><p>and external factors, that makes their exact significance and the way in</p><p>the theoretical status of the driving forces framework 47</p><p>which they play into each other an empirically open question, and which</p><p>furthermore provides us with a more fine-grained set of analytical tools</p><p>than ‘internal’ and ‘external’. External factors are usually discussed as one</p><p>broad category where ‘events’ are presumably the most significant, but</p><p>other external factors include great power politics and the evolution in</p><p>key technologies. The resources and political agendas of foundations and</p><p>think-tanks may be both an internal (to the extent that these institutions</p><p>are part of ISS) and an external influence (to the extent that they grant</p><p>money to ISS). We will discuss which specific driving forces to include in</p><p>the next section and lay out the interplay between them.</p><p>The theoretical status of the driving forces framework</p><p>Moving now to the question of how a concrete analytical framework</p><p>should be designed, we start from the assumption that it is the interplay</p><p>between a set of internal and external forces that explains the evolution</p><p>of ISS. We cannot think of a way of meaningfully testing the influence of</p><p>each force and our proposed five forces framework is thus a ‘theory’ in</p><p>the European sense, where the term is used for something that organises</p><p>a field systematically, structures questions and establishes a coherent and</p><p>rigorous set of inter-related concepts and categories, but not in the dom-</p><p>inant American positivist sense of the term (which requires cause–effect</p><p>propositions). Our dual methodology of working simultaneously from</p><p>the sociology of science literature, particularly in IR, and from an induc-</p><p>tive reading of the ISS debates themselves brought us to a framework</p><p>of five forces: great power politics, technology, key events, the internal</p><p>dynamics of academic debates, and institutionalisation. Several of these</p><p>factors comprise both internal and external aspects, which reinforces our</p><p>commitment to focus on their interplay.</p><p>Looking to the existing sociology of science literature in IR – thereby</p><p>applying a more deductive methodology – those who have provided more</p><p>detailed frameworks have done so with the purpose of explaining partic-</p><p>ular national approaches or, more generally, the divide between European</p><p>or Continental approaches on the one hand and the American one on</p><p>the other (Wæver, 1998; Jørgensen, 2000; Breitenbauch and Wivel, 2004;</p><p>Wæver, 2007; Wæver and Buzan, 2007). Since what is to be explained</p><p>are national (or regional) variations, there is – as in most foreign pol-</p><p>icy analysis – a logical move to emphasise explanations located at the</p><p>national/regional level. The most controversial aspect of our framework</p><p>may thus be that we do not include a domestic societal variable. This</p><p>48 the driving forces behind the evolution of iss</p><p>decision was based on the fact that our main research question was to</p><p>trace and offer an explanation of the evolution of ISS as a general sub-</p><p>field of IR, but that we would not attempt to cover national variations</p><p>in any great detail. But since ISS was founded in the US and most of the</p><p>conventional Cold War literature was driven by a US great power politics</p><p>agenda, we do pay attention to specific American</p><p>societal factors through</p><p>the driving force of great power politics. It is true that part of the story</p><p>of ISS is the evolution of distinct European and American approaches,</p><p>but this is a difference that we can explain through the five driving forces</p><p>without elevating societal factors to the status of a distinct driving force.</p><p>Europe and the US have been situated differently in terms of great power</p><p>capabilities and politics. Both during the Cold War and after, the US has</p><p>had technological capabilities that Europe did not and it has been able to</p><p>shoulder the costs of technological innovation in a manner that Europe</p><p>could or would not afford. There were, furthermore, significant events</p><p>that impacted the US and Europe differently (Vietnam, German unifi-</p><p>cation and 9/11 to mention just a few), and there are different academic</p><p>traditions, particularly in terms of epistemology, in the two parts of the</p><p>West that again are linked to processes of institutionalisation. The five</p><p>forces and particularly their interplay can in short explain the Europe/US</p><p>difference especially as ‘events’, ‘great power politics’ and ‘internal aca-</p><p>demic debates’ open up space for incorporating societal and political</p><p>differences.</p><p>Although we hold that all five forces are significant for understanding</p><p>the evolution of ISS, and that they are distinct in that they each constitute</p><p>different lenses or forms of explanation, it is also the case that they are</p><p>derived deductively from six decades of ISS literature and that not all</p><p>forces may therefore be equally significant at all times. The advent of</p><p>Poststructuralism in the mid-1980s was, for example, clearly connected</p><p>to the general influence of Postmodern and Poststructuralist philosophy</p><p>first on the humanities and later on the social sciences. Here, the driving</p><p>force ‘the internal dynamics of academic debate’ was clearly a strong</p><p>influence. Human Security, by contrast, was not linked as much to internal</p><p>academic debate, but made it from the field of policy into academe (see</p><p>chapter 7).</p><p>To theorise the five forces as interplaying rather than as distinct and</p><p>free-standing variables implies that we may identify a transformation that</p><p>starts with one, or more, force(s) which then has implications for, or at</p><p>least raises questions concerning, the others. The complicated interplay</p><p>between the forces implies that there is not a simple domino effect between</p><p>the theoretical status of the driving forces framework 49</p><p>the forces, that a change (or a continuity) that we identify in force A will</p><p>automatically lead to changes in B, C, D and E. We can say that major</p><p>events, like 9/11 and the end of the Cold War, apply pressure on the other</p><p>forces, but exactly how different approaches to ISS then negotiate these is</p><p>an empirically open question.</p><p>A good question is perhaps how the five forces relate to the ISS perspec-</p><p>tives we examine in the chapters ahead. Is it that there are some driving</p><p>forces that ‘belong’ to particular ISS perspectives, that great power pol-</p><p>itics for instance is a Strategic Studies force, while institutionalisation is</p><p>a Constructivist one? This may seem tempting at first, but it is impor-</p><p>tant to distinguish between the theoretical claims and concepts of ISS</p><p>perspectives on the one hand, and how they (might) answer questions of</p><p>security on the other. It would, for instance, be quite difficult to think of</p><p>an ISS approach that would not accord some importance to great power</p><p>politics, but approaches differ significantly in their analytical, political</p><p>and normative analysis thereof. All approaches are going to point to their</p><p>ability to analyse key events, but they may disagree dramatically on which</p><p>events are more important, wherein their importance lies and how they</p><p>should be responded to.</p><p>Analytically the forces are both a way of organising our discussion and</p><p>a framework that explains the evolution of ISS, i.e. the continuity and</p><p>transitions in the concept of security, the major political and empirical</p><p>questions on the agenda, and the epistemology through which security</p><p>is studied. This means that chapters 4 to 8, which document and analyse</p><p>the evolution of ISS, are not all structured in the same way. The driving</p><p>forces are used as an analytical framework in all five chapters, but with</p><p>four variations.</p><p>First, ‘events’ has a special status in that it functions as a way of arranging</p><p>the chapters into three chronological groups: chapters 4 and 5 are about</p><p>the Cold War, chapters 6 and 7 are about the post-Cold War and pre-9/11,</p><p>and chapter 8 is about the impact of these attacks and the subsequent</p><p>‘War on Terror’. This, however, does not mean that everything changes</p><p>in 1989 or 2001, but rather that these events pose a series of significant</p><p>questions for ISS.</p><p>Second, there is also a division of labour logic at work that follows</p><p>from the way in which the two major events in ISS have been used to</p><p>structure the chapters: since chapter 5 (Cold War Challengers) is to a</p><p>large extent a critical counter chapter to chapter 4 (Cold War Strategic</p><p>Studies), many of the descriptions of the major events and technology</p><p>need not be introduced again in chapter 5.</p><p>50 the driving forces behind the evolution of iss</p><p>Third, it is, of course, not everything that fits nicely into a chronolog-</p><p>ical structure, in that approaches that were first laid out during the Cold</p><p>War were in most cases also important later on. Feminism and Poststruc-</p><p>turalism were, for example, introduced into ISS in the mid–late 1980s</p><p>and they are therefore dealt with at length in chapter 5. Chapter 7 will</p><p>build on this presentation and ask how the end of the Cold War and the</p><p>general evolution of the field of ISS impacted on these approaches. Those</p><p>approaches that were genuine newcomers to the widening debate in the</p><p>1990s are thus dealt with more extensively in this chapter. These divisions</p><p>of labour mean that there is a quantitative difference that one should</p><p>notice (Conventional and Critical Constructivism get more pages than</p><p>Poststructuralism in chapter 7), but that this does not by itself amount to</p><p>a qualitative difference or to a qualitative or normative preference on our</p><p>part.</p><p>Fourth, each chapter has one or more disciplinary and conceptual</p><p>stories to tell or plots to unfold, and the driving forces help tell those</p><p>stories (see chapter 1). But because the plots are different, the way in</p><p>which the driving forces help organise the chapters also differs.</p><p>The five driving forces as general analytical categories</p><p>Great power politics</p><p>Perhaps the most obvious driver of the ISS literature has been the major</p><p>movements (and non-movements) in the distribution of power among</p><p>the leading states. The crystallisation of bipolarity during the late 1940s,</p><p>with its peculiarly intense and militarised superpower US–Soviet rivalry,</p><p>set the dominant framing of ISS for the next forty years. Within that</p><p>framing, and necessary to it, was an important non-event: namely that</p><p>both Western Europe collectively and Japan remained as mostly civilian</p><p>powers closely associated with the US, and did not seek to reassert tra-</p><p>ditional great power military capability. This action stabilised bipolarity</p><p>and extended its run. As a consequence, security analysis during the Cold</p><p>War was almost synonymous with studying US–Soviet relations and a</p><p>bipolar system with enmity between two superpowers whose direct and</p><p>covert influence stretched around the globe. Other phenomena appeared</p><p>on the research agenda, for instance the question of Third World security</p><p>(Bull, 1976), but these were seen as structured (if not determined) by</p><p>bipolarity.</p><p>The importance of great power politics is also evident from the debate</p><p>over which polarity replaced bipolarity after the end of the Cold War, with</p><p>the five driving forces as general analytical categories 51</p><p>suggestions ranging from uni- to multipolarity (Waltz, 1993; Kupchan,</p><p>1998; Huntington, 1999). Until the end of the 1980s, superpower rela-</p><p>tions had been frozen at only slightly fluctuating levels of enmity and</p><p>engagement,</p><p>by another twenty years of silence on the subject.</p><p>A sceptical reader might of course think that this indicates the futility,</p><p>impossibility or lack of audience for such a project, but we beg to differ.</p><p>We think that an intellectual history, and an account of how different</p><p>perspectives play into each other, evolve and battle, is a useful thing to have.</p><p>Historical context is always good, and allows ISS to enter the pantheon</p><p>of related academic enterprises like Political Theory, Political Science and</p><p>International Relations (IR) that do have such self-understanding. An</p><p>intellectual and sociology of science history can provide those in ISS with</p><p>a better sense of where they and others came from, why they might differ</p><p>and about what, and which points of contestation do in fact tie the field</p><p>together.</p><p>One difficulty with such a project, and a possible explanation of why ISS</p><p>has not had an intellectual history, is that its sense of disciplinary identity</p><p>is contested, making how to define what falls into ISS and what does not</p><p>a political – and politicised – question. This issue of delineation takes us</p><p>into the longer story to this book. Barry Buzan has worked for nearly</p><p>forty years on security, from the heyday of traditionalist Strategic Studies</p><p>ix</p><p>x foreword</p><p>over the burgeoning turns to the widening and deepening of security in</p><p>the 1980s to contemporary securitisation debates. Lene Hansen came to</p><p>ISS in the early 1990s, reading Walker before Waltz and Der Derian rather</p><p>than Deutsch. Clearly, for someone who picked up our CVs an immediate</p><p>difference in starting point and positioning in relation to traditionalist</p><p>versus widening/deepening debates would spring to mind. What we had</p><p>in common however was a long connection, starting at the Copenhagen</p><p>Peace Research Institute (COPRI) in 1991, with the Copenhagen School –</p><p>Barry as a founding figure, Lene as a boundary-testing critic. We shared</p><p>intellectual links through Ole Wæver, also then at COPRI, and an interest</p><p>in the concepts and ways in which different perspectives could come to</p><p>understand and recognise each other. All this of course makes us part</p><p>of the story that we tell, and places us more on the European side of</p><p>what is mainly an Atlantic story. Although we have aimed for a full</p><p>and balanced account, a version of this book written from within the</p><p>US mainstream ISS community might well reflect somewhat different</p><p>priorities and perspectives. And since we come from the middle and</p><p>radical end of the ISS spectrum, a version written by a traditionalist or</p><p>a rational-choicer would also reflect different priorities and perspectives.</p><p>Self-involvement also opens up the embarrassing contradiction that what</p><p>qualifies us to tell the story also threatens our detachment from it. Readers</p><p>will have to judge for themselves how well (or not) we dealt with this.</p><p>Our hunch is that the duration, immensity and diversity of the ISS</p><p>archive, especially when casting the inclusion net widely, which we have</p><p>deliberately done, mean that coming to grips with ISS requires the mem-</p><p>ory, perspective (and stamina!) of more than one person. Our age differ-</p><p>ence has helped us not only to understand the perspectives of different</p><p>generations, but also to think about how one communicates the historical</p><p>context of a particular literature as well as its contemporary relevance.</p><p>One aim of our project was to counteract the illusion that there is a</p><p>clear ‘before and after 1990’ structure to ISS, with everything changing</p><p>as a result of the Cold War ending and widening approaches suddenly</p><p>appearing. For new entrants into ISS it is quite easy to get the impression</p><p>than nothing much before 1990 matters now. We hope to show that ISS</p><p>has significant coherence not just across the many approaches that now</p><p>define it, but also across time. One needs a sense of the whole story in</p><p>order to understand both the structure and significance of what ISS looks</p><p>like now.</p><p>Our thanks to Lucy Robinson for suggesting the idea that led to this</p><p>book and to John Haslam at Cambridge University Press for taking on the</p><p>foreword xi</p><p>book project and being tolerant of its ever-lengthening word count and</p><p>timetable. Thanks also to Mathias Lydholm Rasmussen, Anne Kathrine</p><p>Mikkelsen Nyborg and Ian Siperco for research assistance; and to Maria-</p><p>Lara Martin at the International Studies Association (ISA) Headquarters</p><p>in Tucson, Arizona, for going through the files and sending us their</p><p>material on the Peace Studies Section of the ISA. Many people have offered</p><p>comments along the way and our appreciation goes to the audience at the</p><p>ISA’s annual convention in San Diego in 2006, particularly our discus-</p><p>sant Michael C. Williams; the IR Group in the Department of Political</p><p>Science, University of Copenhagen; the audience at the European Con-</p><p>sortium for Political Research (ECPR) Standing Group on International</p><p>Relations conference in Turin in 2007, particularly Francesco Ragazzi,</p><p>who was the discussant; and to the three reviewers for Cambridge Uni-</p><p>versity Press, particularly for the suggestion that we look more closely at</p><p>financing and the institutional side of ISS. Pinar Bilgin, Lene Cividanes,</p><p>Lawrence Freedman, Matti Jutila, Sanne Brasch Kristensen, Jeppe Mülich,</p><p>Nini Nielsen, Karen Lund Petersen, Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen, Christine</p><p>Sylvester, Ole Wæver, Håkan Wiberg and Michael C. Williams did us the</p><p>great favour of reading and commenting on the whole penultimate draft,</p><p>and Anders Wivel did the same for particular chapters. These comments</p><p>were extremely helpful to us in shaping the final manuscript. Finally,</p><p>we wish to thank the Department of Political Science and the Centre</p><p>for Advanced Security Theory (CAST) at the University of Copenhagen</p><p>for funding most of the research assistance and multiple trips between</p><p>Copenhagen and London, and the LSE for funding the rest of the research</p><p>assistance.</p><p>Barry Buzan (London)</p><p>Lene Hansen (Copenhagen)</p><p>September 2008</p><p>ABBREVIATIONS</p><p>ABM Anti-Ballistic Missile</p><p>ACDA Arms Control and Disarmament Agency</p><p>AFK Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Friedens- und Konfliktforschung</p><p>ARF ASEAN Regional Forum</p><p>ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations</p><p>BMD Ballistic Missile Defence</p><p>CAC Council for Arms Control</p><p>CAST Centre for Advanced Security Theory</p><p>CDSS Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies</p><p>CEE Central and Eastern Europe</p><p>CESS Centre for European Security Studies</p><p>CFE Conventional Armed Forces in Europe</p><p>CHALLENGE Changing Landscape of European Liberty and Security</p><p>CND Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament</p><p>CNS Center for Nonproliferation Studies</p><p>COPRI Copenhagen Peace Research Institute</p><p>CPREA Canadian Peace Research and Education Association</p><p>CSIS Center for Strategic and International Studies</p><p>CSS Critical Security Studies</p><p>ECPR European Consortium for Political Research</p><p>ED Extended deterrence</p><p>END European Nuclear Disarmament</p><p>ESRC Economic and Social Research Council</p><p>EU European Union</p><p>EUISS European Union Institute for Security Studies</p><p>FRY Former Republic of Yugoslavia</p><p>FSU Former Soviet Union</p><p>GIPRI Geneva International Peace Research Institute</p><p>GWoT Global War on Terrorism</p><p>IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency</p><p>IDSA Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses</p><p>IDSS Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies</p><p>xii</p><p>list of abbreviations xiii</p><p>IFSH Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at Hamburg</p><p>University</p><p>IISS International Institute for Strategic Studies</p><p>INF Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces</p><p>IPE International Political Economy</p><p>IPRA International Peace Research Association</p><p>IPSHU Institute for Peace Science Hiroshima University</p><p>IR International Relations</p><p>ISA International Studies Association</p><p>ISS International Security Studies</p><p>JPR Journal of Peace Research</p><p>LNW Limited nuclear war</p><p>LSE London School of Economics and Political Science</p><p>MAD Mutually Assured Destruction</p><p>MIC Military–industrial complex</p><p>MTCR Missile Technology Control Regime</p><p>NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization</p><p>NGO Non-government organisation</p><p>NNWS Non-nuclear weapon states</p><p>NoD Non-offensive defence</p><p>but with the dissolution of the Soviet Union came not only</p><p>a reconsideration of the polarity of the international system, but also of</p><p>the relations between the great powers. Was the US going to face enemies</p><p>or would its deployment of ‘soft power’ or ‘co-optive power’ stabilise the</p><p>system (Nye, 1990)? And what level of resources was the US prepared to</p><p>devote to security problems outside its own immediate sphere of interest</p><p>(Posen and Ross, 1996/7)?</p><p>The rise of China has also been a perennial great power issue since</p><p>the victory of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, but moved more</p><p>centre-stage as the only obvious ‘peer competitor’ to the US from the early</p><p>to mid 1990s, when the demise of the Soviet Union and the economic</p><p>eclipse of Japan made it more obvious. The huge expansion in China’s</p><p>economy, and its half-friendly, half-rivalry relationship with the West,</p><p>make its status a key theme in discussions of international security, and</p><p>one whose importance is almost certain to rise during the early decades of</p><p>this century. The attacks on 9/11 led US policy-makers and many security</p><p>analysts to define a new era. Whether the ‘Global War on Terrorism’ will</p><p>ultimately boost or weaken the relative power of the US and exacerbate</p><p>or ameliorate patterns of amity and enmity remains to be seen, but great</p><p>power politics is still a key question on the agenda.</p><p>To point to great power politics as a driving force is also to note that</p><p>ISS began as an American discipline, focused on American security and</p><p>written by Americans (although some had emigrated from Europe to</p><p>the US before or during the Second World War) (Kolodziej, 1992: 434).</p><p>European approaches might have gained more ground after the end of the</p><p>Cold War, but as Ayoob (1984) and Krause (1996) point out, it is still the</p><p>Western model of the state which forms the core of ISS. The US-centrism</p><p>that has infused the birth of ISS and its development during the Cold War</p><p>means that the particularities of the US as a state and society have been,</p><p>and remain still, one of the central driving forces of ISS; hence there is an</p><p>analytical incorporation of a domestic societal variable under the driving</p><p>force of great power politics.</p><p>US dominance was large during the Cold War, but from the 1990s</p><p>onwards, with the US as the sole superpower, the particularities and</p><p>peculiarities of the US became even more influential. It is not that the US</p><p>is unique in having its own peculiarities: all countries do. It is that the</p><p>dominant position of the US makes its peculiarities matter much more</p><p>than those of less powerful states. This is a massively complicated and</p><p>52 the driving forces behind the evolution of iss</p><p>controversial topic which pushes enquiry towards the large literature on</p><p>American exceptionalism (Buzan, 2004a: 153–182).</p><p>A distinctive feature of the US is that its geography and history have</p><p>insulated it from the rigours of war and the balance of power to a much</p><p>greater extent than is true for most of the countries of Eurasia. Isolationism</p><p>has been an option for the US in a way that it was not for other powers,</p><p>and the US has strong traditions against military entanglements and</p><p>engagements abroad. It also has as its norm a higher standard of national</p><p>security: a desire to be absolutely secure against outside threats as it</p><p>largely was for much of its history. The Soviet threat was sufficiently</p><p>global, and sufficiently challenging to the much cherished American idea</p><p>that their country was the model for the future of humankind, to draw</p><p>the US out of isolationism. But even though the US accepted a long-</p><p>term global commitment against a broad-spectrum challenger, it still did</p><p>not abandon its high standard for national security (Campbell, 1992).</p><p>One can read this into both the frenzied US reaction to Sputnik (see</p><p>chapter 4), and, up to a point, into the obsession with working out</p><p>the last detail of deterrence logic in order to ensure that the US would</p><p>not be caught at a disadvantage. Even clearer is its impact on the Anti-</p><p>Ballistic Missile/Ballistic Missile Defence (ABM/BMD) project, where the</p><p>promise was precisely of invulnerability to attack. The allure of that goal</p><p>made ABM/BMD a central feature of US strategic thinking and policy,</p><p>despite the fact that the technology has never come close to delivering the</p><p>promise, and that many experts argue that it never will. It is also visible</p><p>in the decision to retain unprecedentedly high relative levels of military</p><p>expenditure after the end of the Cold War, though there one might want</p><p>also to look at bureaucratic and domestic political factors. The high</p><p>expectation of security can additionally be seen in the US response to</p><p>9/11. The shock of vulnerability ran deep in the US, in ways that it has</p><p>been difficult for societies with less stringent expectations of security to</p><p>understand or empathise with.</p><p>Summing up this discussion, the driving force of great power politics</p><p>comprises: the distribution of power among the leading states (the polarity</p><p>of the international system); the patterns of amity and enmity among</p><p>the great powers; the degree of involvement and interventionism by the</p><p>great powers; and their particular societal dispositions towards levels of</p><p>security. These elements are to some extent related, at least according</p><p>to a Realist logic. In a bipolar system, for instance, there would tend to</p><p>be stronger patterns of enmity than in a multipolar one, and a bipolar</p><p>system would also presuppose that its two superpowers were driven to</p><p>the five driving forces as general analytical categories 53</p><p>a high degree of interventionism. One may indeed argue that a great</p><p>power has to show at least the traces of a desire to be involved in global</p><p>politics (Buzan and Wæver, 2003: 35). Yet while these four elements may</p><p>be related they are also distinct: the bipolar structure witnessed both</p><p>periods of détente and ‘colder Cold Wars’ where the level of amity/enmity</p><p>fluctuated, and US–EU relations have done so as well over the last two</p><p>decades of unipolarity combined with a European great power. And, the</p><p>interventionism of the US receded after the Gulf War of 1990–91 and</p><p>Somalia only to return in full with the ‘intervention’ in Kosovo, all under</p><p>the same polarity structure. From the US concern with enemies also arises</p><p>the question of whether or not the US in particular, and great powers in</p><p>general, need enemies or threats in order to define themselves and ease the</p><p>problems of domestic governance. As one moves into the study of enmity</p><p>one may also ask more specific questions about how ‘enmity identity’ is</p><p>constructed: is it an entire nation/civilisation or culture which is seen as</p><p>radically opposed to ‘Us’ or is it because that country is run by a corrupt,</p><p>power-mongering elite? Is enmity connected to a barbaric identity that</p><p>cannot be transformed, or is it based simply on states being self-sufficient,</p><p>rational actors within an anarchical structure (Hansen, 2006)?</p><p>The technological imperative</p><p>Almost equally obvious as a driver of ISS is the continuous unfolding</p><p>of new technologies and the need to assess their impact on the threats,</p><p>vulnerabilities and the (in)stabilities of strategic relationships. The arrival</p><p>during the mid-1940s of the atom bomb was pretty much the founda-</p><p>tional event for Strategic Studies and the impact of nuclear – and nuclear</p><p>related – technology during the Cold War can hardly be exaggerated.</p><p>Nuclear weapons provided a huge surplus capacity of destructive power</p><p>for the first time in military history. Long-range ballistic missiles speeded</p><p>up delivery times and were capable of carrying nuclear warheads, a tech-</p><p>nological development that liberated nuclear weapons from vulnerable</p><p>bomber delivery systems, and greatly increased the capacity to make a first</p><p>strike against opponents. Whereas nuclear warheads and intercontinental</p><p>missiles were real developments feeding huge quantities of ISS literature,</p><p>the enormous and ongoing literature on ABM/BMD reveals that even</p><p>potential technology developments could have major impacts on</p><p>both</p><p>strategic relations and ISS.</p><p>Technology need not be exclusively military in kind to make an impact</p><p>on ISS. The history of military and civilian technologies is often one of</p><p>54 the driving forces behind the evolution of iss</p><p>interplay and ‘dual-use’. The Internet, for instance, was originally devel-</p><p>oped as a military technology, as a distributed network transmitting infor-</p><p>mation under a nuclear attack. Nuclear technology, to take another exam-</p><p>ple, has a military as well as a civil side (energy and medicine) that can</p><p>be difficult to differentiate, a fact which also complicates the assessment</p><p>of nuclear proliferation. The same dilemma is applicable to biological</p><p>and chemical weapons or to the communications technologies applied in</p><p>both civilian consumer electronics and battlefield management.</p><p>If the concept of security is expanded beyond the military sector, the</p><p>list of technological factors that can drive security debates grows as well. If</p><p>HIV/AIDS is seen as a threat to regional security in parts of Africa and Asia,</p><p>the retroviral technology for treating those infected is key to the spread</p><p>and consequences of the disease (Elbe, 2006). Or, if the environment</p><p>is threatened by the effects of industrialisation, then the technologies</p><p>implicated in these threats and their solution become central. The attacks</p><p>on 9/11 and the ‘Global War on Terrorism’ show that technology and the</p><p>identification of threats and enemies are intimately linked and that the</p><p>list of technologies central to ISS changes over time.</p><p>The question of how technology impacts economic, political, military</p><p>and cultural developments has been a topic of great debate in the social</p><p>sciences and to speak about technology as a driving factor thus raises</p><p>the spectre of technological determinism (Levy, 1984; Paarlberg, 2004).</p><p>Yet while technology is undoubtedly a main driver in the development</p><p>of ISS, it is by no means a determining one: first, because technology is</p><p>itself influenced by the other driving forces; and second, because there are</p><p>human agents (civilian and military, commercial and public) who make</p><p>decisions about which technology to develop. The evolution of nuclear</p><p>technology during the Cold War was, for example, hugely impacted</p><p>by the bipolar confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union.</p><p>Once in the world, technology creates pressures of its own, which again</p><p>impacts the political process, but this is a complex process of feedback</p><p>between technology and the other driving forces and human decisions, not</p><p>one of determinism.</p><p>Events</p><p>As the discussion above has already indicated, it is impossible to imagine</p><p>the birth and the evolution of ISS without the impact of key events,</p><p>but it is equally important that this impact is theorised in a way that</p><p>does not claim events as a causal force that simply exerts its power on a</p><p>the five driving forces as general analytical categories 55</p><p>pliable academic community. Hence we theorise events in a Constructivist</p><p>manner and emphasise the interplay between events and the other driving</p><p>forces. Events come in various forms, and they can change not only</p><p>relationships among the powers, but the academic paradigms used to</p><p>understand those relationships. The most dramatic are specific crises that</p><p>not only become objects of study in their own right, but which change</p><p>existing understandings, relationships and practices in the wider strategic</p><p>domain. Two examples of this type are the Cuba Missile Crisis in 1962</p><p>(Snyder, 1978; Weldes, 1996) and the terrorist attacks on the US on 9/11</p><p>(Barkawi, 2004; Der Derian, 2005).</p><p>Other events take the form of steady processes unfolding over time that</p><p>change the knowledge, understanding and consciousness that support</p><p>existing practices. A good example of this is the rise of environmental</p><p>concerns and the move of the environment from a background variable</p><p>to a foreground one (Ullman, 1983; Deudney, 1990). There was no spe-</p><p>cific crisis that put environmental issues into the forefront, but rather a</p><p>steady drip of new information, new understandings and a rising pub-</p><p>lic consciousness that grew sufficiently wide and deep to open a place</p><p>for environmental security in policy debates and the ISS literature. The</p><p>identification of key events might often seem common-sensical: it is not</p><p>hard to see the impact of the Soviet Union gaining nuclear weapons, its</p><p>dissolution in 1991, or the attacks on 9/11. Yet in analytical terms one</p><p>should note that events are in fact politically and intersubjectively con-</p><p>stituted. It is the acknowledgement (or not) by politicians, institutions,</p><p>the media and the public that something is of such importance that it</p><p>should be responded to, possibly even with military means, that makes it</p><p>an ‘event’ (Hansen, 2006). Herein lies much controversy over why events</p><p>that kill or maim huge numbers of people in the Third World (hunger,</p><p>disease, civil war) often fail to get constructed as security events in the</p><p>West.</p><p>We divide events into three categories. Constitutive events are those</p><p>singled out by a theory as major occurrences which have given rise to</p><p>the theory in question or which are seen as reinforcing the basic tenets</p><p>of the theory either because they confirm central analytical assumptions</p><p>or because they can be explained by the theory. A particular kind of</p><p>constitutive event is what Parmar (2005) has called catalysing events:</p><p>events that politicians or academics have been waiting for in the belief</p><p>that these would ‘permit their relatively unpopular ideas and schemes for</p><p>a radical foreign policy shift to gain an attentive public hearing’ (Parmar,</p><p>2005: 2). Catalysing events may be identified methodologically prior to</p><p>56 the driving forces behind the evolution of iss</p><p>an event if they are constituted as such in discourse. After the catalysing</p><p>event has taken place, we may trace how it is constituted in support of</p><p>the shift in question. One of the examples provided by Parmar is the</p><p>Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 which was the ‘shock’ that men</p><p>in the US State Department felt that the isolationist public needed to enter</p><p>the Second World War (Parmar, 2005: 17). As Parmar notes (2005: 8),</p><p>to take advantage of catalysing events ‘requires planning, organization,</p><p>publicity and political positioning’, which is to say that events do not</p><p>become catalysing – or indeed key events at all – without the support of</p><p>other driving forces.</p><p>Significant critical events are those that appear to challenge key aspects</p><p>of the theory in question. Significant critical events are put on the agenda</p><p>due to pressure from the media, policy initiatives or other, competing</p><p>theories and they may lead the theory in question to expand its research</p><p>agenda in response to these ‘new questions and themes’. Or it may lead</p><p>the theory to offer elaborate justifications as to why it is able to account</p><p>for these alleged ‘critical’ events. Or it may cause the theory to offer minor</p><p>adjustments to its basic assumptions and hypotheses. A good example of</p><p>a significant critical event is the upsurge in so-called ethnic intra-state</p><p>wars as these were taken on board by Neorealist scholars during the first</p><p>half of the 1990s (Posen, 1993; Van Evera 1994; Kaufmann, 1996). The</p><p>third category of events are deferred critical events, that is events that are</p><p>constituted as significant by other political, media or academic actors, but</p><p>which the theory either chooses to ignore, or to categorise as not falling</p><p>within the scope of proper ISS. As an illustration of deferred critical events</p><p>we may point to issues such as wartime rape, honour killings and sex-</p><p>trafficking, which in spite of being granted significant media and policy</p><p>attention have not led most security scholars to incorporate gender issues</p><p>(Tickner, 1997, 2005; Hansen, 2000a).</p><p>Because different perspectives will constitute events differently, there</p><p>is not a simple one-to-one relationship between ‘the real world’ and</p><p>ISS. What register as events and facts are also implicated in the very</p><p>conceptualisation of security within a</p><p>particular approach. Since what we</p><p>are tracing is the evolution of ISS and not the real world, the events that we</p><p>are going to identify are also those that have been granted ISS significance.</p><p>Our accounts of key events in chapters 4 to 8 are thus through the lens</p><p>of what has been analysed and debated, not a balanced account of what</p><p>happened in the world as such. That said, we should also understand ISS</p><p>as a sub-field that is itself struggling with other sub-fields and disciplines</p><p>for funding, prestige and the claim to ‘policy relevance’. This means that</p><p>the five driving forces as general analytical categories 57</p><p>ISS cannot neglect entirely what other fields and actors, not least policy-</p><p>makers, constitute as key events.</p><p>The internal dynamics of academic debates</p><p>A positivist model of how academic knowledge is created would, as noted</p><p>above, predict that ISS has evolved progressively in response to key events,</p><p>new technologies and great power politics. Hypotheses would be derived,</p><p>falsified or verified, and theories revised, expanded or abandoned in</p><p>response. The actual development of ISS is, however, much more con-</p><p>flictual due to the absence of consensus on what scientific model should</p><p>be adopted and the inherently political nature at the heart of the field.</p><p>IR literature, including ISS, is much affected by current affairs, but it is</p><p>also affected by changes in theoretical and epistemological fashion which</p><p>may or may not have any immediate link to what is going on in the real</p><p>world. Looking more systematically at the internal dynamics of academic</p><p>debates, there are four dimensions within this driving force that are of</p><p>significance for the evolution of ISS.</p><p>First, what drives the social sciences, including ISS, is to a large extent</p><p>debates on epistemology, methodology and the choice of research focus.</p><p>As shown in chapter 2, the call for objective measures and rational science</p><p>has been part of ISS since the early 1950s, and discussions of epistemol-</p><p>ogy and methodology have been central ever since, particularly from the</p><p>late 1980s onwards. A distinctive and recurring feature of ISS debates is</p><p>the dichotomy that obtains between the hard positivist understanding</p><p>of theory which dominates in the US, and the softer reflectivist under-</p><p>standings of theory found more widely in Europe (Wæver, 1998). This</p><p>reflects a deeper divide in the whole approach to what ‘theory’ means in</p><p>IR, as was laid out in chapter 2. US social science is particularly receptive</p><p>to rationalist, economistic approaches to its subject, a feature again on</p><p>display from the early years of deterrence theory and onwards whereas</p><p>critical, predominantly European, approaches have emphasised interpre-</p><p>tative and hermeneutic forms of analysis. Once in place, academic debates</p><p>have a quite considerable life of their own. One could be cynical about</p><p>this, and point to careerist motivations for doing various kinds of writ-</p><p>ing, and distortions of priority created by both state and private funders,</p><p>but the core fact is that academics thrive on argument, and most schol-</p><p>ars believe that competition between different interpretations of things</p><p>is essential to the pursuit of understanding. In the social sciences, com-</p><p>peting interpretations of problems can be primarily normative, such as</p><p>58 the driving forces behind the evolution of iss</p><p>those between Strategic Studies on the one hand and Peace Research and</p><p>Critical Security Studies (CSS) and Human Security on the other. Or</p><p>they can be primarily analytical, as in the debate about whether deter-</p><p>rence is easy or difficult. Mixtures are also there, as in the ABM/BMD</p><p>debates.</p><p>Second, academic debates in ISS are influenced by developments in</p><p>other academic fields. ISS has relied upon significant imports from other</p><p>disciplines, and not just on Mathematics and Economics which delivered</p><p>most of the first generation of nuclear strategists. These imports include:</p><p>game theory (Jervis, 1978); Cognitive Psychology (Snyder, 1978); Lin-</p><p>guistics (Cohn, 1987; Wæver, 1995; Fierke, 1996); social theory (Dalby,</p><p>1988; Price, 1995; Wyn Jones, 1995; Krause, 1996; Hansen, 2000a; Bigo,</p><p>2002; Der Derian, 2005); Political Theory (Walker, 1990; Williams, 1998);</p><p>Development and Post-colonial Studies (Ayoob, 1984; Krause, 1996;</p><p>Thomas, 2001; Barkawi, 2004); and Feminist Theory (Cohn, 1987; Grant,</p><p>1992; Tickner, 2004; Hansen, 2006). The impact of these disciplines and</p><p>their debates have been felt in ISS both in terms of how security should</p><p>be conceptualised/what should fall under the rubric of ISS, and in terms</p><p>of how it should be analysed. This, however, has not been all a one-</p><p>way street: during its golden age ISS also exported to other disciplines</p><p>significant advances in game theory and systems analysis.</p><p>The close relationship between ISS and IR and Political Science, and</p><p>periodically to other disciplines as well, imply, as noted in chapter 1, that</p><p>there is a ‘frontier zone’ between ISS and these adjacent fields or disci-</p><p>plines. The existence of frontier zones also indicates that there are different</p><p>kinds of relationships between ISS and the other fields/disciplines. Most</p><p>crucially there is an important difference between those ISS approaches</p><p>that came out of general IR to pick ISS as a particular (difficult) case, such</p><p>as Constructivism, and those, like Critical Theorists, Feminists or Post-</p><p>structuralists, who chose security, not because of its epistemological or</p><p>methodological status, but because this was considered a hugely impor-</p><p>tant political question to engage. During the Cold War, ISS had close links</p><p>to (Neo)realism, a link fortified by the division of labour between ISS and</p><p>IPE, which emerged as the other great sub-field of IR in the 1970s. IPE</p><p>partly defined itself against ISS, the two sub-fields carving up the terrain</p><p>of IR so that IPE claimed the cooperative, joint-gains side of the subject,</p><p>with ISS claiming the conflictual, relative gains one.</p><p>Third, a particular feature of academic debates in ISS which reflects</p><p>its political and politicised nature concerns the political and normative</p><p>the five driving forces as general analytical categories 59</p><p>status of security scholars. ISS is constituted as an academic field, which</p><p>means that it gains its legitimacy from being a particular form of knowl-</p><p>edge however broadly conceived. But it is also a field which has been</p><p>formed around a set of perceived urgent policy questions and the bound-</p><p>ary between the academic and the political, the scholar and the advisor,</p><p>has thus always been a tenuous and debated one. Academics may choose</p><p>to act politically, either directly as advisors or as public intellectuals who</p><p>engage in debate in the attempt to influence policy decisions. The advi-</p><p>sory role blurs in most cases the lines between scientific authority and</p><p>policy advocate, while the identity of the public intellectual is built upon</p><p>a particular epistemic authority that sets him or her aside from ‘the aver-</p><p>age citizen’. As an illustration, many universities have a policy for how</p><p>staff should be listed when making media appearances: when speaking</p><p>on matters of security one gives one’s university affiliation, when writing</p><p>about the joys of gardening one does not. Security scholars may speak</p><p>about politics, as did prominent Realists in the lead-up to the war against</p><p>Iraq in 2003 (Mearsheimer and Walt, 2003), but they also need to be care-</p><p>ful to make sure that they do not compromise their academic authority</p><p>and become viewed as ‘merely’ politicising. Exactly where the boundary</p><p>between the academic and the political is drawn can, however, be diffi-</p><p>cult to tell; it is contextually constituted and may differ from country to</p><p>country and perhaps even from university to university. The combination</p><p>of the high politics nature of ‘security’ and the absence of any objective</p><p>definitions of the ‘good security analyst’ means that ISS has witnessed</p><p>heated discussions of the drawing of the academic–advisory boundary</p><p>both within and across approaches.</p><p>Fourth, ISS is also impacted</p><p>by the ‘meta-view’ that scholars hold</p><p>about how the field should evolve. This goes back to the Kuhnian discus-</p><p>sion of academic paradigms and commensurability above and underlines</p><p>that there are different views on whether ISS is – or should be – a field</p><p>made up by only one approach or whether it thrives on debate across</p><p>different approaches. If ISS is made up of different perspectives, are these</p><p>incommensurable or is there, in spite of the different views of referent</p><p>objects, threats and politics, a substantial and thematic core that ties the</p><p>field together, thus constituting a ‘meta-commensurability’? Do security</p><p>scholars have a responsibility to engage across paradigms, or may they</p><p>just as well try to either exile or ignore opponents? Different scholars have</p><p>responded differently to these questions and their responses have impor-</p><p>tant consequences for how ISS evolves as a field, both for its diversity and</p><p>60 the driving forces behind the evolution of iss</p><p>for its culture of scholarly communication and engagement. We address</p><p>this explicitly in chapter 9, where we discuss whether ISS has become a</p><p>delta connecting a variety of approaches or whether it has retreated into</p><p>a series of inward-looking camps.</p><p>Institutionalisation</p><p>To identify institutionalisation as a driving force is to further highlight that</p><p>academic debates do not unfold in an economic and structural vacuum.</p><p>Simply put, for there to be an academic discipline (Political Science), or</p><p>a field (IR), or a sub-field (ISS), there has to be a set of supporting insti-</p><p>tutional structures and identities. Academic disciplines and fields are not</p><p>objective representations of reality, but rather particular ways of looking</p><p>at, and generating knowledge about, the world (Foucault, 1969, 1970).</p><p>As a consequence, it is essential for there being a field of study that there</p><p>is an academic community that self-identifies as, for instance, security</p><p>scholars or IR theorists. The institutionalisation of any subject involves</p><p>not only the allocation of resources and the embedding of a certain pro-</p><p>cess of reproduction, but also brings with it the bureaucratic dynamics</p><p>of organisations. Since organisations, once established, are often hard to</p><p>kill, institutionalisation also creates a type of inertia (which could be seen</p><p>as momentum) carrying the past into the future. The institutionalisation</p><p>of ISS through generations of hiring practices might easily breed a certain</p><p>conservatism as far as broadening the concept of security is concerned.</p><p>Institutionalised conceptions might also ‘slow down’ the impact of key</p><p>events, as when Neorealism managed to reinvent itself after its failure to</p><p>predict the end of the Cold War. But other aspects of institutionalisation,</p><p>for instance a change in funding programmes, may also speed up the</p><p>effect of other forces.</p><p>Surprisingly little has been written about this in relation to IR and ISS</p><p>so we need to explain it at greater length than for the other driving forces.</p><p>Simply put, institutionalisation may be seen as comprising four overlap-</p><p>ping elements: organisational structures, funding, the dissemination of</p><p>knowledge, and research networks. These are summed up in Table 3.1</p><p>and will be laid out in more detail below.</p><p>First, institutionalisation identifies the way in which ISS is conducted</p><p>within – and hence supported by – a set of organisational structures.</p><p>Organisations range from the academic ones of universities through</p><p>the five driving forces as general analytical categories 61</p><p>Table 3.1. The driving force of institutionalisation</p><p>INSTITUTIONALISATION</p><p>Organisational Dissemination Research</p><p>structures Funding of knowledge networks</p><p>Academic</p><p>Universities</p><p>- Undergraduate and</p><p>graduate programmes/</p><p>degrees</p><p>- Departments and</p><p>positions in Security</p><p>Studies</p><p>Academic/policy</p><p>Research centres</p><p>Policy/advocacy</p><p>Think-tanks</p><p>- Governments</p><p>- Foundations</p><p>- Universities</p><p>- Think-tanks</p><p>Academic</p><p>- Publications</p><p>(books,</p><p>journals, etc.)</p><p>- Conferences</p><p>Public</p><p>- Expert</p><p>appearances</p><p>- Public</p><p>intellectual</p><p>- Conferences</p><p>- Digital</p><p>networks</p><p>- Visiting</p><p>positions</p><p>- Placement of</p><p>PhDs</p><p>research centres to think-tanks with a more explicitly political agenda.</p><p>Policy research may be carried out by all organisations, but tends to</p><p>play a stronger role in think-tanks and research centres. Beginning with</p><p>academic institutions, ISS is concretely influenced by the way in which</p><p>departments educate, grant degrees, conduct research and fill positions on</p><p>a given subject. The very fact that courses on Strategic Studies were taught</p><p>from the late 1960s onwards institutionalised ISS within academe as well</p><p>as in the policy world. Tenured professors make decisions on what future</p><p>students learn and they decide which graduate students are accepted and</p><p>on what topics. Successful graduate programmes are characterised by the</p><p>ability of graduating PhDs to find jobs at respectable universities and pol-</p><p>icy institutes, and hiring policies at universities are thus extremely central</p><p>to institution building (Betts, 1997).</p><p>In contrast to academic institutions which are presumed to be adopt-</p><p>ing an objective, analytical stance, think-tanks – and the foundations</p><p>supporting them – are often mapped according to political–ideological</p><p>categories: the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation</p><p>and the Hoover Institution are considered Conservative; the Center for</p><p>Strategic and International Studies is centre-right; the Council on For-</p><p>eign Relations and RAND are centrist; the Brookings Institution and the</p><p>62 the driving forces behind the evolution of iss</p><p>Carnegie Endowment for International Peace are centre-left. Turning to</p><p>foundations, the Ford Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur</p><p>Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts and the Rockefeller Foundation are</p><p>defined as Liberal, whereas some of the major Conservative ones include</p><p>John M. Olin Foundation (closed by 2005), Sarah Scaife Foundation,</p><p>Earhart Foundation and Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation (McGann,</p><p>2007: 25, 63). These categorisations provide some indication of what work</p><p>is going to be carried out or supported by the think-tank or foundation in</p><p>question. Yet we should also be cautious about making rigid connections</p><p>between think-tank labels and the kind of ISS research which is being sup-</p><p>ported or the policy stance adopted. Foundations and think-tanks differ</p><p>in how explicit and narrowly their political agenda is defined, and they</p><p>differ in how they balance or mix the scholar/advisor constellation dis-</p><p>cussed above. A particular ideological agenda may not exclude supporting</p><p>works that come to quite different readings of global security politics, and</p><p>hence the (Western/American) policies to be pursued. The John M. Olin</p><p>Foundation, for instance, sponsored both Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’</p><p>and Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ projects, which shows that insti-</p><p>tutions may also see themselves as thriving on debate (within particular</p><p>parameters) (Wooster, 2006).</p><p>To point to the influence of think-tanks, one of the most politi-</p><p>cised issues concerning institutionalisation, indicates that the boundaries</p><p>around ISS can sometimes be difficult to draw. The analytical and method-</p><p>ological criteria we apply when distinguishing between ISS scholarship</p><p>and ‘pure’ policy advocacy is thus an open one based on how it is viewed</p><p>by others in the field. Work conducted in think-tanks may sometimes</p><p>be part of ISS, as in the case of RAND scholars’ path-breaking contri-</p><p>butions to game theory and deterrence thinking, while in other cases it</p><p>is perceived as so ideological that it is not a part of ISS as such. That</p><p>this boundary is sometimes hard to draw is illustrated by the debate over</p><p>US Neo-Conservatives and their impact on the Bush administration. As</p><p>pointed out by Williams (2005: 308), Neo-Conservatives do not publish</p><p>in academic journals nor do they engage in academic theoretical debate</p><p>inside IR or ISS. They prefer magazines and newspapers and concrete</p><p>issues, and often adopt a ‘polemical language that sits uncomfortably</p><p>with the culture of scholarly discourse’. Yet, argues Williams, the impact</p><p>of this movement on the Bush administration and the deeper resonance</p><p>between Neo-Conservative discourse and key Political Theory themes</p><p>justifies a consideration of Neo-Conservatism as IR theory. This grey</p><p>zone between policy and academe is on the one hand an analytical and</p><p>the five driving forces as general analytical categories 63</p><p>methodological challenge – it’s always easier if the material at hand falls</p><p>neatly into distinct boxes – but it is also on the other hand an indication</p><p>of the fact that ISS is a field that has been constituted by an ambiguous</p><p>juggling of the objective detachment of the analytical observer and the</p><p>passionate ideological commitment of the concerned citizen.</p><p>The discussions of the significance of think-tanks and foundations</p><p>often concern their ability to influence either the policy world or the aca-</p><p>demic world of ISS. The question of political influence also comes to the</p><p>fore in discussions of the links between ISS and governmental institutions.</p><p>To the extent that universities and other research institutions are publicly</p><p>funded they are of course dependent on governments – and parliamentary</p><p>support more broadly – granting priority to higher education. Depending</p><p>on the political system in question, public funding may be more or less</p><p>explicitly targeted and come with particular restrictions. Much security</p><p>analysis adopts an implicit view of scholar–state cooperation as either</p><p>unproblematic or as desirable: since ISS should be ‘policy relevant’, work-</p><p>ing for the state as a consultant or periodic employee is uncontroversial.</p><p>Yet, there is also a body of work that takes a much more critical view of</p><p>such collaborations. Criticism may be raised in the context of particular</p><p>policies, as in the debates over the US and the Vietnam War, or who</p><p>‘lost’ China, or policies that break with essential civil liberties and human</p><p>rights. Criticism may also be raised not only against particular policies,</p><p>but towards collaboration with the state in general (Oren, 2003). This</p><p>view of the state ties in with state-critical approaches more broadly, par-</p><p>ticularly Poststructuralism, parts of Peace Research, and Critical Security</p><p>Studies (see chapters 5 and 7).</p><p>Second, the level and kind of funding provided by governments and</p><p>foundations is obviously important – without economic support it is</p><p>hard to envision how organisations could work. In countries charac-</p><p>terised by high levels of public spending on education and research it</p><p>might make a significant difference that resources are invested not only</p><p>in university education and research, but in research centres such as the</p><p>Copenhagen Peace Research Institute (COPRI), home of the Copenhagen</p><p>School (Huysmans, 1998a), the Stockholm International Peace Research</p><p>Institute (SIPRI), PRIO and the Norsk Utenrikspolitisk Institutt (NUPI).</p><p>Foundations have significant discretion to target their financial support</p><p>towards particular programmes, and to foster or inhibit new directions.</p><p>The growth in widening approaches in the 1990s was, for instance, aided</p><p>by a series of American foundations (Nye and Lynn-Jones, 1988: 21;</p><p>Kolodziej, 1992: 437). Funding patterns also impact ISS more indirectly</p><p>64 the driving forces behind the evolution of iss</p><p>through the way in which universities make internal allocation between</p><p>academic departments, and within departments between different sub-</p><p>jects. Successful degree programmes in turn provide economic input as</p><p>students bring tuition fees to universities.</p><p>Third, a crucial element in the institutionalisation of academic dis-</p><p>ciplines is the formation and dissemination of its research. Academic</p><p>publication works both as a way of disseminating knowledge to students</p><p>through curricula and textbooks, and as a way of gaining individual and</p><p>institutional academic prestige through top journals – seen by Wæver as</p><p>the ‘crucial institution of modern sciences’ – and book publishers (Wæver,</p><p>1998: 697). Although scholars rarely make much money on their publica-</p><p>tions, to publish is a commodity that is valued within the reward system</p><p>of academe in that prominent publications often generate support for</p><p>the researcher’s institution and hence provides the researcher in question</p><p>with bargaining power when jobs and promotions come up. As a conse-</p><p>quence, such things as the reviewing procedures adopted by top journals</p><p>are significant for the degree and form of gate-keeping that may be tak-</p><p>ing place, and hence what becomes considered, and institutionalised, as</p><p>legitimate research.</p><p>Another crucial component in the dissemination of academic research</p><p>is conferences where researchers meet, network and test their arguments</p><p>prior to official publication. While academic publications may form the</p><p>backbone of a discipline’s intellectual institutionalisation, the wider pub-</p><p>lic dissemination might be significant as well in that this demonstrates</p><p>the broader societal value of a body of research – and hence why it should</p><p>be supported financially. Security scholars thus often function as public</p><p>intellectuals and experts by writing op-eds and essays for a non-specialist</p><p>audience and by being interviewed for print and electronic media.</p><p>Institutionalisation is not only about the impact of material resources</p><p>on the waxing and waning of academic disciplines – and the sub-fields and</p><p>particular approaches within them – it is also about ideational, symbolic</p><p>and normative factors. Quoting institutional sociologist Richard Scott,</p><p>Williams has pointed to institutionalisation as ‘the process by which a</p><p>given set of units and a pattern of activities come to be normatively</p><p>and cognitively held in place, and practically taken for granted as lawful</p><p>(whether as a matter of formal law, custom or knowledge)’ (Williams,</p><p>1997: 289). Institutionalisation points to what is considered legitimate,</p><p>both as an academic discipline or field and as a form of knowledge,</p><p>and it relies upon and (re)produces structures of knowledge, trust and</p><p>the five driving forces as general analytical categories 65</p><p>symbolic power (Williams, 1997). Here the fourth element of institu-</p><p>tionalisation, the building of research networks and the legitimation of</p><p>particular forms of research that happens within them, is hugely sig-</p><p>nificant. Research networks are built through professional associations,</p><p>meetings at conferences, the exchange of faculty and students through</p><p>visiting programmes, the placement of graduating PhDs by senior pro-</p><p>fessors, and through daily communication about research projects. To give</p><p>just a brief indication of how this has changed over the six decades since</p><p>ISS began, consider how email and cheap airfares have revolutionised the</p><p>way in which researchers can meet and stay in touch. Although difficult to</p><p>theorise, and certainly to quantify, personal sympathies and animosities</p><p>may also be highly important for the way in which research communities</p><p>evolve.</p><p>Summarising the brief overview of institutionalisation above, we will</p><p>work with this driving force analytically and methodologically in three</p><p>ways. First, we are relying upon existing accounts of different aspects of</p><p>institutionalisation which are relatively empirical and historical. These</p><p>accounts are usually not particularly critical of the subject under inves-</p><p>tigation, although they do not necessarily praise it either. Second, where</p><p>necessary we have conducted preliminary primary research to fill in some</p><p>of the gaps in the existing literature, for instance in getting an overview</p><p>of the financial flows of think-tanks and foundations. Third, we deal with</p><p>critiques of institutionalisation as part of ISS debates. There is, as a conse-</p><p>quence, a division of labour between chapters 4 and 5, where the former</p><p>tells a fairly straightforward story of how Strategic Studies became insti-</p><p>tutionalised and institutionally supported during the Cold War. Chapter</p><p>5 then covers both the institutionalisation of Peace Research and other</p><p>alternative approaches to</p><p>security that emerged in the 1980s and the crit-</p><p>ical analyses made of the institutionalisation processes covered in chapter</p><p>4. Chapters 6 to 8 follow a similar strategy of examining both the institu-</p><p>tionalisation of the approaches covered and the latter’s critical account of</p><p>institutionalisation itself.</p><p>4</p><p>Strategic Studies, deterrence and the Cold War</p><p>This chapter focuses on the Cold War and the military, political, tech-</p><p>nological and strategic aspects of the superpower rivalry as theorised by</p><p>the Strategic Studies core of ISS. The central theme of that story is how</p><p>nuclear weapons influenced, and were influenced by, the rivalry between</p><p>the US and the Soviet Union.</p><p>The distinct field of study we are calling ISS did not crystallise out until</p><p>the mid-to-late 1940s, and neither the field nor the concept of security</p><p>were fully formed and accepted from day one. What emerged in the</p><p>US, and to a lesser extent Europe, during the 1940s and 1950s was a</p><p>category of work at the intersection of military expertise and university</p><p>based social science, aimed at addressing the policy problems arising</p><p>from nuclear weapons and the broad-spectrum challenge posed to the</p><p>West by the Soviet Union. These problems were seen as urgent. Because of</p><p>their crucial contributions during the Second World War, civilian experts,</p><p>mainly physicists and social scientists, could now specialise in military</p><p>issues under the heading of security, which unlike ‘war’ or ‘defence’ nicely</p><p>bridged the military and non-military aspects of the subject. As well as</p><p>having relevant technical expertise not possessed by the military, a large</p><p>and influential civilian cohort helped to address specifically American</p><p>concerns about the dangers of society becoming militarised by a long-term</p><p>struggle (Lasswell, 1941, 1950; Huntington, 1957; Deudney, 1995, 2007:</p><p>161 ff.). One of the reasons why this was a uniquely American moment</p><p>was that this period was when the US left behind its traditional foreign</p><p>policy of political isolationism and entered into long-term struggles and</p><p>commitments as the central player in the global balance of power.</p><p>This momentous transition explains why the development of ISS was</p><p>encouraged by US government funding for ‘strategic’ research. Not only</p><p>was permanent global strategic engagement a new game for the US in a</p><p>way that it was not for other countries, but nuclear weapons opened a new</p><p>game for everyone. As succinctly put by Betts (1997: 14), ‘Nuclear war</p><p>66</p><p>strategic studies, deterrence and the cold war 67</p><p>spurred theorizing because it was inherently more theoretical than empir-</p><p>ical: none had ever occurred’. As it began to be clear that the Cold War</p><p>could become a drawn-out, all-encompassing and existential struggle, the</p><p>idea took hold that one needed a form of integrated understanding, where</p><p>different forms of knowledge could be combined. This was a major part</p><p>of the reasoning behind the US National Security Act of 1947 (in addition</p><p>to closer coordination of the services plus intelligence reform). When the</p><p>US moved towards institutionalising an unprecedented level of military</p><p>mobilisation, this could not be done purely in terms of ‘war’ or ‘defence’</p><p>without the spectre of the garrison state (Lasswell, 1941) threatening the</p><p>values of American liberalism. This is a central part of the explanation</p><p>for the rise of the term ‘security’ to cover mobilisation in more inclusive</p><p>and ‘civilian’ terms (Wæver 2004b, 2006), and it conditioned a particular</p><p>space for civilian expertise in a military-centred universe. This nexus of</p><p>peculiarly American concerns explains a lot about the origins of ISS.</p><p>The first decade after the Second World War is described by David</p><p>A. Baldwin (1995: 121–122) as ‘the most creative and exciting period in</p><p>the entire history of security studies’, perhaps because ‘no single research</p><p>question dominated the field’, hence there was a broader consideration</p><p>of non-military techniques of statecraft and of domestic affairs than later</p><p>became the norm. As the Cold War went on and Security Studies went</p><p>through its so-called golden age between 1955 and 1965, these conceptual</p><p>discussions receded and the sub-field became almost exclusively devoted</p><p>to the study of nuclear weapons and bipolar rivalry. One of the central</p><p>plotlines of this chapter is how the Strategic Studies understanding of the</p><p>state, dangers and insecurities became institutionalised to such an extent</p><p>that the majority of Strategic Studies literature felt no need to explicitly</p><p>discuss its conceptualisation of security.</p><p>This did not, however, mean that there were no debates within ISS</p><p>and the four questions laid out in chapter 2 resurfaced in discussions of</p><p>the rationality of states in general, and the Soviet Union in particular,</p><p>and hence over the way in which security politics should be understood.</p><p>There was also a recurring concern with the significance of societal cohe-</p><p>sion, in the West as well as the Soviet Union. While there was general</p><p>agreement that the latter was the enemy of the US and the so-called Free</p><p>World, there were rich discussions of the interplay between technology</p><p>and amity/enmity which had an impact both on how Cold War contes-</p><p>tations of Strategic Studies were made and on post-Cold War debates on</p><p>the role of the state and military technology. ISS was simultaneously pro-</p><p>ductive, influential and fashionable. With its core centred around game</p><p>68 strategic studies, deterrence and the cold war</p><p>theory and nuclear deterrence, it had the appearance of being method-</p><p>ologically coherent, and because of the explicit link to public policy it was</p><p>also generously funded. This ‘golden age’ was the formative period of the</p><p>new sub-field, and therefore defined the position from which subsequent</p><p>studies of the subject had to proceed.</p><p>The main goal of this chapter is to show in more detail how the five</p><p>driving forces can explain both the initial demand for ISS, its first concep-</p><p>tually driven decade and its continued evolution through the golden age</p><p>of Strategic Studies and into the later parts of the Cold War. The detailed</p><p>story of how nuclear strategy evolved during its first four decades has</p><p>been told by Freedman (1981a), and it is not our intention to repeat that</p><p>effort here. Instead, we want to locate the main themes of that literature</p><p>within a broad brush story of the historical background to the literature</p><p>of ISS. But the Cold War period is not just interesting as history. It estab-</p><p>lished the meaning of what ‘international security’ is about, and did so</p><p>with sufficient depth that this still serves as the centre of gravity around</p><p>which the many subsequent widening and deepening debates within ISS</p><p>revolve.</p><p>Great power politics: the Cold War and bipolarity</p><p>The Cold War emerged during the mid-to-late 1940s as the new power</p><p>structure created by the outcome of the Second World War settled into</p><p>place. Its two big defining features came into play almost simultaneously:</p><p>nuclear weapons and a rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union. This</p><p>rivalry was made exceptionally intense not only because they were the big</p><p>winners of the 1939–45 war, overawing all of the other erstwhile great</p><p>powers, but also because they were the champions of mutually exclu-</p><p>sive ideologies (democratic capitalism, totalitarian communism) each of</p><p>which claimed to own the future of humankind. This rivalry, and the</p><p>fact that the US and the Soviet Union quickly became by far the largest</p><p>holders of nuclear weapons, was captured in the concepts of superpower</p><p>and bipolarity. One enduring question of both the Strategic Studies and</p><p>IR theory debates was whether the simple fact of bipolarity, or the exis-</p><p>tence of nuclear weapons, did more to explain the character of the Cold</p><p>War (Waltz, 1964; Goldgeier and McFaul, 1992: 469, 490). Was bipolarity</p><p>stable simply because a two-party, zero-sum game eliminated much of the</p><p>uncertainty and possibility of miscalculation from superpower relations,</p><p>as Waltz (1979) so famously maintained? Or was bipolarity intrinsically</p><p>unstable, as</p><p>suggested by Classical bipolarities: wars to the death between</p><p>great power politics: the cold war and bipolarity 69</p><p>Athens and Sparta, and Rome and Carthage? If bipolarity was unstable,</p><p>then only the fear of national obliteration posed by nuclear weapons</p><p>stopped it from spiralling into war.</p><p>There was some challenge to the bipolar framing from China after</p><p>Mao’s break with Moscow in the late 1950s, with some thinking of China</p><p>as a third power, at least in Asia, because of its willingness to challenge both</p><p>superpowers (Hinton, 1975; Segal, 1982). Yet the bipolar framework held</p><p>firm throughout the more than four decades of the Cold War. Japan and</p><p>Western Europe were closely allied with the US and accepted its military</p><p>dominance and leadership. Even when they surpassed the Soviet Union</p><p>economically, both remained politically weak, and the US remained very</p><p>much the dominant partner in both the North Atlantic Treaty Organiza-</p><p>tion (NATO) and the bilateral alliance with Japan. With the brief exception</p><p>of the ‘Japan as number 1’ flourish in the late 1980s, neither sought to, nor</p><p>was thought able to, challenge bipolarity. The huge superpower military</p><p>establishments and arsenals of nuclear weapons sustained it even after the</p><p>economic challenge from the Soviet Union (which seemed formidable in</p><p>the 1950s and 1960s) had faded into palpable backwardness and decline.</p><p>This meant that right to the end of the Cold War, bipolarity stood as</p><p>the general framing for nearly all strategic theorising. Whether it was</p><p>about deterrence, arms racing, arms control or alliances, the underpin-</p><p>ning assumption of Cold War Strategic Studies was bipolarity (Buzan,</p><p>1987a: 173–177). This assumption is extraordinarily prominent in deter-</p><p>rence theory, and goes some way to explaining the attractions of game</p><p>theory, especially ‘chicken’ and ‘the prisoner’s dilemma’ (Snyder, 1971).</p><p>These two games depend on two-player assumptions (without which they</p><p>quickly get too complicated) and thus mirror bipolarity. Bipolarity also</p><p>explains US and Soviet sensitivity to nuclear proliferation, which more</p><p>than anything else could threaten their status and privileges as the only</p><p>members of ‘the big two’ club.</p><p>The bipolar framing of the Cold War manifested itself in the geostrate-</p><p>gic policy of containment. The rivalry between the US and the Soviet</p><p>Union developed from the ceasefire lines of the Second World War, and</p><p>quickly settled into a US attempt to ring the Soviet bloc with allies (NATO,</p><p>Japan, Iran, Pakistan, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, etc.) to prevent fur-</p><p>ther expansion of the communist world. The Soviet response was to try</p><p>to breach, or jump over, these containment barriers. This strongly terri-</p><p>torial formation explains the significance of crises in Berlin, Korea, Cuba,</p><p>the Middle East and Vietnam, all of which were seen as crucial to main-</p><p>taining or breaching the lines of containment. Once China emerged as a</p><p>70 strategic studies, deterrence and the cold war</p><p>power opposed to both the US and the Soviet Union, a secondary game</p><p>of containment opened up with the Soviet Union trying to contain China</p><p>by making alliances with India and Vietnam. The communist victory in</p><p>China was initially seen in the West as a big victory for Moscow, but by the</p><p>mid-1970s China could be seen in Washington as part of the containment</p><p>of the Soviet Union.</p><p>Two of the other analytical components of great power politics laid</p><p>out in chapter 3 are the patterns of amity and enmity among the great</p><p>powers and their degree of involvement and interventionism. In Cold</p><p>War ISS these two components were deeply intertwined in that the Soviet</p><p>Union was viewed as a hostile enemy Other whose communist ideology</p><p>professed the downfall of capitalist societies and the subsequent spread</p><p>of communism to the whole planet. In the West, and especially in the</p><p>US, a characterisation of the Soviet Union as a ruthless and implaca-</p><p>ble opponent requiring long-term containment and vigorous ideological</p><p>challenge quickly became sedimented as the foundation of US policy. Part</p><p>of this rivalry was the necessity to prove false the Marxist projection of</p><p>capitalism as exploitative, polarising and doomed to terminal crisis. The</p><p>broad-spectrum nature of the challenge from the Soviet Union was a key</p><p>reason for the shift to policies based around the concept of national secu-</p><p>rity (Smoke, 1975; Yergin, 1978; Neocleous, 2006a), which itself became</p><p>an ongoing subject of debate in the literature (Wolfers, 1952; Buzan,</p><p>1983). Kennan’s (1947) powerful ‘X’ article was instrumental in setting</p><p>this path, and his image of the Soviet Union remained deeply influential</p><p>through to the end of the Cold War. Although constituting its foreign pol-</p><p>icy and intentions in radically different terms, the US shared the Soviet</p><p>Union’s interventionist – and messianic – stance, in that it, too, believed</p><p>in the eventual downfall of the opponent’s political and economic system</p><p>and the rise of a global order based on its own model. As in communist</p><p>ideology, this stance was grounded in an economic analysis combined</p><p>with an unquestioned normative certainty about the virtues of one’s own</p><p>societal mode of organisation.</p><p>Yet if there was general consensus that the Soviet Union was radically</p><p>opposed to the West, and the US in particular, there were still crucial</p><p>differences as to how Soviet Otherness and enmity was constituted. These</p><p>differences grew out of more general assumptions about the state and</p><p>the international system and thus also pointed to different ways in which</p><p>nuclear bipolarity could be managed. The first line of discussion was over</p><p>how to define Soviet intentions. Kennan famously held in this ‘X-article’</p><p>in 1947 that the Soviet leadership was inextricably tied to an ideology of</p><p>great power politics: the cold war and bipolarity 71</p><p>communist superiority and capitalist downfall. Hence one should take</p><p>no expressions of trust and accommodation at face value but view them</p><p>as tactics in the battle for long-term domination. Soviet officials were like</p><p>‘toy automobiles’ unable to break from the party line and ‘unamenable to</p><p>argument or reason which comes to them from outside sources’ (Kennan,</p><p>1947: 574). Kennan’s remedy was an unwavering containment of the</p><p>Soviet Union ‘at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon</p><p>the interests of a peaceful and stable world’ (Kennan, 1947: 581). Others</p><p>argued that the Soviet Union took a much less aggressive stance. The</p><p>founding father of Neorealist theory, Waltz held, for example, that the</p><p>Soviet Union had ‘assumed a posture of passive deterrence vis-à-vis her</p><p>major adversary, whom she quite sensibly does not want to fight’ (Waltz,</p><p>1964: 885). Waltz came to a different view of the Soviet Union, not because</p><p>he held a more amiable view of Soviet ideology and its leaders, but because</p><p>in his theory, bipolarity exerted a disciplining effect on the leaders of great</p><p>power states that ‘will strongly encourage them to act in ways better than</p><p>their characters might otherwise lead one to expect’ (Waltz, 1964: 907).</p><p>Two further assumptions underlay Waltz’s structural analysis. First was</p><p>that international polarity held a stronger explanatory power than unit-</p><p>level factors like ideology or the composition of a state’s leadership. Second</p><p>was the view that the Soviet Union was fundamentally a rational actor</p><p>capable of understanding that managing nuclear bipolarity rather than</p><p>embarking on an expansionist military policy would be in its own best</p><p>interest.</p><p>In the later period of the Cold War, the debate over rationality was</p><p>influenced by a growing concern with the extent to which the Soviet</p><p>Union was in several important respects a different type of actor from</p><p>the US, with different concerns and understandings (Kolcowicz, 1971;</p><p>Ermarth, 1978; Snow, 1979; Gray, 1980; Holloway, 1980; Erickson, 1982;</p><p>Hanson, 1982/3). Was the Soviet Union ruthless, expansionary and driven</p><p>by revolutionary fervour, or was it essentially defensive and moved by</p><p>feelings of inferiority to the West? What difference</p><p>did Russian military</p><p>culture and tradition make, and did the Soviets understand concepts</p><p>such as deterrence in the same way as Western theorists and policy-</p><p>makers did? Did the Russian language, indeed, have a word for deterrence?</p><p>Could the Soviets be trusted to pursue apparent joint interests in survival</p><p>and accident avoidance, or was the Kremlin not to be trusted to keep</p><p>agreements, and to be assumed as always seeking strategic advantage</p><p>under the guise of arms control? Did they calculate ‘unacceptable damage’</p><p>in the same way as Americans did, or was the Soviet Union, and even</p><p>72 strategic studies, deterrence and the cold war</p><p>more so Mao’s China, a hard and ruthless player, prepared to accept huge</p><p>casualties, while the US was relatively soft and easy to threaten?</p><p>Waltzian Neorealism was built on the assumption that states, includ-</p><p>ing the Soviet Union, were rational actors, and other scholars such as</p><p>Jervis held that Soviet military doctrine was not that dissimilar to that of</p><p>American military officials, that their ‘ideas are not particularly Russian</p><p>or particularly Marxist but simply those one would expect from people</p><p>charged with protecting society and winning wars’ (Jervis, 1979/80: 630).</p><p>The Russians understood ‘very well the potency of the American threat</p><p>to destroy their society’; the difference between the two countries resided</p><p>rather in the different distributions of power between civilian and military</p><p>leadership (Jervis, 1979/80: 630). Others agreed with Kennan that more</p><p>fundamental differences between the East and West were to be found.</p><p>According to Colin S. Gray (1980: 139), there were ‘no functional Soviet</p><p>equivalents to the Western theories of deterrence, limited war, and arms</p><p>control, just as the key Western concepts spawned by those theories – sta-</p><p>bility, escalation control, bargaining, sufficiency/adequacy, and the rest –</p><p>appear to play no identifiable role in guiding Soviet military planning’.</p><p>Those who emphasised Soviet difference fell into two broad camps: there</p><p>were those who, like Kennan, linked Soviet enmity to the communist</p><p>ideology of its leadership, while arguing that the Russian people were</p><p>inadequately represented by this ideology and would eventually topple</p><p>‘their’ leaders. Others like Gray claimed that what explained the adoption</p><p>of this ideology was ‘a Russian national political character marked by</p><p>cunning, brutality, and submissiveness’ and that Soviet strategic culture</p><p>was thus ‘at root, Russian rather than Marxist-Leninist’ (Gray, 1980: 142).</p><p>Although couched in more concrete, empirical terms, these discussions</p><p>foreshadowed later ISS debates over the significance of cultural factors</p><p>versus material capabilities, and of the importance of societal cohesion</p><p>and ‘national identity fit’ between governors and governed.</p><p>There was no easy way of settling such questions: Western access to</p><p>the Soviet Union and China was severely restricted and estimates of their</p><p>intentions were thus deduced from a combination of these countries’</p><p>observed behaviour, and assumptions about ideology, national identity</p><p>and structure of government. The tricky thing was that behaviour often</p><p>lent itself to multiple interpretations depending on which deeper assump-</p><p>tions about actor rationality and the specific views of the enemy Other ISS</p><p>analysts held. Underneath these debates was also a more fundamental ana-</p><p>lytical difference between Neorealist explanations located at the level of</p><p>the international structure where actor rationality was a basic ontological</p><p>the technological imperative 73</p><p>assumption, and unit-level explanations that allowed for a greater range</p><p>of ‘irrational’ behaviours where ‘rationality’ itself was contextualised and</p><p>changing over time and space. Game theory, which constituted an impor-</p><p>tant part of ISS – particularly since the absence of nuclear exchanges</p><p>between the superpowers created an analytical space for the modelling of</p><p>hypothetical encounters – can be seen as taking up a middle ground. Most</p><p>games allowed for multiple (initial) forms of state rationality (coopera-</p><p>tive, deceiving, secretive, distrustful, etc.), but also often positioned the</p><p>ability of states to recognise the virtues of cooperative behaviour if games</p><p>were played repeatedly, hence becoming more ‘rational’ (Jervis, 1978).</p><p>As a consequence, at the core of ISS were diverging empirical as well as</p><p>normative views of how the patterns of amity and enmity could evolve,</p><p>leaving the dispute about them as part of what differentiated hardlin-</p><p>ers, moderates and pursuers of peace (more on this in chapter 5). One</p><p>should note that ISS deterrence logic, the difference between particular</p><p>approaches above notwithstanding, always entailed a fundamental ambi-</p><p>guity. A minimum of common understanding and rationality between</p><p>the two great powers had on the one hand to be assumed for deterrence</p><p>to work. If the Soviet Union was flat out unpredictable and insane it</p><p>would not make much difference which strategies the West adopted and</p><p>it might well be the safest thing to do to initiate a preventive attack. On</p><p>the other hand, deterrence logic always retained an element of uncer-</p><p>tainty at its core: even if the Soviets were presumably sufficiently rational</p><p>not to attack out of the blue, how could one know for sure? The advent,</p><p>spread and development of nuclear weaponry made the answers to these</p><p>questions of the utmost importance.</p><p>The technological imperative: the nuclear revolution</p><p>in military affairs</p><p>The development of Cold War Strategic Studies took place in a con-</p><p>text in which the bipolar power political framework of the Cold War</p><p>became broadly stable, but the technology surrounding nuclear weapons</p><p>was highly dynamic. Nuclear weapons technology (meaning not just the</p><p>warheads themselves, but also their delivery systems) underwent very</p><p>rapid and dramatic development throughout the Cold War, and indeed</p><p>beyond, generating an ongoing strategic imperative that lay at the heart</p><p>of the problematique of ISS. Discussion of the evolutions of military</p><p>technology and their strategic consequences became the principal con-</p><p>cern of the literature (Brodie, 1976; Snow, 1979; Martin, 1980; Luttwak,</p><p>74 strategic studies, deterrence and the cold war</p><p>1980a; Buzan, 1987a). During these decades, nuclear weapons and many</p><p>of their associated systems were in the middle stage of the classic ‘S-curve’</p><p>of technological development where improvements are rapid before the</p><p>technology matures and its performances level out. To get a sense of this</p><p>‘S-curve’ think of the long and very slow development of aircraft dur-</p><p>ing the nineteenth century, the extremely rapid developments in range,</p><p>speed, size, altitude and reliability from the Wright brothers’ flight in</p><p>1903 to Concorde and the SR-71 in the 1970s, and the levelling out</p><p>thereafter.</p><p>Explosive power multiplied many times. Accuracies of delivery shrank</p><p>from several kilometres to a few metres. Unstoppable ballistic missiles</p><p>replaced vulnerable bombers as the principal carrier of nuclear weapons,</p><p>in the process reducing potential delivery times from many hours to</p><p>thirty minutes or less. The power-to-weight ratios of warheads improved</p><p>hugely, meaning first that smaller rockets could carry the same payloads,</p><p>and later that one rocket could carry many warheads. Smaller, lighter</p><p>warheads meant that nuclear weapons could be mounted onto tactical</p><p>missiles and even put into artillery shells. Missiles became not only more</p><p>accurate, but more reliable, and with solid instead of liquid fuel having</p><p>response times of seconds rather than hours. All of these developments</p><p>enabled missiles to be sent to sea in submarines, making them very difficult</p><p>to detect, and potentially shortening the warning time between launch</p><p>and arrival to a few minutes. Rocket, radar and guidance technology</p><p>improved to the point where it became technically possible, and in the</p><p>US context politically necessary, to think about developing ABM systems.</p><p>All of this was neatly summed up by Brown’s (1977: 153) observation</p><p>that:</p><p>For thousands</p><p>of years before [1945] firepower had been so scarce a</p><p>resource that the supreme test of generalship lay in conserving it for</p><p>application at the crucial time and place. Suddenly it promised to become</p><p>so abundant that it would be madness ever to release more than the tiniest</p><p>fraction of the total quantity available.</p><p>By the late 1970s the superpowers had accumulated many tens of thou-</p><p>sands of nuclear warheads, so the point about the ‘tiniest fraction’ was</p><p>not merely rhetorical.</p><p>As noted above, bipolarity conditioned the whole argument about</p><p>nuclear deterrence, but this general truth was moderated by the specific</p><p>nature of the military balance between the US and the Soviet Union,</p><p>which varied over time. Until the mid-1950s, the US had a monopoly</p><p>the technological imperative 75</p><p>first of nuclear weapons, and then of long-range bombers with which</p><p>to deliver them. Deterrence was easy for the US under these conditions,</p><p>with the Soviets having only their conventional military superiority and</p><p>nuclear threats in Europe to offer a counter-threat. The launching of</p><p>Sputnik in 1957 changed all this, by demonstrating that the Soviet Union</p><p>had mastered (if not yet deployed) rocket technologies that would enable</p><p>them to strike the US quickly and unstoppably, and also threaten the then</p><p>largely bomber-based US nuclear forces. From the late 1950s onwards,</p><p>and as anticipated by the early writers on the nuclear age, the game was</p><p>increasingly one of mutual nuclear deterrence with the Soviet Union</p><p>moving steadily towards a general nuclear parity with the US. This pro-</p><p>cess was not smooth. Large uncertainties were introduced not just by</p><p>technological developments, but also by misinformation about who had</p><p>deployed what: the bomber and missile ‘gaps’ of the mid and late 1950s,</p><p>in which Soviet secrecy and American domestic politics combined to</p><p>produce huge US overreactions to non-existent Soviet ‘leads’. During the</p><p>1950s and 1960s the basic rules and dynamics of mutual nuclear deter-</p><p>rence were worked out in detail (Kissinger, 1957; Wohlstetter, 1959; Kahn,</p><p>1960, 1962; Schelling, 1960), though many had been anticipated by ear-</p><p>lier writers responding to the first arrival of nuclear weapons (Brodie,</p><p>1946, 1949; Blackett, 1948). Whether these theoretically elegant rules</p><p>of the game would actually work during a real crisis was an ongoing</p><p>question. Could decision-makers stay rational in a crisis (Green, 1966;</p><p>Allison, 1971; Jervis, 1976)? Would the armed forces actually follow the</p><p>official policy, or would their implementation of orders in effect cre-</p><p>ate escalation? During the 1970s the US more or less accepted nuclear</p><p>parity with the Soviet Union as the basis for arms control negotiations,</p><p>though this position was rolled back during the increased tension of</p><p>the so-called ‘Second Cold War’ from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s,</p><p>when the Reagan administration pursued defences against ballistic mis-</p><p>siles and other aspects of warfighting strategy as a way of reasserting US</p><p>superiority.</p><p>Technological developments locked the superpowers into a fierce arms</p><p>race with both quantitative (how many missiles/warheads?) and also qual-</p><p>itative (how accurate, how quickly delivered, how well protected against</p><p>pre-emptive attacks?) dimensions (Wohlstetter, 1974). They also gener-</p><p>ated an accompanying space race, in which the two superpowers com-</p><p>peted to be first to master orbital, then manned orbital and interplanetary</p><p>probes, and finally moon-landing technologies. Arms racing not surpris-</p><p>ingly became another staple topic in the literature (Huntington, 1958;</p><p>76 strategic studies, deterrence and the cold war</p><p>Gray, 1971, 1974; Bellany, 1975; Rattinger, 1976; Hollist, 1977; Russett,</p><p>1983: Levine and Carlton, 1986; Buzan, 1987a: 69–131), giving yet more</p><p>weight to what seemed to be the material driving forces defining the strate-</p><p>gic agenda. There were obvious comparisons to be made between earlier</p><p>arms races, such as the famous naval rivalry between Britain and Ger-</p><p>many before 1914, and the nuclear race between the superpowers. Both</p><p>reflected the continuous pressure of rapid technological development on</p><p>military options that had been a feature of international relations since the</p><p>industrial revolution (Buzan, 1987a). Like earlier industrial arms races,</p><p>the superpower one was driven not just by action–reaction between rivals,</p><p>and more or less autonomous improvements in technology, but also by</p><p>the lobbying power of arms industries and military establishments. Eisen-</p><p>hower’s warning about the influence of a ‘military–industrial complex’</p><p>(MIC) in American life unfolded into a whole literature on how domestic</p><p>politics influenced what sorts and amounts of weapons the superpowers</p><p>acquired (Kurth, 1973; Rosen, 1973; Allison and Morris, 1975; Freedman,</p><p>1981a: ch. 22; Evangelista, 1984, 1988; Buzan, 1987a: 94–113; McNaugher,</p><p>1987).</p><p>An interesting theme in the literature on the MIC was that while the US</p><p>had an MIC, and so faced the problem of domestic industrial and military</p><p>interests taking advantage of the Cold War to further their own goals, the</p><p>Soviet Union virtually was an MIC, with a large part of its economy</p><p>devoted to the production of military power. That the US was a capitalist</p><p>democracy mattered, and played importantly into the general American</p><p>enthusiasm for – and belief in – technological and scientific solutions</p><p>(Wæver and Buzan, 2007: 386). On the one hand, one might think that</p><p>capitalist political economies, with their general preference for capital</p><p>over labour, would naturally lean towards high technology solutions to</p><p>military challenges. The logic of capitalism points to capital intensive</p><p>solutions regardless of whether the problem is production or destruction,</p><p>a leaning reinforced by a democracy’s natural desire to minimise risks to its</p><p>citizen/soldiers. On the other hand, the very awareness of the MIC in the</p><p>US reflected a keen and sustained interest in the economics of defence.</p><p>Despite the ‘gold-plated’ reputation of US military procurement, the</p><p>strategic debates were not just driven by new developments in technology</p><p>and calculations of Soviet military capability. Discussions about possible</p><p>new technologies were also much concerned with cost-effectiveness, and</p><p>calculations about how to achieve desired military goals in the most</p><p>economic fashion (Kapstein, 1992). And while the US was not close to the</p><p>Soviet model of being an MIC, it is clear that the large and sustained US</p><p>the technological imperative 77</p><p>military expenditure served Keynesian purposes (i.e. the state channelling</p><p>large sums of public money into the economy) for the US economy</p><p>that it would have been ideologically difficult for US governments to do</p><p>without making themselves vulnerable to charges of socialism or big-</p><p>government. In other words, military spending in the US played the same</p><p>role that government spending on industrial policy played in most other</p><p>Western states. Unlike in Europe, where there was no ideological barrier</p><p>to Keynesian state spending, this element of military Keynesianism in the</p><p>US eased the politics of military budgets (Russett, 1983).</p><p>But regardless of whether the development and acquisition of new</p><p>military technology was driven domestically or by arms racing, the fear</p><p>was that failure to keep up would make one’s nuclear forces vulnerable</p><p>to first strike by the enemy. Any such development would neutralise the</p><p>effects of mutual deterrence by fear of retaliation on which both sides</p><p>relied. For example, if one’s missiles were liquid-fuelled, and took an</p><p>hour to launch, but one’s opponent could launch a surprise attack which</p><p>would give only thirty minutes’ warning, then the opponent had powerful</p><p>incentives to strike first. From this foundational insecurity arose a huge</p><p>and elaborate body of theory and argument about incentives to attack</p><p>(or not) under various conditions of nuclear balance, and the need to</p><p>create a ‘secure second strike’ force able to retaliate even after a major first</p><p>strike (Wohlstetter, 1959; Rosecrance, 1975; Howard,</p><p>1979; Jervis, 1979,</p><p>1979/80; Art, 1980; Gray, 1980; Lodal, 1980; Weltman, 1981/2; George,</p><p>1984; Allison et al., 1985). Formal theoretic ways of thinking were called in</p><p>to help in understanding the ‘game’ of deterrence and bipolar superpower</p><p>rivalry (Snyder, 1971; Jervis, 1978).</p><p>Much of this literature was heavily dependent on the assumptions of</p><p>rationality laid out above (Steinbruner, 1976; Snyder, 1978) to work out</p><p>the great chains of if–then propositions that characterised deterrence</p><p>theory: if A attacks B in a given way, what is B’s best response, and what</p><p>would A then do in reply, and then . . . and then . . . The foundational</p><p>insecurity here was that of being disarmed by one’s opponent in a first</p><p>strike (a so-called ‘counterforce’ strike). This fear was real in the early</p><p>phases of the Cold War when nuclear arsenals were relatively small, slow</p><p>to launch and not well protected. It diminished from the later 1960s as</p><p>nuclear arsenals got larger and much harder to attack (particularly when</p><p>missiles were put into submarines), giving an effective secure second</p><p>strike. But it was replaced by another, more subtle, fear known as the</p><p>ex ante ex post dilemma (Rosecrance, 1975: 11–12; Steinbruner, 1976:</p><p>231–234). This envisaged a counterforce attack by one side (B) against</p><p>78 strategic studies, deterrence and the cold war</p><p>the other (A) in which A loses more of its nuclear weapons than B uses</p><p>in its first strike. Such an outcome was plausible if the attacker used the</p><p>multiple warhead missiles that became widely available during the 1970s.</p><p>If B attacked with ten missiles each with ten warheads, it might eliminate</p><p>up to 100 of A’s missiles. The dilemma is about what A would then do.</p><p>It is not completely disarmed, and could either retaliate by striking B’s</p><p>missile silos or B’s cities. Attacking B’s silos would be potentially wasteful</p><p>of A’s remaining missiles because it is unclear which ones are empty and</p><p>which ones are still holding missiles. The chances of eliminating B’s ability</p><p>to retaliate would thus be slim. Alternatively, escalating by attacking B’s</p><p>cities would mean effectively committing suicide, because B would then</p><p>be able to use its remaining missiles to retaliate and destroy A’s cities.</p><p>Would rationality suggest that A should not retaliate in the first place,</p><p>thereby having to accept the attack without making any retaliation? To</p><p>do that might indeed be rational, but the possibility of it undermined the</p><p>whole structure of deterrence by seeming to give incentives for aggressors</p><p>to make counterforce first strikes. Getting these great chains of reasoning</p><p>right was seen as crucial to developing the best military options that would</p><p>deter the enemy from attacking in the first place.</p><p>The seeming impossibility of working out plausible rational responses</p><p>across the entire range of complexities thrown up by nuclear war scenarios,</p><p>led to an increasing acceptance that the effectiveness of deterrence lay in</p><p>the possibility, or even likelihood, of irrational behaviour. Not many con-</p><p>tinued to believe that the rationality assumption would hold once nuclear</p><p>exchanges, even limited ones, began. The ‘threat that leaves something to</p><p>chance’ (Schelling, 1960: ch. 8) was a theoretically sophisticated answer</p><p>to the otherwise unsolvable ex ante ex post policy dilemma. Potential</p><p>attackers would be deterred precisely by the fear of an irrational response,</p><p>whether on the individual level (anger, revenge), or the bureaucratic one</p><p>(breakdown in command and control). But if deterrence depended on</p><p>irrationality, then much of the incentive for elaborate theoretical scenario</p><p>spinning, and thus for Strategic Studies itself, went out the window.</p><p>The whole edifice of deterrence theory was also continuously under</p><p>pressure from new developments in technology that might make one</p><p>more, or less, vulnerable to attack, and often the arguments were about</p><p>which types of technology to pursue (or not) in order to improve one’s</p><p>position. Much ink was spilled among other technological choices over</p><p>the costs and benefits of putting multiple warheads on missiles; of pursu-</p><p>ing high levels of accuracy with so-called precision-guided munitions; of</p><p>developing supersonic bombers; of developing neutron bombs (designed</p><p>the technological imperative 79</p><p>to produce a lot of radiation and little blast, so killing people but not</p><p>destroying property); of deploying cruise missiles; and of building elab-</p><p>orate protected hiding places for land-based intercontinental ballistic</p><p>missiles.</p><p>One of the fiercest, and still ongoing, debates of this sort was about</p><p>ABM, aka BMD, systems, under argument since the late 1960s (Stone,</p><p>1968; Brodie, 1978; Lodal, 1980; Independent Commission on Disarma-</p><p>ment and Security Issues, 1982; Glaser, 1984, 1985; Hoffman, 1985), and</p><p>still today (Glaser and Fetter, 2001; Powell, 2003; Karp, 2004). Part of the</p><p>argument was about whether it could be done or not with existing or</p><p>likely technology, and involved everything from particle beams mounted</p><p>on orbiting satellites to super-fast interceptor rockets and elaborate radars.</p><p>But the more interesting theoretical part was about what impact deploy-</p><p>ment of an effective, or even partly effective, BMD would have on strategic</p><p>nuclear stability. The immediate allure was that BMD offered an escape</p><p>from the whole logic of deterrence, and especially from having one’s popu-</p><p>lation held hostage under the grim, but supposedly stabilising, logic of the</p><p>Cold War’s most notorious acronym, MAD (Mutually Assured Destruc-</p><p>tion). It could thus be posed as a return to national defence by blocking</p><p>an attack. One obvious problem was that this defensive measure would</p><p>give its first possessor a free hand to launch an offensive first strike against</p><p>its rival without fear of retaliation. Another was that, unit for unit, BMD</p><p>was always going to be much more expensive to deploy than offensive</p><p>missiles because shooting down missiles was intrinsically and massively</p><p>more difficult than simply firing them from one place to another. Moves</p><p>towards BMD thus threatened to trigger an unending arms race in which</p><p>BMD deployments would be countered by the addition of enough offen-</p><p>sive missiles equipped with penetration aids to swamp the system. In</p><p>the event, and mainly because mastering the technology looked like a</p><p>fabulously expensive venture of very uncertain outcome, the two super-</p><p>powers deferred this issue in the ABM Treaty of 1972, which restricted</p><p>deployment but not research. Ronald Reagan’s SDI in the early 1980s,</p><p>designed partly as an attempted escape from MAD, and partly to roll back</p><p>the strategic parity that the US had accorded the Soviet Union during</p><p>the 1970s, put BMD back onto the US agenda, where it has remained</p><p>ever since. With its promise of escape from MAD, BMD proved partic-</p><p>ularly attractive in US domestic politics, helped there by its appeal to</p><p>enthusiasm for technological fixes, and its amenability to being staged as</p><p>defensive (the protests of strategists about its destabilising consequences</p><p>notwithstanding).</p><p>80 strategic studies, deterrence and the cold war</p><p>In addition to the pressures from rapidly evolving technologies, there</p><p>was an ongoing fundamental disagreement about the basic nature of</p><p>nuclear deterrence itself, and whether it was easy or difficult to achieve</p><p>(Jervis, 1979/80; Gray, 1980; Lodal, 1980; Buzan, 1987a: 173–196). In part</p><p>this overlapped with the technology debates, but apart from assuming the</p><p>existence of deliverable nuclear weapons it was not heavily dependent on</p><p>their details. Some thought that nuclear weapons made deterrence easy,</p><p>because any even half-rational actor would be given extremely serious</p><p>pause by the prospect of obliteration. In other words, possession of a</p><p>nuclear arsenal sufficient for ‘assured destruction’ would basically suffice,</p><p>leading to a so-called ‘minimum deterrence’ strategy. Others, taking a</p><p>maximum deterrence approach, calculated that a ruthless rational actor</p><p>(as Kennan had postulated the Soviet Union to be) would require not</p><p>only a threat of</p><p>NORDSAM Nordic Cooperation Committee for International Politics</p><p>NPT Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty</p><p>NUPI Norsk Utenrikspolitisk Institutt/Norwegian Institute of</p><p>International Affairs</p><p>NWFZ Nuclear weapon free zone</p><p>NWS Nuclear weapon states</p><p>OSCE Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe</p><p>PADRIGU Department for Peace and Development Research, University of</p><p>Gothenburg</p><p>PfP Partnership for Peace</p><p>PRIF Peace Research Institute Frankfurt</p><p>PRIME Peace Research Institute in the Middle East</p><p>PRIO International Peace Research Institute, Oslo</p><p>RAND Research and Development (non-profit think-tank that grew out of</p><p>the United States Army Air Forces)</p><p>RAWA Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan</p><p>RMA Revolution in Military Affairs</p><p>RSCT Regional security complex theory</p><p>RUSI Royal United Services Institute</p><p>SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks</p><p>SDI Strategic Defense Initiative</p><p>SIPRI Stockholm International Peace Research Institute</p><p>xiv list of abbreviations</p><p>SORT Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty</p><p>SSRC Social Science Research Council</p><p>START Strategic Arms Reduction Talks</p><p>TAPRI Tampere Peace Research Institute</p><p>UN United Nations</p><p>UNDP United Nations Development Programme</p><p>UNEP United Nations Environment Programme</p><p>UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization</p><p>UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees</p><p>UNIDIR United Nations Institute of Disarmament Research</p><p>UNPROFOR United Nations Protection Force</p><p>USIP United States Institute of Peace</p><p>WIIS Women in International Security</p><p>WMD Weapons of mass destruction</p><p>FIGURES</p><p>1.1. Security and its adjacent concepts page 14</p><p>3.1. Sociology of science approach 42</p><p>4.1. The main drivers of Strategic Studies 98</p><p>5.1. The location of Arms Control on the terrain of ISS 105</p><p>5.2. The internal structure and offshoots of Peace Research 146</p><p>5.3. The main drivers behind Peace Research and its offshoots 152</p><p>6.1. The composition of Post-Cold War traditionalism 157</p><p>6.2. The main drivers behind Post-Cold War traditionalism 184</p><p>7.1. The changing shape of ISS from Cold War to Post-Cold War 190</p><p>7.2. The composition of Constructivism 193</p><p>7.3. The evolution of ISS 222</p><p>7.4. The main drivers behind the widening–deepening approaches 225</p><p>xv</p><p>TABLES</p><p>2.1. Epistemological distinctions page 34</p><p>2.2. ISS perspectives in relation to the five questions 38</p><p>3.1. The driving force of institutionalisation 61</p><p>5.1. Peace Research on societal cohesion 121</p><p>xvi</p><p>Introduction</p><p>This book is about the evolution of International Security Studies (ISS),</p><p>in the beginning as an independent field of study, but quite quickly</p><p>absorbed as a sub-field of International Relations (IR), which was devel-</p><p>oping rapidly alongside it.1 Like IR itself, ISS is mainly a Western subject,</p><p>largely done in North America, Europe and Australia with all of the</p><p>Western-centrisms that this entails. ISS is one of the main sub-fields of</p><p>Western IR. Wherever IR is taught, ISS is one of its central elements.</p><p>There is an antecedent literature extending back before the Second World</p><p>War which can largely be characterised as war studies, military and grand</p><p>strategy, and geopolitics. This includes much discussed writers such as</p><p>Clausewitz, Mahan, Richardson and Haushofer, whose work still remains</p><p>relevant. But we are not going to cover this literature both for reasons of</p><p>space, and also because a distinctive literature about security developed</p><p>after 1945 (Freedman, 1981a; Wæver and Buzan, 2007). This literature</p><p>was distinctive in three ways. First, it took security rather than defence</p><p>or war as its key concept, a conceptual shift which opened up the study</p><p>of a broader set of political issues, including the importance of societal</p><p>cohesion and the relationship between military and non-military threats</p><p>and vulnerabilities. The ability of security to capture the conceptual cen-</p><p>tre of ISS dealing with defence, war and conflict as well as the broadness</p><p>of the term was famously condensed in Wolfers’s definition of security</p><p>as an ambiguous symbol. In laying out the ability of security policy to</p><p>subordinate all other interests to those of the nation, Wolfers stressed the</p><p>rhetorical and political force that ‘security’ entailed despite having very</p><p>little intrinsic meaning (Wolfers, 1952: 481). Second, this literature was</p><p>distinct because it addressed the novel problems of both the Cold War</p><p>and nuclear weapons. How to deploy, use and not use military means</p><p>1 ‘ISS’ is not universally used as the designator for the sub-field. We use it as an umbrella label</p><p>to include the work of scholars who might refer to themselves as being in ‘international</p><p>security’, or ‘security studies’, or ‘strategic studies’, or ‘peace research’, or various other</p><p>more specialised labels. We set out the scope of ISS in detail in chapter 1</p><p>1</p><p>2 introduction</p><p>were quite different questions in the conditions of the nuclear age, and</p><p>it was from those questions that the sub-field of ISS mainly arose. Third,</p><p>and related to both the total war mobilisations of Britain and the US dur-</p><p>ing the Second World War, and the peculiar strategic conditions created</p><p>by nuclear weapons, ISS was much more a civilian enterprise than most</p><p>earlier military and strategic literatures. Strategic bombing and nuclear</p><p>weapons transcended traditional military warfighting expertise in ways</p><p>that required, or at least opened the door to, bringing in civilian experts</p><p>ranging from physicists and economists to sociologists and psychologists.</p><p>As shown during the Second World War, strategic bombing required</p><p>knowledge about how best to disable the enemy’s economy and infra-</p><p>structure, not just how to defeat his armed forces. Nuclear deterrence</p><p>quickly became the art of how to avoid fighting wars while at the same</p><p>time not being militarily defeated or coerced. The centrality of the civilian</p><p>element also reflects the fact that ISS has largely flourished in democratic</p><p>countries, while strategic thinking in non-Western countries generally</p><p>remained more firmly in the grip of the military.</p><p>Although security was a new lead concept in the post-Second World</p><p>War world (Yergin, 1978; Wæver, 2006), its implications for a wider, not</p><p>exclusively military–political understanding of the subject were not fully</p><p>felt until quite late in the Cold War. During most of the Cold War, ISS</p><p>was defined by a largely military agenda of questions surrounding nuclear</p><p>weapons and a widely embedded assumption that the Soviet Union posed</p><p>a profound military and ideological threat to the West. From the 1970s</p><p>onwards, as the nuclear relationship between the superpowers matured,</p><p>the original breadth carried by the term security began to re-emerge,</p><p>opening up pressure to widen the international security agenda away</p><p>from the military–political focus. Economic and environmental security</p><p>became established, if controversial, parts of the agenda during the later</p><p>years of the Cold War, and were joined during the 1990s by societal (or</p><p>identity) security, human security, food security and others. Much of this</p><p>literature stayed within the predominant national security frame of the</p><p>Cold War, but some of it began to challenge the emphasis on material</p><p>capabilities as well as state-centric assumptions, opening paths to studies</p><p>of the importance of ideas and culture and to referent objects for security</p><p>other than the state. These moves were accompanied by more critical and</p><p>radical challenges to state-centrism, with the result that instead of flowing</p><p>as a single river within one set of quite narrowly defined banks, ISS has</p><p>broadened out into several distinct but inter-related flows of literature. In</p><p>addition to the more traditionalist, military-centred Strategic Studies and</p><p>introduction 3</p><p>Peace Research, there is also Critical Security Studies, Feminist Security</p><p>Studies, the Copenhagen School, Poststructuralism and Constructivist</p><p>Security Studies.</p><p>Given that ISS has both undergone some radical changes and main-</p><p>tained some core continuities, and has done so quite visibly in interaction</p><p>with</p><p>high damage, but also a near certain probability that</p><p>such a retaliation would be delivered, before deterrence could be effec-</p><p>tive. Because of the ex ante ex post dilemma outlined above, providing a</p><p>high certainty of retaliation under conditions of mutual deterrence was</p><p>difficult. Logic might dictate that retaliating after being struck was an</p><p>irrational act, thus opening the opportunity for the ruthless aggressor to</p><p>think about attacking in the first place.</p><p>Minimum deterrence offered a kind of stability in easy parity, and also</p><p>economy, but at the risk of vulnerability to utterly ruthless opponents</p><p>prepared to gamble in the face of huge threats to their own survival. Its</p><p>logic also provided incentives for so-called ‘horizontal’ nuclear prolifer-</p><p>ation (the spread of nuclear weapons to states not previously possessing</p><p>them), making it seem fairly straightforward for lesser powers to acquire a</p><p>great equaliser (Waltz, 1981). Bipolarity defined a nuclear club of two, and</p><p>associated nuclear weapons with superpower status. Britain, France and</p><p>China had, by the early 1960s, joined the nuclear club, obliging the two</p><p>superpowers to assert their difference by acquiring much bigger nuclear</p><p>arsenals than the new arrivals. One of the few things the US and the</p><p>Soviet Union agreed on was that they did not want additional nuclear</p><p>powers. This concern was initially focused on other industrialised states,</p><p>particularly Germany and Japan, but during the 1970s shifted more to</p><p>Third World states such as Argentina, Brazil and India, and also to Israel</p><p>and the Middle East, and South Africa. Any horizontal proliferation not</p><p>only questioned the superpowers’ status, and complicated their options</p><p>for military interventions, but also raised the risk of nuclear war, whether</p><p>intentional or accidental. In what became the leading example of super-</p><p>power cooperation during the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union led</p><p>the technological imperative 81</p><p>the way in promoting a nuclear non-proliferation regime which tried to</p><p>promote the spread of civil nuclear technology while blocking the acqui-</p><p>sition of military nuclear capabilities by other states. Although mainly</p><p>subordinate to the agenda driven by expanding and evolving superpower</p><p>nuclear arsenals, horizontal nuclear (non-)proliferation became a large</p><p>and elaborate subject in its own right within the Cold War ISS literature,</p><p>which we will look at in chapter 5.</p><p>In contrast to minimum deterrence, maximum deterrence thinking</p><p>offered higher entrance costs to would-be nuclear weapon states, and an</p><p>expensive, open-ended arms race to existing nuclear weapon states. The</p><p>supposed gain was to close loopholes against extreme aggressors who</p><p>might take risks along the lines of the ex ante ex post dilemma, or try</p><p>to find other ways around the military paralysis of nuclear deterrence</p><p>by, for example, making small, swift, military attacks. Dealing with this</p><p>contingency generated demands for huge and elaborate forces capable</p><p>of responding to aggression at any level, and of maintaining ‘escalation</p><p>dominance’ throughout a complicated and possibly extended spectrum</p><p>of conventional and nuclear warfighting. Maximum deterrence thinking</p><p>rested on the assumption of a highly aggressive, risk-taking and oppor-</p><p>tunistic opponent. Given the experiences of the Second World War (the</p><p>successful surprise attacks by Japan on the US and by Germany on the</p><p>Soviet Union), this assumption was not historically unreasonable, and was</p><p>supported by the understanding of the Soviet Union in the US embedded</p><p>by Kennan. Maximum deterrence thinking was pushed along by three fac-</p><p>tors: a certainty-seeking understanding of the logic of bipolar deterrence</p><p>plus a high threat perception of the Soviet Union; successful lobbying</p><p>within the US by the MIC (Kurth, 1973); and the problem of extended</p><p>deterrence that arose when the US guarantees to protect Europe had to be</p><p>implemented in the face of a growing Soviet ability to strike the US with</p><p>nuclear weapons.</p><p>Extended deterrence (ED) links the technological driver to the great</p><p>power politics theme discussed above. Mutual nuclear deterrence exclu-</p><p>sively between the US and the Soviet Union was a fairly straightforward</p><p>proposition, albeit with some pretty complicated ramifications. But dur-</p><p>ing the period when it had a nuclear monopoly, the US took on an obliga-</p><p>tion to defend Western Europe from the Soviet Union (embodied in the</p><p>1949 NATO alliance). Extending the US nuclear umbrella was uncompli-</p><p>cated when the US nuclear monopoly made deterrence easy, even in the</p><p>face of much superior Soviet conventional military strength in Europe.</p><p>But it became fiendishly difficult when the Soviets also acquired the</p><p>82 strategic studies, deterrence and the cold war</p><p>capability to threaten the US with nuclear weapons. How could the Euro-</p><p>pean allies believe that the US would retaliate against the Soviet Union for,</p><p>say, an attack on West Germany, when the consequence could be Soviet</p><p>retaliation against American cities? This question and its many variants</p><p>haunted Western strategic thinking from Sputnik onwards (Beaufre, 1965;</p><p>Rosecrance, 1975; Snyder, 1978; Jervis, 1979/80; Gray, 1980; Martin 1980;</p><p>Cordesman, 1982; George, 1984; Huth and Russett, 1984; Allison et al.,</p><p>1985; Huth, 1988). It was also central to the literature on NATO and its</p><p>recurrent discontents over especially nuclear strategy, which was another</p><p>major theme in the ISS literature (Luttwak, 1980a; Bertram, 1981/2; Freed-</p><p>man, 1981/2; Hoffmann, 1981/2; Treverton, 1983; Duffield, 1991; Zagare</p><p>and Kilgour, 1995).</p><p>The questions arising from ED were addressed, though not settled,</p><p>in various ways. Uncertainty over the US nuclear guarantee provided</p><p>incentives for the European powers to acquire their own nuclear deterrents</p><p>(which Britain had already done, and France proceeded to do), and made</p><p>for a kind of permanent crisis in NATO about the credibility of its deterrent</p><p>posture and the division of labour between the US and its European allies.</p><p>Mainly it pushed the US into taking various measures to strengthen its</p><p>commitment (by basing its own troops in Europe in substantial numbers),</p><p>and to increase the risks to the Soviet Union of ‘salami tactics’ (taking one</p><p>slice at a time and so staying below the threshold at which nuclear weapons</p><p>would be used) by such measures as integrating so-called ‘tactical’ nuclear</p><p>weapons (‘tactical’ being mainly defined by short or intermediate, rather</p><p>than intercontinental range) into NATO’s forward deployments. ‘Flexible</p><p>response’, as this doctrine came to be known, led inexorably towards the</p><p>logic of maximum deterrence by trying to find force deployments able</p><p>to meet all of the possible types and levels of Soviet threat to Europe.</p><p>Since NATO never managed to match Soviet conventional strength in</p><p>Europe, the commitment to extended deterrence fed the nuclear logic</p><p>that strengthened maximum deterrence thinking and policy in the US.</p><p>Europe was always the main issue in extended deterrence, but the problem</p><p>affected US relations with other allies such as South Korea and Japan,</p><p>which were also under its nuclear umbrella.</p><p>Extended deterrence and flexible response spurred another concern</p><p>intrinsic to the whole logic of maximum deterrence, and also linked to</p><p>rival superpower interventions in crises and conflicts in the Third World:</p><p>escalation and how to control it (Ball, 1981; Clark, 1982; George, 1984;</p><p>Allison et al., 1985). The practice of extended deterrence inevitably led</p><p>to scenarios about low-level warfighting in response to local aggression,</p><p>the pressure of current affairs and ‘events’ 83</p><p>and how to respond if the opponent raised the ante by moving to higher</p><p>levels of force, especially to the use of ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons (Davis,</p><p>1975/6). Maximum deterrence required meeting threats at every level, but</p><p>this ran into difficulties when tactical nuclear weapons were embedded</p><p>in forward-based units. Should one use such weapons early, or take the</p><p>risk of losing them to the attacker? If nuclear exchanges began,</p><p>could</p><p>escalation be controlled or, once started, would it become uncontrollable,</p><p>meaning that even a small nuclear use carried a big risk of ending up with</p><p>all-out nuclear war between the superpowers? These escalation questions</p><p>were as much a problem in relation to crises arising in the Third World</p><p>(more on these below) as they were for the defence of Europe. Maxi-</p><p>mum deterrence logic required that rationality prevail, and that limited</p><p>nuclear war be containable, but there were as noted above real doubts</p><p>about whether such cool-headedness and fine tuning would be possible</p><p>once command and control systems came under the intense and unpre-</p><p>dictable pressures of actual nuclear warfighting. Maximum deterrence</p><p>logic and ED thus pushed deterrence theory into fantastic complications.</p><p>The great chains of if–then propositions became so long, and rested on so</p><p>many questionable assumptions about both technological performance</p><p>and human rationality, particularly under stress (Snyder, 1978), that the</p><p>credibility of the theory itself came into question.</p><p>Although most of Strategic Studies was concerned with working out</p><p>the novelties of nuclear-age military relations, there was also work that</p><p>covered enduring fundamentals of the military agenda in any period:</p><p>the utility of force/war (Howard, 1964; Knorr, 1966; Hoffmann, 1973;</p><p>Martin, 1973; Keohane and Nye, 1977: 27–29; Art, 1980; Mueller, 1989),</p><p>and the question of whether offensive or defensive strategies were the</p><p>most appropriate in the technological conditions of the day, and what the</p><p>consequences of pursuing either would be (Quester, 1977; Jervis, 1978;</p><p>Levy, 1984; Van Evera, 1984). Looking beyond nuclear questions, there</p><p>were virtually no considerations related to the specifically technological</p><p>demands produced by conventional wars in the Third World.</p><p>The pressure of current affairs and ‘events’</p><p>Bipolarity and nuclear weapons certainly set the main framing for the</p><p>evolution of ISS during its first four decades, but they were not the</p><p>only driving forces in play. Looking first to the constitutive events that</p><p>impacted Strategic Studies, the end of the Second World War and the</p><p>rise of the Soviet Union and the US as antagonistic superpowers was, of</p><p>84 strategic studies, deterrence and the cold war</p><p>course, the foundational event that the discipline set out to both explain</p><p>and advise policy-makers about. As the Cold War unfolded, a mixture of</p><p>constitutive and significant critical events worked to reinforce this view</p><p>of the Soviet Union while also expanding the scope of ISS. The events</p><p>that made a significant impact on the evolution of ISS were: Berlin (the</p><p>Soviet blockade of West Berlin in 1948–49, and the building of the Berlin</p><p>Wall in 1961), the Korean War (1950–53), the Cuba Missile Crisis (1962),</p><p>the Middle Eastern oil crisis (1973) and the Vietnam War (1964–75).</p><p>One might add the Suez Crisis (1956) generated by Egyptian President</p><p>Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal, which pitched long-term allies</p><p>Britain and the US against each other and confirmed bipolarity and the</p><p>inability of the European powers to operate independently from the US.</p><p>It also inaugurated US engagement in the Middle East, but it did not have</p><p>a major impact on the ISS literature as such. The launching of Sputnik</p><p>(1957) and other key technological innovations have been covered under</p><p>technology.</p><p>The crises in Berlin and Korea served mainly as constitutive events that</p><p>confirmed in the West the expansionist view of the Soviet Union (and</p><p>China) and the need for containment. The war in Korea inaugurated a</p><p>major rearmament in the US and up to a point Europe. It consolidated</p><p>the idea in the West of a ‘communist bloc’, and provided a real example</p><p>of the extended deterrence and containment problems that NATO faced</p><p>in Europe. US possession of nuclear weapons deterred neither the North</p><p>from invading the South, nor the Chinese from intervening against the</p><p>US counter-invasion of the North. Containment clearly had to involve</p><p>both conventional and nuclear capabilities.</p><p>The crisis caused by the Soviet emplacement of nuclear-armed mis-</p><p>siles in Cuba in 1962 brought the world closer to nuclear war than</p><p>it has been before or since. It was consequently the biggest ‘event’ for</p><p>the evolution of ISS during the Cold War. Not only did the crisis gen-</p><p>erate a substantial literature of its own that continued long after the</p><p>ending of the Cold War, it also provided lessons that impacted on the</p><p>ISS debates in several different ways, thus making it both a constitutive</p><p>and a significant critical event that expanded the topics on the agenda</p><p>of ISS (Horelick, 1964; Abel, 1966; Kennedy, 1969; Allison, 1971; Din-</p><p>erstein, 1976; Snyder, 1978; Lebow, 1983/4; Landi et al., 1984; Tracht-</p><p>enberg, 1985; Garthoff, 1988; Allyn et al., 1989/90; Scott and Smith,</p><p>1994; Weldes, 1996; Bernstein, 2000; Pressman, 2001). Most obviously,</p><p>the Cuba Missile Crisis generated an interest in crisis management as a key</p><p>area of concern within ISS. It underlined the dangers of escalation in an</p><p>the pressure of current affairs and ‘events’ 85</p><p>action–reaction process and exposed the need for reliable means of com-</p><p>munication between Washington and Moscow. This need was quickly</p><p>met by the installation of a ‘hot line’. The crisis provided a neat template</p><p>for looking at the reality of how decisions get made, and questioning the</p><p>rationality assumptions central to deterrence theory (Allison, 1971; Janis,</p><p>1972; Jervis, 1976). Knowledge of the various military response options</p><p>considered by the US, and the effectiveness of the naval ‘quarantine’ of</p><p>Cuba by the US, fed into and validated the utility of ‘flexible response’</p><p>then being discussed by NATO, but the underlying concern was under-</p><p>standing the actual and potential production of irrationality in foreign</p><p>policy-making, especially in the US. It could be argued that the experience</p><p>of staring into the nuclear abyss for days on end sensitised both policy-</p><p>makers and the ISS community, not to mention the peace researchers</p><p>and activists, to the need for management of the nuclear arms race. Cuba</p><p>demonstrated the common interest of the two superpowers in survival,</p><p>and so paved the way for the rising interest in arms control and détente</p><p>that began during the 1960s.</p><p>Like the Cuba crisis, the Middle East crisis of 1973 again underlined</p><p>the problem of unwanted escalation, though this time not in a direct</p><p>confrontation between the superpowers, but as a consequence of both</p><p>being drawn into regional conflicts on behalf of their allies. By the early</p><p>1970s, nuclear forces on both sides were much larger than a decade earlier,</p><p>much more based on missiles, and with much more sophisticated warning</p><p>systems and shorter response times. As both superpowers got involved</p><p>in the conflict between Israel and its neighbours, the interlocking of</p><p>their alert systems signalled a new form of escalation problem in which</p><p>automated systems and protocols could ratchet up levels of alert as each</p><p>side reacted to the other. The intense time pressures within the logic and</p><p>technology of nuclear deterrence seemed to necessitate such automation,</p><p>but doing so then created a danger of unwanted escalation all the way to</p><p>war.</p><p>The ability of events to found, expand and reorient a field of research</p><p>is often only fully detectable in hindsight. In retrospect, perhaps the main</p><p>impact of the 1973 Middle East crisis was, especially in the US, to put</p><p>economic security and international terrorism onto the ISS agenda (Nye,</p><p>1974; Knorr and Trager, 1977) as well as introduce ‘interdependence’ and</p><p>International Political Economy into IR, and up to a point ISS, agendas</p><p>(Keohane and Nye, 1977; Gilpin, 1981). The use of the ‘oil weapon’ by</p><p>the Arab states forced the US to notice that Western prosperity and US</p><p>hegemony depended on the availability of cheap oil, much of it from</p><p>86 strategic studies, deterrence and the cold war</p><p>the Third World (IISS, 1975a, 1975b; Maull, 1975; Odell, 1975; Krapels,</p><p>1977). More broadly, this triggered awareness that</p><p>denial of access to other</p><p>strategic resources by cartels seeking political leverage could, and in some</p><p>views should, be seen as a strategic threat (Connelly and Perlman, 1975;</p><p>Foley and Nassim, 1976). Less visible at the time was the fact that this</p><p>crisis drew the US much more deeply into the Middle East on the side of</p><p>Israel, thus creating a set of acutely contradictory objectives (support for</p><p>Israel and maintenance of stable relations with the oil-producing states)</p><p>which would increasingly entrap US foreign policy over the subsequent</p><p>decades. The ongoing crisis between Israel on the one hand, and the</p><p>Palestinians in particular, and the Arab states generally, on the other, bred</p><p>terrorism, and how to respond to it, as a new subject within ISS (Dugard,</p><p>1974; Bell, 1975; Fromkin, 1975; Stern, 1975/6; Clutterbuck, 1976; Pierre,</p><p>1976; Wohlstetter, 1976; Hopple, 1982; Wilkinson, 1986; Wilkinson and</p><p>Stewart, 1987). Because this literature was mainly focused on the relatively</p><p>localised terrorism stemming from the Arab–Israel conflict, it was largely</p><p>marginal to the central strategic preoccupations of Cold War Strategic</p><p>Studies.</p><p>The most significant candidate for the category of deferred critical</p><p>events was substantial intra-Third World events such as the Iran–Iraq</p><p>War during the 1980s. Third World security was largely discussed as part</p><p>of the superpowers’ global rivalry, and this perhaps explains the relative</p><p>lack of concern about Western support for anti-communist military dic-</p><p>tatorships. Only a few ISS writers, to be further discussed in chapter 5,</p><p>pointed to the security concerns of Third World states in their own right</p><p>(Girling, 1980; Kolodziej and Harkavy, 1982; Ayoob, 1984; Thomas, 1987;</p><p>Azar and Moon, 1988). Many relatively minor superpower engagements</p><p>in Africa, Central America or elsewhere just became small parts of the gen-</p><p>eral literature without making much impact on its main lines of thought</p><p>(e.g. IISS, 1981). In a general sense, this literature might be seen as a</p><p>response to decolonisation as a broad ‘event’, but without the ability to</p><p>fundamentally change the basic scope or analytical assumptions which</p><p>characterised Cold War ISS.</p><p>The war in Vietnam constituted a particularly critical case, but for an</p><p>event of such scale and political controversy it made surprisingly little</p><p>impact on the ISS literature, thus making it the strongest single inci-</p><p>dent of a deferred critical event. There were rather few articles in IR</p><p>or Strategic Studies journals (Fishel, 1966; Hunter and Windsor, 1968;</p><p>Thompson, 1969; Goodman, 1972), and the IISS did not devote even</p><p>one Adelphi Paper to it. In the Cold War context, the Vietnam War was</p><p>the internal dynamics of academic debates 87</p><p>primarily about US containment policy and the ‘domino theory’ fear</p><p>that allowing a breach anywhere in the US wall around the communist</p><p>world would result in a cascade of conversions to communism in the</p><p>Third World. Along with events in Africa and Central America, it gave</p><p>rise to a sub-literature on guerrilla war and counterinsurgency (Johnson,</p><p>1968a, 1968b; Soderlund, 1970), and cruelly exposed the difficulties for</p><p>the US in fighting limited wars in the periphery as part of containment</p><p>(Mack, 1975). It also highlighted the limits of the abstract strategic theory</p><p>then at its height in relation to deterrence, but seemingly useless in a war</p><p>where body counts and battles won seemed to bear no direct relation-</p><p>ship to the politics of victory and defeat (Gray, 1982b: 90). Perhaps most</p><p>importantly, the defeat suffered by the US in the Vietnam War generated</p><p>a sustained doubt in the US about the utility of force in general, and US</p><p>ability to fight limited wars in the Third World in particular – the so-called</p><p>‘Vietnam syndrome’ (Herring, 1991/2). In the postmortem literature on</p><p>what went wrong two key lessons crystallised: technological preponder-</p><p>ance did not win wars, and domestic cohesion was essential, both to the</p><p>enemy’s ability to suffer high levels of casualties and for the ability of</p><p>Western media to sway the support of the public (Cooper, 1970; Kalb and</p><p>Abel, 1971; Ravenal, 1974, 1974/5; Grinter, 1975; Fromkin and Chace,</p><p>1984/5).</p><p>In the main, superpower concerns dominated, and the discussion of the</p><p>Third World within ISS was therefore mainly tied into its consequences</p><p>for the central balance. The literature focused on five possible effects: con-</p><p>tainment (how would instabilities and conflict in the Third World affect</p><p>the structure of superpower spheres of influence?), extended deterrence</p><p>(could Third World allies be supported by superpowers extending their</p><p>nuclear umbrella to them?), escalation (was there a danger that the central</p><p>stability of deterrence could be upset by the superpowers being drawn into</p><p>Third World conflicts between their clients and allies?), nuclear prolifera-</p><p>tion (see above and chapter 5) and economic security (could Third World</p><p>supplier cartels disrupt the Western economy by raising prices or restrict-</p><p>ing supply?). Consideration of deterrence logics outside the superpower</p><p>framework was rare (Rosen, 1977; Waltz, 1981).</p><p>The internal dynamics of academic debates</p><p>In a broad brush perspective, the internal academic dynamic of Strategic</p><p>Studies across the duration of the Cold War can almost be seen as following</p><p>the same ‘S-curve’ described for technology earlier in this chapter. It had</p><p>88 strategic studies, deterrence and the cold war</p><p>a slow start, a dramatic period of development and then a levelling off.</p><p>Stimulated by nuclear weapons and the Cold War, it begins to gather</p><p>strength during the 1940s and 1950s, reaching a kind of peak in the</p><p>1950s and 1960s golden age with a string of classic books centred around</p><p>nuclear deterrence (Brodie, 1946, 1959; Kissinger, 1957; Osgood, 1957;</p><p>Kahn, 1960, 1962; Rapoport, 1960, 1964; Schelling, 1960, 1966; Snyder,</p><p>1961; Singer, 1962; Green, 1966; Morgan, 1977). There were inputs from</p><p>many disciplines and a real sense of excitement driven by the intrinsic</p><p>intellectual interest of the problem, the sense of fear and urgency about</p><p>what choices to make in practice, and the high public profile and generous</p><p>resourcing of nuclear strategy.</p><p>But by the 1970s, the main breakthrough work had been done, and</p><p>some of the enthusiasm was waning as both the superpower relation-</p><p>ship and Strategic Studies itself became more routine and institution-</p><p>alised. The theoretical debates about deterrence were beginning to sink</p><p>under the weight of their own logical complexity (Freedman, 1991). The</p><p>nuclear balance had reached a kind of stalemate which seemed fairly</p><p>stable, and about which there did not seem all that much more new to</p><p>say except for responses to technological developments, most notably in</p><p>defences against ballistic missiles. Mainstream Strategic Studies literature</p><p>succumbed to hectic empiricism, in which the main job of analysts was to</p><p>keep up with ever-changing technologies and political developments. On</p><p>a deeper level, some academics and some policy-makers drifted towards</p><p>a kind of exhausted acceptance of existential or general deterrence, where</p><p>the main effect came not from ever more elaborate and less credible</p><p>preparations to meet every contingency, but from the simple existence</p><p>of nuclear weapons and fear of them being used (Waltz, 1981; Morgan,</p><p>1983; Freedman, 1988).</p><p>As noted above, one of the distinctive features of Strategic Studies (and</p><p>ISS more broadly) was and is the involvement of civilians in strategic</p><p>thinking, an involvement which produced a number of distinctive out-</p><p>puts. Systems analysis, for example, which was a method for solving prob-</p><p>lems of force structure and resource allocation, was based on economic</p><p>theory as well as on operations research developed by natural scientists,</p><p>engineers and economists during the Second World War (Smoke, 1975:</p><p>290–293). Several pioneering RAND studies were implemented into pol-</p><p>icy, notably the famous ‘air bases’ study by Wohlstetter, a mathematician,</p><p>and his associates (1954). Some of the leading representatives of this way</p><p>of thinking entered the Kennedy administration labelled as McNamara’s</p><p>‘whiz kids’ (Kaplan 1983; Brodie 1965). From there, this method and</p><p>the internal dynamics of academic debates 89</p><p>related RAND techniques like the ‘Planning-Programming-Budgeting-</p><p>System’ ‘spread through most of the federal government’ (Smoke, 1975:</p><p>292).</p><p>This unfolding of Strategic Studies meshed with both the problem-</p><p>solving disposition of American social science generally, and its prefer-</p><p>ence for values of ‘objective’ science (quantification and hard theory) as</p><p>opposed to the traditionalism (history) and normative approaches (aca-</p><p>demic and activist) that were the main approaches in Europe. Wæver</p><p>(Wæver and Buzan, 2007: 388; see also Smoke, 1975) argues that:</p><p>Under a Cold War situation with a booming US economy, a mood of tech-</p><p>nological optimism and a willingness to support social science as part of</p><p>the solution to social challenges (including not only the Cold War struggle</p><p>but social problems of all kinds), the reward was high for new approaches</p><p>that seemed to move IR in the direction of the use of scientific methods</p><p>and tools ranging from coding of events data allowing for computerized</p><p>data processing through cybernetic models and experimental psychology</p><p>to game theory. Deterrence theory became a success story in this context</p><p>for two reasons. On the one hand, it produced a seemingly productive</p><p>(‘progressive’) research programme where theoretical work produced ever</p><p>new and more complex problems which could in turn be dealt with by</p><p>new theoretical moves. On the other hand, all this seemed highly useful</p><p>because the theories actually produced their own reality of abstractions,</p><p>the world of ‘secure second strike capability’, ‘extended deterrence’ and</p><p>‘escalation dominance’.</p><p>There was a noteworthy synergy between the commitment of Strategic</p><p>Studies to ‘scientific’ methods (positivism, quantification, game theory)</p><p>and the parallel enthusiasm in much of American Political Science and</p><p>IR for ‘behaviouralism’ which sought not just to bring the epistemology</p><p>and methods of the natural sciences into the social ones, but to judge</p><p>what counted as knowledge by those standards. Here golden age Strategic</p><p>Studies with its system theories, game theory and quantification was</p><p>in the vanguard, showing the rest of IR what could (and should) be</p><p>done. The steady absorption of Strategic Studies into the expanding and</p><p>consolidating field of IR was facilitated by this synergy.</p><p>Moving from the golden age to the full forty-five years of Cold War</p><p>Strategic Studies, the general commitment to ‘scientific’ methods and</p><p>positivist, rationalist forms of scholarship comprised quite a diverse set of</p><p>analytical and methodological approaches. Waltzian structural Neoreal-</p><p>ism drew explicitly on micro-economics, with its rational actor assump-</p><p>tions taken from the level of the individual human being or firm, and</p><p>90 strategic studies, deterrence and the cold war</p><p>applied these to states. Structural Realism as well as Strategic Studies more</p><p>broadly lent itself to quantitative studies of large data-sets, a methodol-</p><p>ogy aided by the introduction of computers in the 1950s and 1960s,</p><p>as well as to comparative case-studies which became the norm in the</p><p>influential journal International Security published from 1976. Game the-</p><p>ory constituted yet another form of scientific scholarship based not on</p><p>the correlates deduced from data-sets or historical case-studies, but on</p><p>the running through of different scenarios and mathematical equations</p><p>built around different actor assumptions and the prospects for conflict or</p><p>cooperation. The fact that no nuclear exchanges took place, and hence did</p><p>not generate quantifiable data, made game theory particularly suited for</p><p>the development of deterrence theory. As game theory evolved during the</p><p>1950s and 1960s it was also greatly aided – and in fact spurred – by the</p><p>construction of computers powerful enough to run games through a</p><p>large number of cycles (Edwards, 1996). One should note, though, that a</p><p>large part of what was written on international security did not evoke high</p><p>theory or complicated deductive or quantitative techniques but came in</p><p>the form of rather straightforward empiricist scholarship with contem-</p><p>porary history and policy problem-solving as the principal framings.</p><p>The passions for ‘scientific’ method were mainly, though as we shall</p><p>show in the next chapter not exclusively, American. In Europe, though</p><p>again not exclusively, there was more support for historical and norma-</p><p>tive approaches. This epistemological clash was represented by the famous</p><p>exchange between Hedley Bull (1966), who defended ‘traditional’ meth-</p><p>ods and was sceptical about scientific ones, and Morton Kaplan (1966)</p><p>who defended the behavioural move. In the event, however, it was nor-</p><p>mative differences that were the most prominent dividing feature of the</p><p>discourse about nuclear weapons and, as with the methodological divide,</p><p>this largely resulted in the formation of two sides shouting past each other</p><p>(the opposition to Strategic Studies is surveyed in the next chapter). In</p><p>general the two sides stuck to their positions, though in the self-reflections</p><p>on the state of the field (Bull, 1968; Gray, 1977, 1982a, 1982b; Booth, 1979;</p><p>Howard, 1979; Freedman, 1984b) that were a staple of the Strategic Stud-</p><p>ies literature, there was some attempt to address the normative critiques</p><p>of Strategic Studies from Peace Research.</p><p>Although dominated by American scholars, Strategic Studies was by</p><p>no means an exclusively US field. Some innovative thinking was done in</p><p>Europe, perhaps most notably Hedley Bull’s (1961) path-breaking work</p><p>on arms control. British and French military thinkers made some impact</p><p>on both deterrence theory generally, and on the more self-interested topics</p><p>institutionalisation 91</p><p>involving the endless debates about NATO and how to make extended</p><p>deterrence work (Liddell Hart, 1946; Blackett, 1948, 1956; Gallois, 1961;</p><p>Beaufre, 1965), as did some strategic analysts (Noel-Baker, 1958; Aron,</p><p>1965; Hassner, 1968; Howard, 1973, 1976, 1979, 1981; Pierre, 1973; Freed-</p><p>man, 1981a, 1981b, 1981/2, 1988; Joffe, 1981). But regardless of which</p><p>side of the Atlantic they were on, most of those involved in Strategic</p><p>Studies followed the ‘S-curve’ described above and faced the same crisis</p><p>of relevance when the Cold War ended.</p><p>Institutionalisation</p><p>The story of how a new field, ISS, arose and became established is not ‘only’</p><p>one of great power politics, technology, events and academic debates. It</p><p>is also crucially a story of how the field became institutionalised, how</p><p>it achieved a standing and a legitimacy that allowed it to build research</p><p>programmes, get funding, find outlets for the dissemination of its results</p><p>and make researchers self-identify as ‘security scholars’. Institutionalisa-</p><p>tion can thus be seen as a driving force that is at first produced through</p><p>the successful interplay of the four others, but which also, once the pro-</p><p>cess of institutionalisation gains ground, becomes a driving force in its</p><p>own right. A field which is strongly institutionalised is one with good</p><p>chances of succeeding in the competition for funds, policy influence and</p><p>prestige. Institutionalisation may be a conservative force, but it may also</p><p>be a driving force that pushes ISS in new directions.</p><p>A general idea of how this institutionalisation occurred can be gained</p><p>from looking at five different aspects of it: the establishment of ISS courses</p><p>and institutes within universities; the creation of specialist sections within</p><p>academic associations; the development of specialist ISS journals; the</p><p>founding of ISS think-tanks; and the setting up of funding programmes</p><p>(by government and foundations) aimed at promoting ISS. It is not</p><p>within our resources to tell this story comprehensively, particularly at</p><p>the level of how concrete research networks were formed, but we can</p><p>certainly demonstrate the general pattern. Here we focus mainly on the</p><p>institutionalisation of Strategic Studies</p><p>itself: the story is of how a new</p><p>field arises and becomes established.</p><p>Prior to the formation of a field of ISS there had, of course, been a</p><p>long tradition of studying war that security scholars could draw upon.</p><p>The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) was founded in 1831 on the</p><p>initiative of the Duke of Wellington to study naval and military science,</p><p>and its journal dates from 1857. The US Army War College is more than</p><p>92 strategic studies, deterrence and the cold war</p><p>a century old. As already noted, the ISS that emerged as a self-conscious</p><p>field after the Second World War in part built on this tradition, but as</p><p>noted above was also distinctive in purpose and personnel, and carried</p><p>the new label and wider orientation of international security. Broadly</p><p>speaking, the development and institutionalisation of ISS proceeded in</p><p>parallel with that of IR more widely as a field/discipline distinct from</p><p>Political Science, History and International Law – distinct here meaning</p><p>having its own academic associations, departments, degrees and journals.</p><p>ISS did not start as part of IR, and some of its early key thinkers, for</p><p>example Schelling, probably never thought of themselves as part of IR.</p><p>But their many overlaps, synergies, shared personnel and intertwined</p><p>processes of institutionalisation steadily drew them together. By the late</p><p>1960s, ISS had become one of the major sub-fields of IR without anyone</p><p>really noticing this happening. It was not uncommon for major figures</p><p>in IR theory, such as Bull, Jervis and Waltz, also to be active writers</p><p>in ISS.</p><p>A few of the institutions in which ISS was to be pursued existed before</p><p>the Second World War (e.g. the Brookings Institution think-tank founded</p><p>in 1927), but most of them came into being as the subject of ISS devel-</p><p>oped, a process that is still ongoing. The US Army formed a Strategic</p><p>Studies research group in the mid-1950s, which during the 1970s became</p><p>the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College. The Inter-</p><p>national Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) was founded in London in</p><p>1958. In universities, the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia</p><p>University was established in 1951, and the Department of War Studies at</p><p>King’s College London also in the 1950s. The Mershon Center for Interna-</p><p>tional Security Studies at Ohio State University was inaugurated in 1967,</p><p>consolidating programmes on defence and national security that dated</p><p>back to the mid-1950s, funded by a private bequest. On the government</p><p>side of things, the US established an Arms Control and Disarmament</p><p>Agency (ACDA) in 1961, and in 1965 the Indian Defence Ministry set up</p><p>the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA). In its ‘Survey of</p><p>Strategic Studies’ (1970) the IISS listed 128 places in 29 countries where</p><p>research in Strategic Studies (interestingly including Peace Research) was</p><p>being pursued. Most of these were in the West and Japan, with the US</p><p>accounting for 20 and the UK 13, but Eastern European and some Third</p><p>World countries also had significant representation.</p><p>The 1970s and 1980s continued this trend, with ever more think-tanks,</p><p>university programmes and institutes coming into being. Stanford Uni-</p><p>versity’s Arms Control and Disarmament Program was founded in 1970,</p><p>institutionalisation 93</p><p>and the Oxford University Strategic Studies Group in 1971. The Inter-</p><p>national Security Studies section of the International Studies Association</p><p>(ISA) was also set up in 1971, the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad</p><p>in 1973, the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies in 1976, and the Center</p><p>for Peace and Security Studies, Georgetown University and the Center for</p><p>Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University, both in 1977. In Geneva, the Pro-</p><p>gramme for Strategic and International Security Studies was started in</p><p>1978 as part of the Graduate Institute of International Studies. In the US,</p><p>a National Defense University was formed in 1976 by the merger of earlier</p><p>programmes and in 1984 this created its own research arm, the Institute</p><p>for National Strategic Studies. Johns Hopkins University formalised its</p><p>Strategic Studies programme in 1980 and the Committee on International</p><p>Security Studies of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences began to</p><p>function during the late 1980s. A benchmark for how widely and deeply</p><p>ISS had become institutionalised by the late 1980s was the establishment</p><p>in 1987 of Women in International Security (WIIS) based in Georgetown</p><p>University and dedicated to increasing the influence of women in foreign</p><p>and defence affairs. It has subsequently expanded to 1,400 members –</p><p>women and men – in over thirty-five countries from academia, think-</p><p>tanks, the diplomatic corps, the intelligence community, the military, gov-</p><p>ernment, non-governmental organisations, international organisations,</p><p>the media and the private sector (http://wiis.georgetown.edu/about/ –</p><p>accessed 2 January 2007).</p><p>Think-tanks and foundations also played a crucial role in supporting</p><p>the birth and Cold War evolution of Strategic Studies. Some think-tanks</p><p>undertook work that fell squarely within ISS itself, with RAND and the</p><p>IISS being the most prominent examples. Others were significant in that</p><p>they sponsored academic programmes and university centres. As noted</p><p>in chapter 3, foundations and think-tanks are often listed along a Liberal–</p><p>Conservative ideological spectrum, and as a rough general rule, Conser-</p><p>vative institutions would be stronger supporters of conventional Strategic</p><p>Studies, while Liberal institutions have, relatively speaking, been more</p><p>generous in their funding of Peace Research, Arms Control and, from</p><p>the early 1980s, programmes devoted to the rethinking of the concept</p><p>of security itself. That said, some foundations bridged these divides by</p><p>providing support for Strategic Studies as well as for Peace Research and</p><p>Arms Control. Think-tanks and foundations differed and differ further-</p><p>more in how explicitly ideologically they conceive of themselves with, for</p><p>instance, the American Enterprise Institute and the John M. Olin Founda-</p><p>tion taking an explicitly political–normative position, while others such</p><p>94 strategic studies, deterrence and the cold war</p><p>as the Brookings Institution or Ford Foundation emphasise political ide-</p><p>ology less while highlighting their contributions to academic knowledge</p><p>production.</p><p>Institutionally, foundations and think-tanks are often interwoven as</p><p>foundation grants are essential to the upkeeping and growth of think-</p><p>tanks. Looking to the key think-tanks and foundations which underwrote</p><p>traditional Cold War ISS, the question of where to draw the line between</p><p>ISS and the policy world becomes a crucial, but also a blurred, one. A</p><p>narrow definition of what falls within the ambit of the institutionalisa-</p><p>tion of ISS would look exclusively to those think-tanks and foundations</p><p>which either conducted or funded academic research, whereas a broader</p><p>definition would incorporate those institutions that more explicitly target</p><p>policy-makers in a manner that mixes academic knowledge and policy</p><p>advice/advocacy. Starting from a more narrow definition, the cases of</p><p>RAND and IISS noted above are the most prominent examples of think-</p><p>tanks with a clear academic status which impacted core elements of ISS.</p><p>RAND’s contribution to game theory and deterrence thinking during the</p><p>golden age of Strategic Studies has already been noted, and although later</p><p>decades did not produce similar path-breaking theoretical contributions,</p><p>RAND continued to make a crucial input at the level of empirical security</p><p>analysis. Locating RAND on the political landscape of security institu-</p><p>tions, its strong reliance on government contracts has led some to view</p><p>it as compliant with, and hence politically skewed towards, state policies,</p><p>while others have viewed it as less ideologically driven and pointed to</p><p>it being supported by a variety of foundations including Ford, Bill and</p><p>Melinda Gates, and the Pew Charitable Trusts (Oren, 2003). Looking</p><p>to the UK, the IISS, which was during the Cold War perhaps</p><p>the pre-</p><p>mier specialist Strategic Studies think-tank, was the source of several key</p><p>periodicals in the field (Survival, Adelphi Papers, The Military Balance,</p><p>Strategic Survey).</p><p>Broadening the scope to cover think-tanks known for their more</p><p>explicit Conservative ideological agenda and hence often a stronger focus</p><p>on influencing policy and public debate, rather than on ‘pure’ ISS the-</p><p>ory work, we find first the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank</p><p>founded in 1943 as a promoter of free enterprise capitalism. The American</p><p>Enterprise Institute was and is a large recipient of money from Conserva-</p><p>tive foundations, including the John M. Olin Foundation, the Sarah Scaife</p><p>Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry</p><p>Bradley Foundation (www.aei.org/ – last accessed 16 November 2007).</p><p>The importance of the American Enterprise Institute fellows has not been</p><p>institutionalisation 95</p><p>so much in the key field of ISS theory, but as individuals combining the</p><p>roles of academic analysts, policy advisors and public intellectuals. Some</p><p>of the most prominent fellows associated with the American Enterprise</p><p>Institute during the Cold War were Richard Perle, Assistant Secretary of</p><p>Defense for International Security Policy under Reagan, and Irving Kris-</p><p>tol, the founding father of the Neo-Conservative movement which rose</p><p>to a prominent position with the election of George W. Bush in 2000</p><p>(Williams, 2005). The confluence of think-tanks and the policy world</p><p>was further indicated by the claim that the American Enterprise Institute</p><p>played a key role in developing and implementing President Reagan’s con-</p><p>tested policy in Nicaragua in the 1980s when the CIA trained the ‘Contra’</p><p>insurgents.</p><p>Another prominent Conservative think-tank is the Heritage Founda-</p><p>tion, founded in 1973 by an initial grant from beer magnate Joseph</p><p>Coors, defined by Abelson (1996: 49) as the archetypal advocacy think-</p><p>tank (www.heritage.org/ – last accessed 16 November 2007). The Heritage</p><p>Foundation has also been supported by major Conservative foundations</p><p>including the Sarah Scaife and the John M. Olin foundations and like the</p><p>American Enterprise Institute has been linked with the Reagan adminis-</p><p>tration’s support for anti-communist forces in Nicaragua, Guatemala and</p><p>El Salvador. That competition between like-minded institutions is also a</p><p>challenge to foundations is evidenced by the prominent Olin Foundation’s</p><p>decision to support the Heritage Foundation rather than the American</p><p>Enterprise Institute in 1986. The Center for Strategic and International</p><p>Studies (CSIS) founded in 1962 through the Conservative Sarah Scaife</p><p>Foundation should be mentioned as an example of an institution first</p><p>based at a university (Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Ser-</p><p>vice), but whose (perceived) ideological agenda led the university to cut</p><p>ties in 1986. Other prominent think-tanks/policy institutes based at uni-</p><p>versities include the Conservative Hoover Institution founded in 1919</p><p>through a donation to Stanford University made by Herbert Hoover to</p><p>support the Hoover War Collection. Finally, at the end of the Cold War,</p><p>the United States Institute of Peace was founded in 1986 through an act</p><p>signed by President Reagan.</p><p>An important think-tank operating with strong academic credentials</p><p>and an explicitly political agenda is the Hudson Institute, founded in</p><p>1961 by prominent RAND strategist Herman Kahn (www.hudson.org/ –</p><p>last accessed 16 November 2007). The Hudson Institute was explicitly</p><p>concerned with what it saw as left-wing nuclear pessimism arguing both</p><p>the necessity and feasibility of nuclear deterrence. Prior to his death in</p><p>96 strategic studies, deterrence and the cold war</p><p>1983, Kahn expressed support for Reagan’s agenda as well as optimism</p><p>regarding the strategic use of space. Until the end of the Cold War the</p><p>Hudson Institute received substantial government contracts and support</p><p>from major Conservative foundations.</p><p>Not all think-tanks had explicitly ideological agendas and some carried</p><p>out work that fell in part within Strategic Studies, in part within more</p><p>critical approaches to arms control (see chapter 5). These included the</p><p>Brookings Institution, the Council on Foreign Relations which also pub-</p><p>lishes Foreign Affairs, the London-based Royal Institute of International</p><p>Affairs – Chatham House (founded in 1920), the Woodrow Wilson Inter-</p><p>national Center for Scholars, established by the American Congress in</p><p>1968, and national institutes of international affairs, such as the Finnish</p><p>Institute of International Affairs (1961), the Swedish Institute for Interna-</p><p>tional Affairs (1938), and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs</p><p>(1959).</p><p>As this short account of how think-tanks contributed to the institu-</p><p>tionalisation of ISS shows, telling the story of think-tanks is also telling</p><p>the story of the significance of major foundations. Chapter 3 provided</p><p>a list of the largest Liberal and Conservative foundations, and although</p><p>we should be careful not to overdraw the distinction between the two</p><p>as far as providing funding for ISS is concerned, it should be clear from</p><p>the account above that Conservative foundations, most prominently the</p><p>Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the</p><p>Sarah Scaife Foundation and the Smith Richardson Foundation played</p><p>key roles in supporting think-tanks. But foundations also made grants to</p><p>universities, thereby directly impacting the institutionalisation of ISS in</p><p>another way. Most significant in this respect is probably the John M. Olin</p><p>Foundation, founded in 1953 by John M. Olin, who turned a small family</p><p>company into one of America’s largest suppliers of guns, ammunition and</p><p>chemicals (Wooster, 2006). John M. Olin retained tight control over the</p><p>foundation, thus, when his alma mater, Cornell, ‘capitulated’ to student</p><p>protesters in 1969, Olin stopped his contributions (which all combined</p><p>had come to five million dollars). His fear that the foundation might drift</p><p>from his Conservative agenda also led him to disband it by 2005. During</p><p>the 1970s and 1980s the foundation had an important impact on ISS: it</p><p>provided, for example, funding for the International Security Program</p><p>at Yale, and the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard,</p><p>which began in 1989.</p><p>Although ISS did eventually develop a whole suite of specialised pub-</p><p>lications, including a number of textbooks (Baylis et al., 1975, 1987;</p><p>institutionalisation 97</p><p>Russett, 1983; Buzan, 1987a), initially the academic discussions about</p><p>international security took place in less specialised journals. An indica-</p><p>tion of this can be seen in a selection of key articles in the evolution of</p><p>ISS (Buzan and Hansen, 2007). This shows that the debates about inter-</p><p>national security occurred not just in IR and foreign policy journals such</p><p>as World Politics, International Affairs, International Studies Quarterly and</p><p>Foreign Affairs, but also in Political Science journals such as the Ameri-</p><p>can Political Science Review and Political Studies Quarterly, and general</p><p>social science and humanities journals such as Daedalus. Interestingly,</p><p>the first specialist ISS journal appeared in Europe, Survival in 1958, with</p><p>the main US entry International Security not starting until 1976. Oth-</p><p>ers followed: Terrorism/Studies in Conflict and Terrorism (1977), Journal</p><p>of Strategic Studies (1978), Arms Control/Contemporary Security Policy</p><p>(1980), Intelligence and National Security (1986), Terrorism and Political</p><p>Violence (1988) and Security Studies (1990), and these can be seen both as</p><p>an expression of how prominent ISS had become and as part of a wider</p><p>process of expanding numbers of IR journals generally. These more spe-</p><p>cialised journals certainly facilitated an expansion of the ISS literature,</p><p>but they did not acquire anything like a monopoly position. The general</p><p>IR journals remained important forums for ISS debates, including later</p><p>arrivals such as the British Journal of International Studies (1975) (later</p><p>Review of International Studies),</p><p>the European Journal of International</p><p>Relations (1995) and Cooperation and Conflict (1965).</p><p>By the end of the Cold War, Strategic Studies had put down deep</p><p>institutional roots. As a student, you could take courses, and sometimes</p><p>whole degrees, in it at hundreds of universities. From there, you could</p><p>look to jobs in teaching, media, research, public policy, think-tanks, gov-</p><p>ernment and the military. Once courses and degrees and think-tanks had</p><p>been institutionalised, they fed student demand for ISS, not just because</p><p>they seemed interesting and relevant to major questions of the day, but</p><p>because they offered good careers. In the US, ISS had become one of the</p><p>big two subjects within IR, more or less dividing the field with IPE on</p><p>the basis of a division of labour between the conflictual and coopera-</p><p>tive aspect of international relations (Caporaso, 1995; Wæver and Buzan,</p><p>2007). Interestingly, as this division of labour itself became institution-</p><p>alised into separate journals and associations it stunted the development</p><p>of the economic security literature that came out of the Middle East oil</p><p>crisis.</p><p>In sum, over the four decades of the Cold War, and not least because</p><p>of its intimate connection to the public policy problems generated by the</p><p>98 strategic studies, deterrence and the cold war</p><p>Events</p><p>• Berlin (Soviet blockade, building</p><p>of Berlin Wall) (constitutive)</p><p>• Korean War (constitutive)</p><p>• Cuba Missile Crisis</p><p>(constitutive and significant</p><p>critical )</p><p>• Middle East oil crisis</p><p>• Vietnam War (deferred</p><p>critical )</p><p>• Iran–Iraq War 1980s</p><p>STRATEGIC</p><p>STUDIES</p><p>Institutionalisation</p><p>• founding of</p><p>institutes, think-tanks,</p><p>foundations,</p><p>university programmes</p><p>• specialised</p><p>journals</p><p>Great power</p><p>politics</p><p>• stability of</p><p>bipolarity</p><p>• identity of Soviet Union</p><p>Technology</p><p>• nuclear weapons</p><p>(accuracy, delivery</p><p>time, BMD,</p><p>proliferation)</p><p>Academic debate</p><p>• civilian involvement in</p><p>strategic thinking</p><p>• linkage to public policy</p><p>• enthusiasm for</p><p>‘scientific’ methods</p><p>• multidisciplinary start</p><p>Figure 4.1. The main drivers of Strategic Studies</p><p>Cold War, Strategic Studies had acquired formidable weight and momen-</p><p>tum. The success of its institutionalisation combined with its linkage to</p><p>the military problems of the Cold War meant that when the Berlin Wall</p><p>fell, Strategic Studies in particular, and ISS in general, were faced with an</p><p>existential crisis. How could all this survive once its core problem was no</p><p>longer there? More on this in chapters 6 and 7. In Figure 4.1 we illustrate</p><p>the main driving forces that impacted the birth and evolution of Cold War</p><p>Strategic Studies, their main content and interplay. Those circles with a</p><p>thicker line exerted a particularly strong impact.</p><p>Conclusions</p><p>Looking to the five driving forces, the main drivers behind this foun-</p><p>dational stage of ISS were thus unquestionably great power politics and</p><p>conclusions 99</p><p>technology. These two driving forces highlight the way in which the enemy</p><p>image of the USSR became fixed in the US at an early stage, and how this</p><p>played into the impact of nuclear weapons, and the rapidly evolving</p><p>technology associated with them. The other three driving forces were,</p><p>however, by no means unimportant. Events were significant first of all</p><p>because it was key events in the mid and late 1940s and early 1950s which</p><p>produced the very Cold War that Strategic Studies was founded upon.</p><p>Throughout the Cold War there was a series of events that fortified the</p><p>view of the Soviet Union as an enemy, but also expanded the agenda of</p><p>ISS. The two most critical events during the Cold War that challenged</p><p>the geographical and sectoral scope of Strategic Studies were wars in the</p><p>Third World, most crucially the Vietnam War, and the oil crisis of the</p><p>1970s. Turning to the importance of internal academic debates, this is a</p><p>less crucial driving force in that for most of the Cold War, mainstream ISS</p><p>(Strategic Studies) had little interest in epistemological questions, though</p><p>there was a de facto predominance of rational, empirical and positivist</p><p>approaches, albeit often mixed in with elements of history, as with Clas-</p><p>sical Realist IR. To a large extent, this literature was driven by the policy</p><p>problems facing mainly the US, and to a lesser extent those of its allies</p><p>(e.g. Beaufre, 1965). Yet if the Cold War saw few of the epistemologi-</p><p>cal discussions that we have become accustomed to since the 1980s, the</p><p>diversity of disciplines that impacted early ISS was still significant for con-</p><p>stituting both the scope and methodology of the field. The driving force</p><p>of institutionalisation finally laid out the way in which Strategic Studies</p><p>and ISS developed as an academic field, how it received substantial public</p><p>and private funding and how think-tanks and venues for teaching and</p><p>publication underpinned its birth and growth.</p><p>As the Cold War came to an end, the operation and interaction of</p><p>the five driving forces began to change dramatically. Current affairs and</p><p>events, which had largely made their impact within the context of the</p><p>Cold War, were completely overshadowed by the cosmic central collapse</p><p>of both ideological and political–military bipolarity. From the mid-1980s,</p><p>as Gorbachev began to reverse the image projected by the Soviet Union,</p><p>developments in great power politics became the dominant driver. The</p><p>Cold War itself began to wind down, taking with it the debates about</p><p>the nature of the Soviet Union, the sense of urgency that had attached</p><p>to deterrence theory, containment policy and extended deterrence, and</p><p>even much of the fear of nuclear weapons that had dominated ISS since</p><p>the beginning of the nuclear era. There had already been some decline in</p><p>the pressure from the technological driver as nuclear weapons and their</p><p>delivery systems became technologically mature, levelling out at the top of</p><p>100 strategic studies, deterrence and the cold war</p><p>the ‘S-curve’ from the late 1970s onwards. But as we will show in chapter</p><p>6, the winding down of the Cold War did not take away an ongoing</p><p>preoccupation with new military technologies, and neither did it remove</p><p>concern about nuclear weapons. As the focus on superpower arsenals</p><p>receded, that on horizontal proliferation became more prominent.</p><p>As already noted, the ending of the Cold War posed a possible crisis for</p><p>the extremely successful institutionalisation of Strategic Studies, which</p><p>now faced hard questions about its relevance, resourcing and bureau-</p><p>cratic survival on anything like its 1980s scale. It also derailed the internal</p><p>dynamics of academic and policy debates. The 1980s intellectual drift</p><p>of Strategic Studies into an unattractive choice between an existential</p><p>deterrence dependent on irrationality, and a full-spectrum deterrence</p><p>dependent on a sustained rationality so complex as to make its plausibil-</p><p>ity questionable, was simply swept away. With the Cold War gone, these</p><p>questions became of only theoretical interest. And since Strategic Studies</p><p>had lived on its linkage to public policy questions, theoretical interest was</p><p>not nearly enough to sustain engagement by the large establishment that</p><p>had grown up during the Cold War. Gone also was the whole problem</p><p>of managing extended deterrence that had so much defined political and</p><p>intellectual tensions across the Atlantic. With the Soviet Union disap-</p><p>pearing as a threat, Europe no longer needed US protection. The problem</p><p>with NATO shifted from how to share the burdens and risks of extended</p><p>deterrence to whether NATO was necessary at all, and if it was, then for</p><p>what?</p><p>With the end of the Cold War, Strategic Studies faced a crisis born of</p><p>the very success that its marriage to the superpower nuclear rivalry had</p><p>given it. Despite this crisis, it was the Cold War development of ISS that set</p><p>the template for ‘international security’ to which all of the contemporary</p><p>and subsequent wideners and deepeners had to relate. But before we look</p><p>at how ISS rose from the ashes of the ending of the Cold War, let us turn</p><p>to the Cold War approaches which questioned Strategic Studies’ reading</p><p>of</p><p>nuclear deterrence, the nature of the state, and the privilege accorded</p><p>to state-centric, military security.</p><p>5</p><p>The Cold War challenge to national security</p><p>This chapter is devoted to those approaches which in various ways chal-</p><p>lenged Strategic Studies. These approaches had one thing in common –</p><p>namely their criticism of Strategic Studies – but they also differed so much</p><p>in their choices of key analytical and political concepts that it would be</p><p>difficult to present them as one approach and to take this approach</p><p>through one driving force after another. A significant challenge to Strate-</p><p>gic Studies (although in part operating from within it and in part rooted</p><p>in Peace Research) was Arms Control, which emphasised the collective</p><p>risk to survival arising from the intersection of superpower rivalry and</p><p>nuclear weapons.1 The Peace Research branch of Arms Control offered a</p><p>very different, more normatively and politically driven, view of nuclear</p><p>deterrence than Strategic Studies. But it was still, when viewed through</p><p>the lens of the four questions that structure ISS laid out in chapter 1,</p><p>an approach to security that focused on security’s military dimensions</p><p>and on external threats. The extent to which most Arms Control Peace</p><p>Researchers envisaged bipolarity as a structure that could be eased but not</p><p>eradicated, was striking. Détente – the political alternative to containment</p><p>and deterrence – was seen as ‘rivalry with lower risks of war, not an end</p><p>to rivalry’ itself (Buzan et al., 1990: 9; see also Pastusiak, 1977; Schlotter,</p><p>1983).</p><p>Other parts of Peace Research took a more radical approach, ana-</p><p>lytically as well as politically, arguing that governments on both sides</p><p>of the Iron Curtain held their populations – and the planet – hostages</p><p>to nuclear disaster. This constituted ‘humanity’ or the individual as the</p><p>referent object rather than the state, thereby invoking the long-standing</p><p>1 Given that Arms Control had roots in both Strategic Studies and Peace Research, how to</p><p>place it in these chapters posed a problem. To put it in chapter 4 would have meant splitting</p><p>the discussion, while putting it in chapter 5 risks underplaying the extent to which major</p><p>elements of Arms Control were outgrowths of the Strategic Studies debates. It was not</p><p>a big enough topic to justify a separate chapter, yet its inclusion here is one reason this</p><p>chapter is so long.</p><p>101</p><p>102 the cold war challenge to national security</p><p>Liberal tradition of critically scrutinising the relationship between citizens</p><p>and the institutions of authority and sovereignty described in chapter 2.</p><p>Peace Researchers of the 1960s and 1970s did not, however, go through</p><p>the concept of security in launching their critique of Strategic Studies,</p><p>but through the oppositional concept of ‘peace’. Peace Researchers fur-</p><p>ther divided ‘peace’ into positive and negative peace. Negative peace was</p><p>defined as the absence of war, large-scale physical violence or personal</p><p>violence and opened up a research agenda on military security (Galtung,</p><p>1969: 183). Positive peace had multiple connotations. In the 1950s and</p><p>1960s, it was defined as ‘the integration of human society’ (JPR, 1964:</p><p>2), but towards the end of the 1960s, it was reformulated to include</p><p>‘structural violence’, which emphasised social injustice and inequality</p><p>(Galtung, 1969: 168, 171, 175). Successful academic concepts often owe</p><p>their popularity to their ability to encapsulate a body of existing or bur-</p><p>geoning research while simultaneously outlining a conceptually focused</p><p>new research agenda. Structural violence fitted this formula perfectly.</p><p>It provided an anchor for work on development issues, imperialism,</p><p>domestic conflicts in Western as well as Third World societies, environ-</p><p>mental resources, human rights and economic exploitation. It incorpo-</p><p>rated parts of a critical Marxist agenda while not endorsing the radical</p><p>Marxist call for violent revolution. Yet, in a premonition of post-Cold War</p><p>widening debates in ISS, this expansion of ‘peace’ beyond the absence of</p><p>war/conflict was criticised, not only by Strategic Studies, but from within</p><p>Peace Research itself.</p><p>Like Strategic Studies, neither Arms Control nor Peace Research explic-</p><p>itly foregrounded ‘security’, featuring instead complementary, parallel and</p><p>oppositional concepts: détente, arms control, peace, structural violence,</p><p>basic human needs and social justice. In 1983, Buzan (1983, 1984a) could</p><p>thus describe security as ‘an underdeveloped concept’, but as the decade</p><p>wore on, ‘security’ appeared as a concept bridging the fields of Strategic</p><p>Studies and Peace Research. The concept of common security, coined by</p><p>the Palme Commission in 1982 linked arms control and broader concerns</p><p>for the livelihood of people across the globe and became a popular concept</p><p>connecting the policy world and the critical parts of ISS. Articles which</p><p>expanded the military conception of security into environmental and</p><p>economic security began to appear in such prominent journals as Inter-</p><p>national Security (Ullman, 1983) and International Organization (Buzan,</p><p>1984b). Finally, two new academic perspectives, Poststructuralism and</p><p>Feminism, which had made an impact on the social sciences and the</p><p>humanities in general, grew out of Peace Research to establish themselves</p><p>the cold war challenge to national security 103</p><p>as distinct approaches. This literature was much smaller quantitatively</p><p>speaking than Arms Control or Strategic Studies, yet, in the light of the</p><p>changes brought about by the end of the Cold War, it turned out to be</p><p>significant for how ISS has evolved. Had there not been a small but grow-</p><p>ing concern with broader concepts of security in the 1980s, it is doubtful</p><p>whether widening approaches in the 1990s could have capitalised to the</p><p>extent that they did on the ending of the Cold War.</p><p>To handle the several strands of opposition to Strategic Studies we</p><p>structure the chapter as follows. The next section assumes that the reader</p><p>has the account of Strategic Studies and the manner in which the five</p><p>forces drove this literature reasonably fresh in mind, and focuses on</p><p>how the two driving forces of great power politics and technology drove</p><p>Peace Research and Arms Control to a different view of deterrence and</p><p>military technology. Since Peace Research to a large extent functioned</p><p>as a mirror image/attacker, and thus centred largely on the same set of</p><p>events as Strategic Studies, there is no particular section on this driving</p><p>force.</p><p>The third section focuses on the conceptualisation of positive peace</p><p>as integration, an expansion of the research agenda that implies both</p><p>a challenge to the Realist understanding of international security and</p><p>a more thorough concern with the importance of domestic cohesion.</p><p>Looking to the driving forces, this research was partly spurred by a com-</p><p>bination of events such as the formation of NATO and the European</p><p>Economic Community, the growing density of mass media coverage, and</p><p>the impact of peace movements and civil rights movements. It was also</p><p>driven by internal academic factors insofar as positive Peace Research drew</p><p>upon a longer Idealist–Liberal tradition that makes different assumptions</p><p>about state identities. The fourth section turns to the reformulation of</p><p>the concept of positive peace as structural violence, a challenge to both</p><p>Strategic Studies and older Liberal Peace Research traditions driven by</p><p>events which were to a large extent also linked to great power politics</p><p>(decolonisation as a longer process, the oil crisis of the early 1970s, wars</p><p>in the Third World, calls for a New International Economic Order, envi-</p><p>ronmental degradation and the student uprisings in the late 1960s) and</p><p>by internal academic debates, most significantly the popularity of Marxist</p><p>and post-Marxist theories in the wake of the student protests in the late</p><p>1960s.</p><p>The fifth section is concerned with the internal dynamics of aca-</p><p>demic debate within Peace Research, and it examines first the debates</p><p>over whether negative, military peace/security should</p><p>be privileged, or</p><p>104 the cold war challenge to national security</p><p>whether positive peace should be given equal status. The analysis also</p><p>examines the shifts in the relative balance between positive and negative</p><p>approaches, relating it to events and academic fashions outside Peace</p><p>Research itself. It presents the debates over epistemology and methodol-</p><p>ogy within Peace Research which pitched behavioural, quantitative and</p><p>game-theoretical approaches against broader normative, but still largely</p><p>positivist, perspectives.</p><p>The sixth section is also driven by internal academic forces insofar as</p><p>it examines the turn from the concept of peace to the concept of security.</p><p>First comes a shorter section on Common Security, before two separate</p><p>accounts of how Feminist Security Studies and Poststructuralism fol-</p><p>lowed on from a Peace Research agenda. The seventh and final section</p><p>of the chapter turns to the question of institutionalisation and provides</p><p>an account of how Peace Research as a whole was brought into the insti-</p><p>tutions of academe through university education and research, journals,</p><p>textbooks and associations, and how it was supported by foundations and</p><p>think-tanks.</p><p>Peace Research and Arms Control</p><p>Peace Researchers questioned both the morality and the rationality of</p><p>Strategic Studies (Bull, 1968; Wiberg, 1981) and the meanings of war</p><p>and peace (Galtung, 1969). They worried about the seeming co-option of</p><p>the academic debates (and some of the debaters) by the national security</p><p>policies of the US in particular and the Western alliance as a whole. There</p><p>was a monumental set of ethical questions raised by nuclear deterrence</p><p>(Winters, 1986), not the least of which were the explicit leaving of one’s</p><p>population as hostage to the other side’s nuclear weapons in policies of</p><p>MAD, and the explicit willingness to plan the mass murder of the other</p><p>side.</p><p>The motives and political analysis behind this opposition varied sharply</p><p>and came in many mixtures: traditional pacifists opposed to all violence;</p><p>nuclear pacifists opposed to the threat that such weapons posed to the</p><p>survival of the human race; ideological sympathisers and fellow-travellers</p><p>on the political left who saw the US as equally, or more of, a threat than the</p><p>Soviet Union; strategists (working under the new topic of Arms Control)</p><p>who came to think that the dangers of nuclear rivalry created a com-</p><p>mon interest in survival between the two superpowers; and people who</p><p>argued that the ideological struggle of the Cold War was not the only,</p><p>or in some cases even the most important, international security issue</p><p>peace research and arms control 105</p><p>STRATEGIC</p><p>STUDIES</p><p>(Cold War</p><p>traditionalism)</p><p>PEACE</p><p>RESEARCH</p><p>Negative</p><p>peace</p><p>Positive</p><p>peace</p><p>Arms</p><p>Control</p><p>Figure 5.1. The location of Arms Control on the terrain of ISS</p><p>facing humankind. These perspectives formed a spectrum with Strategic</p><p>Studies at one end, Peace Research at the other and a range of views in the</p><p>middle that we might loosely call Arms Control. Arms Control was not</p><p>independent from Peace Research and Strategic Studies but overlapped</p><p>with both. It was in one sense a product of golden age strategic thinking,</p><p>and in another part of the reaction against such thinking. On its Strate-</p><p>gic Studies end, Arms Control demonstrated that many strategists had</p><p>normative concerns not only about the fate of their own side in the Cold</p><p>War, but also about more collective aspects of morality and survival. It is</p><p>not without significance that Survival, the journal of the London-based</p><p>IISS, could equally well have been the name of a Peace Research journal.</p><p>This in-between position that Arms Control had within ISS is illustrated</p><p>in Figure 5.1.</p><p>Both Peace Research and Arms Control involved not only the moral,</p><p>historical and political questioning of Strategic Studies, the Cold War</p><p>and nuclear policy, but also hard technical critiques of deterrence theory</p><p>and strategy, and of the narrowing of the international security agenda</p><p>down to an obsessive concentration on the superpower military rivalry.</p><p>As with early Strategic Studies, Peace Research also contained its share of</p><p>natural and social scientists who brought the positivist methodological</p><p>tools of their disciplines with them. Despite the fact that in retrospect this</p><p>was in substance and method a single conversation, in practice, during</p><p>the Cold War, Peace Research and Strategic Studies (along with Realist</p><p>IR in general) were mainly staged as opposites and political enemies,</p><p>with Arms Controllers suspended uncomfortably across the political gulf</p><p>between them. Much of this oppositionalism was framed in the classic</p><p>Realist versus Idealist mould of IR, and thus at a higher level of abstraction</p><p>concerned very deep ontological assumptions about human nature and</p><p>the state (Carr, 1946). Each side was secure in its own moral high ground</p><p>106 the cold war challenge to national security</p><p>and viewed the other as a threat to its project. Some Peace Researchers</p><p>saw Strategic Studies as complicit in legitimising the prologue to nuclear</p><p>extermination, while some strategists saw Peace Research as at best naive</p><p>Idealism, offering prescriptions dangerously detached from reality, and</p><p>at worst as a kind of fifth column for the Soviet Union. Arms Control was</p><p>a fragile bridge between these positions. This spectrum was not evenly</p><p>distributed in either time or space. In the early decades of the Cold</p><p>War, Strategic Studies unquestionably dominated both intellectually and</p><p>politically, especially in the US. As the Cold War wore on, and deterrence</p><p>theory became more complicated and less convincing, room opened up</p><p>for the Arms Control middle ground everywhere. Peace Research was</p><p>always politically stronger in Europe and Japan than in the US, though</p><p>perhaps dominant only in parts of Scandinavia and Germany (Onuf,</p><p>1975; Reid and Yanarella, 1976).</p><p>Great power politics: the Cold War and bipolarity</p><p>For Peace Research and Arms Control, as for Strategic Studies, super-</p><p>power bipolarity was the foundational political and strategic fact. Just</p><p>as the whole edifice of deterrence theory was largely constructed on the</p><p>assumption of a two-player game, so also was much of the literature on</p><p>arms control, disarmament and arms racing. Bipolarity framed both the</p><p>strategic agenda and the political one. To the extent that the differences</p><p>between Strategic Studies and Peace Research were political, these also</p><p>were framed as being on one side or the other, or else trying to escape the</p><p>bipolar construction by seeking some kind of third way where bipolarity</p><p>did not equate to bottomless antagonism and a complete lack of shared</p><p>interests.</p><p>Although there was widespread acceptance of the fact that the world</p><p>had become bipolar, and that the US and the Soviet Union represented</p><p>deeply opposed views of what humankind’s political, economic and social</p><p>future should look like, this did not mean that everyone thereby accepted</p><p>the orthodox Western view of either what caused the Cold War or how</p><p>such a ‘war’ needed to be fought. Dissidence was possible on political</p><p>grounds, by rejecting the argument that it was Soviet aggression that was</p><p>responsible for the Cold War. Some interpreted Soviet moves as basically</p><p>defensive against a surrounding West that threatened the Russian revo-</p><p>lution from a position of greater economic and military strength. In this</p><p>view, the US was as much an aggressor as the Soviet Union. More moderate</p><p>versions, some anticipating later Critical and Constructivist approaches,</p><p>peace research and arms control 107</p><p>questioned whether the Cold War conflict was real, or just a construction</p><p>set up for the convenience of the ruling elites in the two superpowers</p><p>(Kaldor, 1990). Dissidence was also possible on military grounds, as to</p><p>whether raising the dangers of nuclear war was an appropriate response</p><p>to ideological and superpower bipolarity.</p><p>Within this bipolar framing, the particular position of Western Europe</p><p>looms large on two grounds: its pig-in-the-middle position as the front</p><p>line and principal prize</p><p>of the Cold War, and the differences between</p><p>its domestic politics and those in the US. Thus there was a tendency to</p><p>allocate more space to the particular question of European security in</p><p>moderate Peace Research and Arms Control than in US-centred Strategic</p><p>Studies.</p><p>On positional grounds, the US–Europe political divide was amplified</p><p>by the fact that Europe was the main front line in the Cold War and</p><p>therefore at considerable risk of becoming the first, and perhaps the</p><p>only, battlefield in any superpower hot war. In the orthodox framing,</p><p>a dependent and under-armed Western Europe was being defended by</p><p>the US against a shared threat from the Soviet Union, and this risk was</p><p>therefore both unavoidable and reasonable. NATO was the political and</p><p>military framework within which to handle the stresses created by an</p><p>alliance that was not only unequal, but had continuously to juggle the</p><p>tensions between defending Western Europe and its people on the one</p><p>hand, and providing forward defence for the US on the other (De Porte,</p><p>1979; Grosser, 1980; Bull, 1982; Rogers, 1982; Windsor, 1982; Cohen,</p><p>1982/3; Lundestad, 1986; Garnham, 1988). In dissident perspective, US</p><p>policy was more about the forward defence of itself, and creating strategies</p><p>that ensured that if any fighting did take place, it should be as far away</p><p>from the US as possible. This way of thinking was one natural response</p><p>to the US and NATO shift towards limited nuclear war (LNW) strategies</p><p>during the 1970s. LNW meant that the opening (and possibly only) phases</p><p>of an East–West war would be fought in Europe, escalating fairly quickly</p><p>to the use of ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons. The result would be the certain</p><p>obliteration of most of Germany, Denmark, Poland and Czechoslovakia,</p><p>and possibly of much of the rest of Europe as well.</p><p>The seeming inequity of risk, and the questionable sanity of a policy</p><p>that involved destroying countries in defence of their freedom, opened</p><p>up powerful intellectual and political opposition to both nuclear strategy</p><p>and those whose work seemed to legitimise it by reducing it to a kind of</p><p>economistic science of mass threat. Western Europeans generally accepted</p><p>the need to deter the Soviet Union even though many of them were less</p><p>108 the cold war challenge to national security</p><p>inclined than Americans to accept extreme enemy images of it. They were</p><p>caught in the contradiction of desiring to keep defence expenditure low,</p><p>yet wanting to avoid too much dependence on and subordination to the</p><p>US. Europe was the likely first victim of any nuclear war, but since it would</p><p>not provide adequately for its own defence, also the most dependent on</p><p>nuclear weapons to provide deterrence.</p><p>This positional factor alone would have been enough to support more</p><p>dissident thinking in Western Europe than in the US, but it was com-</p><p>plemented and reinforced by domestic political factors within Europe.</p><p>European politics contained much stronger leftist parties, including com-</p><p>munist ones, than was the case in the US, which famously lacks a strong</p><p>leftist political tradition (Moravscik, 2002: 352–357). Partly because of</p><p>this, Europeans were much more aware of the huge part that the Soviet</p><p>Union had played in the defeat of Nazi Germany, and there was much</p><p>more socialist sympathy than in the US for at least part of what the Soviet</p><p>Union claimed to stand for. In the first decade of the Cold War, and much</p><p>more in Europe than in the US, years of Second World War pro-Soviet</p><p>propaganda had to be undone in order to make the Cold War project</p><p>legitimate among the electorates. Subsequently, although majority opin-</p><p>ion in Western Europe mainly did come around to the official framing of</p><p>the Cold War, very substantial minorities (and in some places majorities)</p><p>either did not accept the Soviet Union as an enemy or held more neutral</p><p>positions, seeing both superpowers as equally to blame for the Cold War.</p><p>There was also significant anti-militarism in many countries, some of it</p><p>as part of left-wing views, some a reaction against war from the horrors</p><p>of the 1914–45 experience.</p><p>The combination of these positional and political factors meant that</p><p>there was a strong peace movement active in many Western European</p><p>countries.2 The first peak of this was in the 1950s and early 1960s when the</p><p>Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) campaigned against nuclear</p><p>weapons and the possibility that they would be used to ‘defend’ Europe.</p><p>The second was during the late 1970s and early 1980s in the European</p><p>Nuclear Disarmament (END) campaigns against the deployment of US-</p><p>controlled cruise and Pershing 2 missiles in Western Europe, and up to</p><p>a point also against the Cold War itself (Burke, 2004). These campaigns</p><p>were a formative event for peace movements as well as peace researchers.</p><p>There were close personal links between this activism and Peace Research,</p><p>2 France was an exception to this rule, having no strong anti-nuclear movement (Fontanel,</p><p>1986).</p><p>peace research and arms control 109</p><p>and those political connections were a substantial part of what alienated</p><p>Peace Research and Strategic Studies.</p><p>The technological imperative: the nuclear revolution in military affairs</p><p>Again in parallel with Strategic Studies, Peace Research and Arms Control</p><p>were in large part motivated by, reacting to, and trying to influence,</p><p>developments in military technology. The dominant driver was nuclear</p><p>weapons and what to do about them. For orthodox strategists, the driving</p><p>force of the ever-unfolding nuclear revolution was how to respond in</p><p>national security terms to new capabilities that either had, or might soon,</p><p>come into the hands of the enemy. For most Peace Researchers, and</p><p>Arms Controllers, this problem was either paralleled, or overridden, by</p><p>seeing nuclear weapons themselves as the main source of threat, and</p><p>humankind as a referent object with an equal or greater claim to survival</p><p>than that of states. While there was no doubt that the two superpowers</p><p>posed mortal threats to each other, as their nuclear arsenals expanded</p><p>to tens of thousands of warheads, some became more concerned about</p><p>the threat that unleashing such arsenals would pose to human existence.</p><p>For the first time humankind had attained the capacity to commit species</p><p>suicide. Given the hair-trigger preparedness for war on both sides, and the</p><p>complexity and fallibility of their interlocked warning and command and</p><p>control systems, there was some risk that humankind would terminate</p><p>itself through the potential for accident that was built into the design of</p><p>MAD and the whole project of nuclear deterrence. Among other things,</p><p>the 1962 Cuba Missile Crisis, a formative and critical event for Peace</p><p>Research as well as Strategic Studies, had shown just how easily and</p><p>quickly the superpower confrontation could be brought to the brink of</p><p>nuclear war. Thus, while one side of the ISS literature pursued the problem</p><p>of how to make nuclear deterrence work as a national security strategy,</p><p>another side increasingly saw nuclear weapons and deterrence strategies</p><p>(especially maximum ones) as posing their own distinctive threat to the</p><p>survival of all human beings regardless of ideology.</p><p>It is a theme of this book that, despite its increasing diversity, ISS can</p><p>be understood as a single conversation organised around a core con-</p><p>cern with international security. Surprisingly perhaps, nowhere does this</p><p>coherence become more obvious then when one looks at those Peace</p><p>Research and Arms Control literatures of the Cold War that focused on</p><p>military technology. Despite what was frequently strong political hostility</p><p>backed up by institutional differentiation (see below), the actual agendas</p><p>110 the cold war challenge to national security</p><p>of Peace Research and Strategic Studies on this topic overlapped exten-</p><p>sively. Sometimes there were normative differences, most obviously about</p><p>whether national security or humanity was the purpose of the game, and</p><p>whether these were compatible or irreconcilable goals under Cold War</p><p>conditions. These differences were most obvious in</p><p>changes in its environment, evolution is an appropriate concept for</p><p>understanding its intellectual history. Our understanding of evolution is</p><p>a Darwinian one that defines it as about how things adapt (or not) to the</p><p>environment they inhabit, and to changes in that environment. Evolution</p><p>is not teleological. It exposes the logic of change without either supposing</p><p>any particular outcome or offering any prediction. It charts the successes,</p><p>but also the failures and extinctions. In chapter 3, we set up a framework</p><p>of five driving forces as a way of identifying the main environmental pres-</p><p>sures on ISS and how it adapted to them and sometimes influenced them.</p><p>A non-teleological view of evolution also leaves open the question of how</p><p>to evaluate progress: evolution as a process can move towards lower levels</p><p>of complexity and diversity as well as higher ones. We return to the ques-</p><p>tion of progress in our summing up of ISS in chapter 9. But along the</p><p>way it is not our aim to identify the best or only theory of international</p><p>security, or to integrate all of the various literatures spawned within ISS</p><p>into one ‘master theory’. Rather our goal is to tell a thorough intellectual</p><p>history of how the various approaches define positions within the debates</p><p>about ISS.</p><p>Nye and Lynn-Jones (1988) noted twenty years ago that no intellectual</p><p>history of ISS had yet been written, and this book is a belated attempt to fill</p><p>that lacuna. Our longer historical perspective distinguishes our project</p><p>from the current standard textbook way of presenting the sub-field of</p><p>ISS. To take some recent examples, Collins (2007) is organised themati-</p><p>cally, and most chapters focus on the substance of particular approaches</p><p>or themes, while not devoting much attention to the historical context</p><p>in which these arose. The book as a whole is quite aptly summed up</p><p>by the first word of the title: it is Contemporary rather than Historically</p><p>Contextualised. Dannreuther (2007a), Sheehan (2005) and Hough (2004)</p><p>take a similar, largely post-1990, approach. Paul D. Williams (2008) is</p><p>notable for taking a longer view, and like the others frames the sub-</p><p>ject through IR approaches (Realism, Liberalism, Critical Theory, etc.)</p><p>along one dimension and thematic security concepts and issues along</p><p>another. These textbooks are good representatives of how the field of ISS</p><p>is presented, or used as a taken for granted springboard for empirical</p><p>or theoretical analysis. There is no perceived need to include a section</p><p>4 introduction</p><p>on how ISS came to have its present structure, and for new entrants ISS</p><p>might almost have begun in 1990.</p><p>To approach ISS in this manner has the advantage that many differ-</p><p>ent thematic and empirical areas can be covered, but it misses some of</p><p>the advantages of a more historical approach. These advantages are first</p><p>that an ahistorical perspective may lead to the forgetting of past knowl-</p><p>edge which in turn makes contemporary scholars work hard to reinvent</p><p>the wheel. Since ISS is a sub-field built on conceptual, normative and</p><p>empirical contestation, to point to the value of past knowledge is not to</p><p>say that there is one objective truth which can be uncovered. Past litera-</p><p>tures identify a series of pros and cons of adopting a particular policy or</p><p>conceptualisation of security. To take the example of George W. Bush’s</p><p>resurrection of anti-ballistic missile defence (Strategic Defence Initiative</p><p>or SDI), there is a rich literature on the advantages and disadvantages of</p><p>this policy written in the early 1980s that should be consulted, particularly</p><p>before one accepts the claim by the Bush administration that such a policy</p><p>entails no threatening or escalating elements (Glaser, 1984). The value of</p><p>the ‘past knowledge’ uncovered is thus more accurately described as ‘past</p><p>contested knowledge’.</p><p>The second advantage of a historical perspective is that it questions</p><p>commonly held assumptions about a field’s development. One such myth</p><p>is to tell the story of the widening approaches as caused by the ending of</p><p>the Cold War. In reality there was a significant 1980s literature that laid</p><p>the groundwork for the growth of widening and deepening approaches</p><p>in the 1990s. The point here is not only that a historiography may correct</p><p>such myths and thus give us a better understanding of what actually took</p><p>place, but that it brings critical attention to the role that these myths have</p><p>in the self-understanding of a discipline (Wæver, 1998). For example,</p><p>the standard account of IR as having gone through three or four debates</p><p>grants more legitimacy to those approaches coined as the winners and</p><p>implicitly argues that the themes of each specific debate are the significant</p><p>ones for understanding the substance of IR.</p><p>The third advantage of a history that ‘trace[s] the political consequences</p><p>of adopting a particular concept’ (Hansen, 2000b: 347) is that it allows</p><p>for an examination of the deeper political and normative implications of</p><p>both the core concept of ISS, ‘security’, and three categories of concepts</p><p>that are spun off from security: complementary concepts (deterrence for</p><p>example), parallel concepts (like power) and oppositional concepts (such</p><p>as peace). The complementary concept of containment, for example,</p><p>originated in early Cold War American policies that were designed to</p><p>introduction 5</p><p>counter what was believed to be an aggressive and uncompromising Soviet</p><p>threat. Embedded in this central concept was a particular understanding</p><p>of the identity of the opposing enemy, what the relationship between the</p><p>American and Western Self and the Communist, Soviet East could be, and</p><p>hence how security should be pursued. When ‘containment’ resurfaces</p><p>in contemporary security discourse as a way in which terrorism should</p><p>be fought, it comes with these historically constituted understandings of</p><p>both enemies and the strategies to fight them. As IR-political theorists</p><p>such as R. B. J. Walker (1987, 1990, 1993) and Michael C. Williams (1998,</p><p>2005, 2007) have laid out, since concepts of security are at the deeper level</p><p>particular ‘solutions’ to a long list of important questions that concern the</p><p>identity of Self and Other, boundaries (territorial and social), authority,</p><p>legitimacy and sovereignty, alternative conceptualisations need to engage</p><p>these political structures of meaning and to offer alternative conceptions.</p><p>A historical approach can help us show how these deeper structures were</p><p>formed, how they have been reproduced or challenged and why such</p><p>challengers succeeded or failed.</p><p>The fourth advantage of a historical analysis is that it allows for a more</p><p>dynamic conception of how a discipline, field or sub-field develops than</p><p>one which organises ISS along thematic lines. Bluntly put, an account</p><p>of ISS that does not have a historical dimension would not give a very</p><p>good idea of why particular approaches appear on the agenda, what their</p><p>relationships were to previous and contemporary approaches, and why</p><p>some disappeared. The framework laid out in the following chapters</p><p>is dynamic in two respects. First, it is designed to study a process of</p><p>change and evolution. Second, it holds, as we will discuss in more detail</p><p>below, that no single factor can explain the evolution of ISS. Neither</p><p>political events nor material forces nor, for that matter, academic theories</p><p>can single-handedly explain the evolution of ISS as an academic field.</p><p>Epistemologically, our framework thus does not seek to make a causal</p><p>claim. Indeed, we believe that the historical development of ISS proves</p><p>the impossibility of explaining it in such terms, whether the explanatory</p><p>variable is internal or external, material or ideational. From the point of</p><p>view of those who make causality the definition of proper social science</p><p>(Keohane, 1988; King et al., 1994), this is obviously a weakness of our</p><p>framework, but not only is the status of causality itself challenged within</p><p>IR and ISS (Kurki and Wight, 2007), it is a ‘price’ we are willing to pay,</p><p>since a model with several interacting driving forces allows us to capture</p><p>relation to arms con-</p><p>trol and especially disarmament. But in some areas of arms control, and</p><p>much of the discussion of arms racing, deterrence theory and nuclear</p><p>non-proliferation, these normative differences often mattered little. Even</p><p>the discussions about transarmament, non-offensive defence and civilian</p><p>defence that were generated by Peace Researchers can be seen as in some</p><p>senses complementary to the Strategic Studies debates about extended</p><p>deterrence.</p><p>Disarmament has a long record as the principal plank for many kinds</p><p>of peace movement. Arguments for it ranged from moral (weapons as</p><p>bad in themselves), through economic (the opportunity costs of mil-</p><p>itary expenditure in terms of schools, hospitals and other civil goods</p><p>in the industrial countries, and to development prospects in the Third</p><p>World), to pragmatic (arms racing as a cause of war, a particularly pow-</p><p>erful argument in the wake of the First World War of 1914–18). Those</p><p>opposed to such movements saw disarmament as at best naive, and at</p><p>worst as a kind of treason designed to make the state vulnerable to its</p><p>enemies. This latter view was facilitated by the left-leaning character of</p><p>many peace movements and their leaders. To this traditional mix, nuclear</p><p>weapons added the fear that the human race might exterminate itself</p><p>and massively damage the planetary ecosphere. This fear for the survival</p><p>of humankind (or at least of Western civilisation) was not entirely new,</p><p>having been a feature of peace campaigners during the 1920s and 1930s</p><p>in relation to the threat of fleets of bombers destroying cities with poi-</p><p>son gas and high explosives. But nuclear weapons made this threat real</p><p>and undeniable, and consequently one feature of the Cold War was mass</p><p>movement campaigns such as CND and END calling for the abolition of</p><p>nuclear weapons. Mainly this demand was for multilateral nuclear dis-</p><p>armament of all of the nuclear weapons states, but some of those who</p><p>saw the danger of nuclear extermination as high also advocated unilateral</p><p>disarmament.</p><p>The demand for nuclear disarmament was not just a matter of public</p><p>protest movements. Especially during the late 1940s and the 1950s, disar-</p><p>mament talks were a formal, if ineffective, part of superpower diplomacy.</p><p>More dramatically, complete nuclear disarmament was also a formal,</p><p>if insincere, commitment by the nuclear weapon states that adhered to</p><p>peace research and arms control 111</p><p>the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968. They promised in</p><p>article 6:</p><p>to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessa-</p><p>tion of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament,</p><p>and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and</p><p>effective international control.</p><p>The failure of the nuclear weapon states to live up to their commitments</p><p>under this article was a recurrent theme in the quinquennial NPT review</p><p>conferences throughout the Cold War and beyond.</p><p>Although it was probably the most divisive and politicised subject in</p><p>that part of the ISS agenda driven by military technology, disarmament</p><p>was thus an acknowledged topic even for Strategic Studies. There was no</p><p>shortage of proponents at the conjuncture of peace movements and Peace</p><p>Research (Noel-Baker, 1958; Falk and Barnet, 1965; Brandt, 1980; Inde-</p><p>pendent Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues, 1982; Frei</p><p>and Catrina, 1983; York, 1983; IDS, 1985). Textbooks aimed at the main-</p><p>stream ISS market generally had substantial discussions of disarmament</p><p>(Singer, 1962; Baylis et al., 1975, 1987; Buzan, 1987a), and respected IR</p><p>theory writers did not hesitate to discuss it seriously (Bull, 1970; Singer,</p><p>1970; Morgenthau, 1978: 391–416).</p><p>But while disarmament remained a key issue for peace movements and</p><p>some Peace Researchers, by the 1960s it was being pushed into the margins</p><p>of ISS by the new concept of Arms Control. Disarmament confronted</p><p>the threat posed by military technology and the arms dynamic with the</p><p>seemingly simple and morally clear prescription of getting rid of them.</p><p>This simplicity and clarity was the key to both its popularity among</p><p>peace movements and its lack of popularity amongst strategists and IR</p><p>Realists, who thought its apparent simplicity wrong and dangerous. Arms</p><p>Control tried to establish a halfway house between these two extremes.</p><p>It did not problematise weapons as such, but stood for a managerial</p><p>approach to military technology and the arms dynamic that would aim to</p><p>maximise their security utility and stability, and minimise their dangers.</p><p>Arms Control could include arms reductions or even eliminations, and</p><p>thus incorporate parts of the disarmament agenda, but it might also</p><p>point to increases in some types of weapons thought of as stabilising.</p><p>It included a range of other ideas such as freezes on deployments, force</p><p>restructuring to reduce provocation and the risk of accidents, and a variety</p><p>of stabilising measures such as communication between enemies, bans</p><p>on certain technologies, and restrictions on testing and deployment and</p><p>112 the cold war challenge to national security</p><p>suchlike (Harvard Nuclear Study Group, 1983: 203–212; Committee on</p><p>International Security and Arms Control, 1985). The theory, history and</p><p>problems of arms control quickly became a staple of ISS textbooks (Singer,</p><p>1962; Baylis et al., 1975, 1987; Buzan, 1987a).</p><p>Arms Control sought both to escape from the sterility and unreality of</p><p>negotiations on disarmament, and to address some real practical prob-</p><p>lems being generated by the superpower arms race. It quickly attracted</p><p>people from both the Strategic Studies and Peace Research ends of the</p><p>ISS spectrum, but it was a fragile bridge between them. Some of those</p><p>whose real interest was disarmament could buy into Arms Control as</p><p>an intermediate stage, something that could be used to pave the way</p><p>towards disarmament by building confidence and reducing tensions. But</p><p>few strategists saw it this way, and to the extent that they supported Arms</p><p>Control at all saw it as an end in itself, simply to help stabilise deterrence,</p><p>not as a means to disarmament. Arms Control was technical and com-</p><p>plex rather than clear and simple. It tended towards moral neutrality on</p><p>military technology and was not necessarily against nuclear weapons in</p><p>themselves. For this reason it had little of the intrinsic moral mobilising</p><p>power of disarmament. Its only claim in this direction was its linkage</p><p>to superpower détente: inasmuch as arms control became the practical</p><p>expression of improved relations between the superpowers and a lowered</p><p>risk of war it could establish moral currency in the public mind. Nev-</p><p>ertheless, its constituency was mainly experts on both ends of the ISS</p><p>spectrum, and as it became seen as simply permanent tinkering with the</p><p>arms dynamic it was vulnerable to losing the support of those who wanted</p><p>more.</p><p>Although there were precedents for arms control – most notably the</p><p>1922 Washington Naval Agreements that set ratios on naval power after the</p><p>First World War – the idea of arms control as a specific strategic concept</p><p>began to evolve during the late 1950s as part of golden age strategic</p><p>thinking (Freedman, 1981a: 130–207). The key statement was Bull’s 1961</p><p>book The Control of the Arms Race (see also Brennan, 1961; Schelling</p><p>and Halperin, 1961; Singer, 1962), and from there both a literature and</p><p>a practice burgeoned. During the 1960s the US and the Soviet Union</p><p>negotiated a number of significant agreements, amongst the highlights</p><p>of which were the Partial Test Ban Treaty (1963), the hot-line agreement</p><p>(1963), the agreement on peaceful uses of outer space (1967), the Nuclear</p><p>Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968), the Seabed Arms Control Treaty (1971),</p><p>the ABM Treaty (1972), and the Biological Weapons Convention (1972).</p><p>During the 1970s, arms control was mainly focused on the two long</p><p>peace research and arms control 113</p><p>rounds of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I, 1969–72; SALT II,</p><p>1972–79).</p><p>By the end of the 1970s arms control, like the superpower détente</p><p>with which it had become associated, was in trouble, both because of its</p><p>failure to stem the growth of huge nuclear arsenals and because US–Soviet</p><p>relations had moved out of détente and into a new round of distrust and</p><p>heightened rivalry. SALT I produced what were generally acknowledged as</p><p>substantive agreements limiting ABM deployments and offensive nuclear</p><p>missiles (though whether these agreements were a good or bad thing</p><p>for strategic stability was hotly contested). SALT II produced ceilings</p><p>on nuclear delivery systems and warheads, but these were set so high</p><p>that they simply seemed to legitimise the vast expansion of superpower</p><p>nuclear arsenals that had gone on during the 1970s. Intermediate-range</p><p>Nuclear Forces talks (INF), and Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START)</p><p>ran respectively from 1981 and 1982 to 1983, but got nowhere due to</p><p>the tensions of the post-détente ‘Second Cold War’ and collapsed, more</p><p>or less ending superpower arms control activity until the Cold War itself</p><p>began to thaw. After a period of gloom, strategic arms control picked</p><p>up again from the mid-1980s as superpower relations began to warm.</p><p>In 1985, negotiations on both INF and START resumed, to be joined by</p><p>talks on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). These produced</p><p>a series of agreements between 1987 and 1993 to reduce both nuclear</p><p>and conventional force levels substantially, and to reconfigure them into</p><p>less threatening forms. A missile technology control regime was agreed</p><p>in 1987 and a chemical weapons convention in 1993. As the structures of</p><p>the Cold War fell away these agreements became less about managing an</p><p>arms race, and more akin to the demobilisations that followed the end of</p><p>the First and Second World Wars.</p><p>The literature on arms control was mainly focused on nuclear weapons</p><p>and their delivery systems, though there was also concern about chemical</p><p>(Robinson, 1984), and to a lesser extent biological, weapons. Within</p><p>the nuclear framing there were two core topics: arms control for the</p><p>superpowers and the prevention of nuclear proliferation to states other</p><p>than the five nuclear weapon states (NWS) recognised in the NPT (the US,</p><p>the Soviet Union/Russia, Britain, France and China). While arms control</p><p>for the superpowers was, as suggested, a controversial and often divisive</p><p>topic, there was a much higher degree of consensus across the spectrum</p><p>of ISS that nuclear proliferation was a bad thing.</p><p>Looking first at arms control for the superpowers, there was an advocacy</p><p>literature stemming from the founding works cited above, and generally</p><p>114 the cold war challenge to national security</p><p>arguing the need for more and better arms control in order to stabilise</p><p>the superpower arms race (Bull, 1976; Dahlitz, 1984). As the practice of</p><p>arms control got under way it was not uncommon during the 1960s and</p><p>1970s for this advocacy to be linked to the maintenance of détente, a view</p><p>that some thought was to prove fatal to the whole process (Blechman,</p><p>1980: 106–112). It could also, of course, be linked to the maintenance of</p><p>deterrence (Calvocoressi, 1984). The bulk of the huge literature on arms</p><p>control reports, analyses and makes proposals about the negotiations,</p><p>implementations, problems (compliance/cheating) and side effects, and</p><p>as both achievement and optimism waned during the 1970s, reflected on</p><p>what went wrong (Terchek, 1970; Newhouse, 1973; Gray, 1975; Nerlich,</p><p>1975/6; Goldblat, 1978; Blechman, 1980; Luttwak, 1980b; Burt, 1981;</p><p>Sharp, 1981/2; Adelman, 1984; Brown and Davis, 1984; Freedman, 1984a,</p><p>1984b; Tuchman, 1984; Schear, 1985; Steinberg, 1985; Steinbruner, 1985;</p><p>Sartori, 1985/6; Schelling, 1985/6; Pieragostini, 1986; Barker, 1987; Dusch,</p><p>1987). The driving force of technology behind both the problems of and</p><p>opportunities for arms control were always a conspicuous part of the</p><p>literature (Gelber, 1974). The Peace Research end of the spectrum was</p><p>mainly disappointed that arms control had not done much to constrain</p><p>the arms race, while the Strategists were more concerned that it had not</p><p>done much to constrain Soviet military power.</p><p>One interesting section of this literature was that devoted to analysis</p><p>of US–Soviet differences in relation to arms control (Sienkiewicz, 1978;</p><p>Legvold, 1979; Pick, 1982; Rivkin, 1987; Guertner, 1988). This concern ran</p><p>parallel to that in the literature on rationality and deterrence discussed in</p><p>chapter 4. But for Arms Control the concern about the difference between</p><p>East and West was even more intense, because to a vastly greater extent</p><p>than deterrence, arms control depended on cooperating with the Soviets,</p><p>and being able to verify that agreements were being kept (Bhupendra and</p><p>Barnaby, 1984; Voas, 1986). Like disarmament, it was thus acutely vulner-</p><p>able to cheating, deception and problems of verification, and to differences</p><p>of opinion across the ISS spectrum about whether the Soviet Union was</p><p>essentially a defensive rational actor sharing an interest in stability and a</p><p>degree of coexistence, or a ruthless, offensive opportunist (Singer, 1962:</p><p>15–17). Although these concerns were almost entirely framed by super-</p><p>power bipolarity, China and arms control also began to attract attention</p><p>before the end of the Cold War (Segal, 1985, 1987; Johnston, 1986).</p><p>The second main theme of nuclear Arms Control was about pre-</p><p>venting the spread of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear weapon states</p><p>(NNWS). This became a large and distinct literature generally framed</p><p>peace research and arms control 115</p><p>around the term ‘nuclear (non-)proliferation’, and both Strategists and</p><p>Peace Researchers broadly agreed that the spread of nuclear weapons was</p><p>undesirable. The consonance of this position with that of the two super-</p><p>powers, who were the principal promoters of non-proliferation, exposed</p><p>an embarrassing hypocrisy affecting this literature. Like the superpowers,</p><p>many strategists were caught favouring nuclear weapons for some or all of</p><p>the existing five NWS, but opposing them for everyone else. One notable</p><p>maverick in these ranks was Waltz (1981), who famously argued that</p><p>because nuclear weapons were an effective deterrent to war, ‘more may be</p><p>better’ in constraining interstate conflicts worldwide. Those on the Peace</p><p>Research end were less compromised here because they generally opposed</p><p>nuclear weapons for everyone. This underlying divide on motives did not,</p><p>however, much disturb the dominant line in the literature that prevent-</p><p>ing or at least curbing the spread of nuclear weapons was the central</p><p>goal.</p><p>The Peace Research logic was mainly driven by a desire to lower the</p><p>statistical probability of nuclear weapons being used. This line of thinking</p><p>had close connections to nuclear disarmament, and the NPT bargain in</p><p>which stopping the spread of nuclear weapons should be accompanied by</p><p>efforts to eliminate those already in existence. The strategic logic for non-</p><p>proliferation shared the concern with accidents and higher probabilities</p><p>of use, but rested also on a desire to preserve the status of the nuclear</p><p>superpowers, and to prevent third parties from triggering superpower</p><p>wars by launching so-called catalytic strikes, where uncertainty as to the</p><p>attacker would trigger responses against the other superpower. China, for</p><p>example, when it was at odds with both superpowers during the 1960s,</p><p>might have been tempted to trigger a war between them. Many strategists</p><p>opposed nuclear disarmament on the grounds that because the possibility</p><p>of cheating could not be removed, and the incentives for it would be high,</p><p>it would be a less stable configuration than a nuclear-armed deterrence.</p><p>Once the knowledge of how to make nuclear weapons was available in</p><p>society, the incentive to rearm would be there, and the first to do so could</p><p>have a huge advantage.</p><p>As with the literature on superpower arms control, that on non-</p><p>proliferation was a mixture of advocacy, reporting on developments, and</p><p>policy analysis and prescription. There was a substantial general literature</p><p>covering present and likely future developments in proliferation,</p><p>techno-</p><p>logical and political issues, policy and progress in various countries, and</p><p>the possible consequences of allowing nuclear weapons to spread (Fisher,</p><p>1971; Young, 1972: 23–81; Quester, 1973; Bull, 1975; Maddox, 1975;</p><p>116 the cold war challenge to national security</p><p>Marwah and Schulz, 1975; Walker, 1975; Schelling, 1976; Kapur, 1980a;</p><p>Harkavy, 1981; Poneman, 1981; de Mesquita and Riker, 1982; Dewitt,</p><p>1987; R. C. Karp, 1991). In addition, there was literature about missile</p><p>proliferation (Hsieh, 1971; Karp, 1984/5, 1991; Navias, 1989; Potter and</p><p>Stulberg, 1990: Dunn, 1991), about the implications of proliferation for</p><p>deterrence and war (Berkowitz, 1982; de Mesquita and Riker, 1982; Kaiser,</p><p>1989) and about the possibility of nuclear terrorism (Beres, 1979). The</p><p>SIPRI Yearbooks contained extensive annual updates on most aspects of</p><p>nuclear proliferation. Because the subject touched on so many aspects of</p><p>IR, from regime theory and technology, through North–South relations</p><p>and area studies, to Strategic Studies and Peace Research, its literature</p><p>was published in a remarkable variety of journals. It was even possible</p><p>to teach whole courses on proliferation at universities, and some of the</p><p>books were published with this in mind, as well as for a wider public</p><p>audience (Beaton, 1966; Young, 1972).</p><p>The subject gained some of its popularity because of concerns over the</p><p>technological and political links between civil and military nuclear appli-</p><p>cations. Civil nuclear power was controversial in its own right. Because</p><p>there were close connections between some key aspects of the technol-</p><p>ogy (especially the enrichment of uranium and the reprocessing of spent</p><p>reactor fuel), this meant that there were economies of scale to be gained</p><p>in pursuing both civil and military nuclear power, as all of the early</p><p>nuclear weapon states, and later India, did. Civil nuclear power could not</p><p>be wholly insulated from military implications, and this fact was at the</p><p>heart of the controversial Faustian bargain in the NPT (Greenwood et al.,</p><p>1976; Camilleri, 1977, 1984; Wohlstetter et al., 1979: Lovins et al., 1980;</p><p>Brenner, 1981: 1–93; Dorian and Spector, 1981). States that renounced</p><p>nuclear weapons via the NPT won the right to have access to civil nuclear</p><p>technology, and that access could be used to prepare breakout options by</p><p>shortening the lead time for making nuclear weapons.</p><p>What came to be known generally as ‘the non-proliferation regime’</p><p>was in fact composed of many different elements, and whether these were</p><p>complementary or contradictory was one theme of the debates. At the</p><p>core of the regime were its two multilateral components: the NPT, and the</p><p>International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which was responsible for</p><p>the system of safeguards (accounting, monitoring, inspection) built into</p><p>the NPT (Quester, 1970; Young, 1972: 82–135; Imber, 1980; Lodgaard,</p><p>1980; Gummett, 1981; Dahlitz, 1984; Schiff, 1984; Fischer and Szasz,</p><p>1985; Nye, 1985; Simpson, 1987; Smith, 1987; Tate, 1990). Although the</p><p>NPT was aimed at being universal, and except for a few holdouts such</p><p>peace research and arms control 117</p><p>as Israel, India and Pakistan, nearly was, there were also regional nuclear</p><p>weapon free zones (NWFZ), sometimes with slightly different condi-</p><p>tions, and discussions about whether there should be more.3 In addition</p><p>to these multilateral approaches, there were also more elitist elements</p><p>in the non-proliferation regime. These included supplier clubs, in which</p><p>the main producers and sellers of civil nuclear technology coordinated</p><p>the security conditions they would demand from purchasers, and various</p><p>unilateral US policies on non-proliferation (Chari, 1978; Hildenbrand,</p><p>1978; Imai, 1978; Williams, 1978; Yager, 1980; Brenner, 1981: 93–245; Lel-</p><p>louche, 1981; Simpson, 1982). In addition to all of this, there were many</p><p>studies of individual countries and their policies on nuclear weapons.4</p><p>The bulk of this literature was about the nuclear programmes and poli-</p><p>cies, and technical capabilities, of the countries, and the implications of</p><p>these for the non-proliferation regime.</p><p>Arms control was not the only technology-driven area in which the key</p><p>themes and debates in Strategic Studies had their counterpoints in the</p><p>Peace Research literature. Deterrence was another (Doran, 1973; Weede,</p><p>1983; Wallace et al., 1986; Nalebuff, 1988; Tunander, 1989; Huth, 1990). So</p><p>also was arms racing (Brubaker, 1973; Chatterjee, 1974; Lambelet, 1975;</p><p>Krell, 1981; Diehl, 1983, 1985; Intrilligator and Brito, 1984; Leidy and</p><p>Staiger, 1985; Gleditsch and Njølstad, 1990) and the evolution of military</p><p>technology (Kaldor, 1982). Much of quantitative Peace Research took</p><p>its inspiration from the pioneering work on arms racing of Richardson</p><p>(1960a, 1960b; see also Rapoport, 1960: chs. 1–2; Bellany, 1975). Both sides</p><p>shared an interest in linking arms racing and war, and in the irrational</p><p>aspects of weapons accumulation due to bureaucratic politics and suchlike</p><p>intervening variables. In general, the Peace Research and Arms Control</p><p>3 These included the actual Latin American Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (Stinson and</p><p>Cochrane, 1971; Redick, 1975, 1981) and the South Pacific one (Power, 1986; Mogami,</p><p>1988), and proposed ones in the Indian Ocean (Buzan, 1981; Vivekanandan, 1981) and</p><p>the Balkans (Klick, 1987).</p><p>4 China (Halperin, 1966; Hsieh, 1971; Segal, 1981; Tan, 1989); Britain (Pierre, 1970; Carlton,</p><p>1976; Seignious and Yates, 1984), with a theme of Britain as the possibly first ex-nuclear</p><p>power (Freedman, 1981b; Dombey et al., 1987); France (Mendle, 1965; Lieber, 1966;</p><p>Seignious and Yates, 1984), including the curious case of the lack of anti-nuclear peace</p><p>movements in France (Fontanel, 1986); Canada (Lentner, 1976); Yugoslavia (Gedza, 1976);</p><p>India and Pakistan (Edwardes, 1967; Imai, 1974; Rao, 1974; Marwah, 1977, 1981; Betts,</p><p>1979a; Kapur, 1980b; Thomas, 1986; Chellaney, 1991); the Middle East (mainly Israel,</p><p>Iran, Iraq) (Freedman, 1975; Rosen, 1977; Feldman, 1981; Pry, 1984; Bhatia, 1988); Africa</p><p>(Cervenka and Rogers, 1978; Betts, 1979b; Mazrui, 1980; Adeniran, 1981; Ogunbadejo,</p><p>1984; Moore, 1987); and Argentina and Brazil (Rosenbaum and Cooper, 1970; Gall, 1976;</p><p>Gugliamelli, 1976; Lowrance, 1976).</p><p>118 the cold war challenge to national security</p><p>agendas were not much driven by international political events, a rare</p><p>exception being one attempt to apply the Richardson models of arms</p><p>racing to escalation in the Vietnam War (Alcock and Lowe, 1969). For</p><p>the most part they marched to the drumbeat of nuclear weapons and</p><p>the technological dynamics of the superpower arms race. Events within</p><p>that frame, such as public health scares over fallout from nuclear testing</p><p>during the 1950s, the Indian nuclear test in 1974, and the superpower</p><p>deployments of intermediate range missiles in Europe in the late 1970s,</p><p>also made an impact on public opinion, about which more in the next</p><p>section.</p><p>Although Peace Research and Strategic Studies overlapped in many</p><p>places, Peace Research did develop one distinctive response to the prob-</p><p>lems posed by technology and military strategy: non-offensive defence</p><p>(NoD, aka non-provocative defence). The central idea of NoD was to</p><p>overcome the security dilemma by designing mainly barrier modes of</p><p>defence that could stop an invasion, but not pose any threat of counter-</p><p>invasion or retaliation (Berg and Lodgaard, 1983; Dankbaar, 1984; Gal-</p><p>tung, 1984; Boserup, 1985; Windass, 1985; Agrell, 1987; Møller, 1987;</p><p>Saperstein, 1987; Dean, 1987/8). This happened during the last decade</p><p>of the Cold War, when some in Peace Research were moving towards a</p><p>more security-defined agenda (Wæver, 2008). This narrowing of the gap</p><p>became acceptable enough for NoD occasionally to sneak into mainstream</p><p>Strategic Studies (Gates, 1987) and general IR (Buzan, 1987b) journals.</p><p>It extended an earlier literature on the people’s war style of dispersed</p><p>but very deeply prepared armed resistance to occupation (Johnson, 1973;</p><p>Roberts, 1976; Fischer, 1982), and on the fringes also to unarmed,</p><p>but</p><p>organised, national resistance to occupation (Roberts, 1967; Boserup and</p><p>Mack, 1974; Sharp, 1985). The mainstream NoD literature was an attempt</p><p>to take NATO’s defence problem seriously, and engage with it on military</p><p>terms, without thereby threatening the Soviet Union and so perpetuating</p><p>a security dilemma and a risk of nuclear war.</p><p>Positive peace, integration and societal cohesion</p><p>The military wing of Peace Research and Arms Control did not go into</p><p>a detailed conceptual analysis of security, although it did rearticulate</p><p>the understanding of security of Strategic Studies in important respects.</p><p>Perhaps most crucially, it held that the antagonistic view of interna-</p><p>tional relations, and the Soviet Union as the embodiment of the enemy</p><p>state, could be transformed through negotiations, confidence-building</p><p>positive peace, integration and societal cohesion 119</p><p>measures, arms reduction treaties and common institutional arrange-</p><p>ments. In terms of the referent object and the sectors to which security</p><p>was applicable there was a similarity to Strategic Studies in that military</p><p>security was privileged as the object of analysis and states were constituted</p><p>as the key actors.</p><p>But other Peace Researchers called for expanding the scope of analysis</p><p>from the negative peace of war avoidance to the ‘positive peace’ study</p><p>of ‘the integration of human society’ and for considering all forms of</p><p>group-based conflicts, not only interstate ones (Journal of Peace Research,</p><p>1964: 2). This line of Peace Research focused on the linkages between</p><p>societal and state-level integration and drew upon Deutsch and his con-</p><p>cept of security communities (Kemp, 1985: 134). Security communities</p><p>came in two forms: amalgamated ones which involved the merger of</p><p>states, and pluralistic ones which stopped short of institutional merger,</p><p>but where processes of interstate and trans-state societal integration had</p><p>led to such commonality in values and trust that war was no longer con-</p><p>sidered a viable way to resolve conflicts (Deutsch et al., 1957). The case of</p><p>the North Atlantic area in the 1950s became Deutsch’s primary example</p><p>of a pluralist security community, while the European Economic Com-</p><p>munity was advocated by first-generation European integration theorists</p><p>as an example of a (future) amalgamated security community. Others</p><p>examined the connections between conflict on the one hand, and com-</p><p>munication/integration on the other, as in Gleditsch’s studies of airline</p><p>networks and conflicts (Gleditsch, 1967, 1977), or the transmission of</p><p>cultural values from one country to another (Sauvant, 1976; Wilson and</p><p>Al-Muhanna, 1985).</p><p>Liberal Peace Research was based on the premise that individuals and</p><p>nations could change their (mis)perceptions about each other, and that</p><p>enemy images were not always realistic. Peace Researchers should criti-</p><p>cally interrogate the accuracy of such enemy images and governments’</p><p>strategic mobilisation – or manipulation – thereof (Deutsch, 1957: 201;</p><p>Loustarinen, 1989). More benignly, governments and mass media might</p><p>be unaware of how their enemy constructions perpetuated conflicts that</p><p>could be solved. In response, Deutsch suggested the establishment of ‘an</p><p>“early warning system,” in regard to the mass-communication aspects</p><p>of interstate conflicts’ that would detect when ‘the image of a particu-</p><p>lar “enemy” country is reaching the danger point’ (Deutsch, 1957: 202).</p><p>The concern with how governments and mass media produce or manip-</p><p>ulate enemy images resonated with the long-standing United Nations</p><p>Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) tradition</p><p>120 the cold war challenge to national security</p><p>of seeing war as starting in people’s minds. A significant body of Peace</p><p>Research was thus devoted to the study of public opinion and propa-</p><p>ganda, including how children and young people were socialised into</p><p>accepting enemy images and ideas about war and peace (Deutsch, 1957:</p><p>203, footnote 4; Cooper, 1965; Becker, 1973).</p><p>A related body of literature dealt with news coverage, particularly for-</p><p>eign policy news. Here, the concern was with which events were selected</p><p>as ‘coverable’ by the media, particularly with the tendency of the media to</p><p>select violent events and report these in simplified and sensationalist ways</p><p>(Galtung and Ruge, 1965; Östgaard, 1965; Smith, 1969). Peace Researchers</p><p>called for a reversal of these tendencies and for a more balanced news cov-</p><p>erage which would provide a space for realising the commonalities among</p><p>diverse peoples and for less violent forms of conflict resolution (Östgaard,</p><p>1965: 55). Situating Peace Research’s concern with news coverage on the</p><p>broader terrain of ISS, this literature reads in some respects as early</p><p>studies of the ‘CNN-effect’ that became popular in the 1990s and which</p><p>argues that politicians are pressured to intervene in response to intense</p><p>media coverage. Yet, it is important to notice that the goal of Liberal</p><p>Peace Research was not to mobilise violent interventions by third parties,</p><p>but to push the media to support non-violent forms of conflict resolu-</p><p>tion. The concern was with news criteria in and of themselves, not the</p><p>actual connection between news coverage and foreign policy behaviour.</p><p>Moreover, the visual ontology adopted by Peace Researchers was a fairly</p><p>objectivist one. Deutsch (1957: 201) called for researchers to ‘find out</p><p>to what extent these images are realistic, that is, to what extent they do</p><p>correspond to objective factors beyond their control’, and Galtung and</p><p>Ruge (1965: 64) were concerned with ‘the selective and distorting factors’</p><p>that came between the event itself and ‘its’ media representation. Percep-</p><p>tions of reality might be more or less in concordance with reality itself,</p><p>but the two – reality and media representation – were ontologically and</p><p>analytically distinct. This marks an important difference between early</p><p>Peace Research and later discursive approaches that hold that ‘reality’ is</p><p>formed through structures of (media) representation and that one should</p><p>study how representational structures establish and legitimise particular</p><p>foreign and security policies rather than compare reality to news coverage.</p><p>The explicit concern with the process of enemy formation rested on</p><p>the deeper assumption that states need not perceive each other through</p><p>a Realist optic (as described in chapter 2), but could engage through</p><p>cooperation. Liberal Deutschian Peace Research also opened up another</p><p>critical front in the debates between Strategic Studies and Peace Research</p><p>positive peace, integration and societal cohesion 121</p><p>Table 5.1. Peace Research on societal cohesion</p><p>Institutional focus</p><p>policy area</p><p>Extra-parliamentarian Parliamentarian</p><p>Foreign policy Peace movements Public opinion – e.g. gender gap</p><p>(democratic peace)</p><p>Domestic policy Civil rights/African</p><p>American movements</p><p>Domestic election studies (not key</p><p>concern of PR)</p><p>in that it foregrounded the relationship between governments and pop-</p><p>ulations and the question of societal, domestic cohesion, identified as a</p><p>key element in security debate in chapters 1 and 2. Realist writers such</p><p>as Kennan were also concerned with domestic cohesion, but as seen from</p><p>the vantage point of the state: How could the government drive a wedge</p><p>between the governments and populations of enemy states like the Soviet</p><p>Union, and how could they prevent forces of dissociation domestically?</p><p>This Liberal Peace Research literature was structured along two dimen-</p><p>sions: first, whether it was concerned with foreign policy or domestic</p><p>(social, class, racial, ethnic or religious) issues; second, whether it was</p><p>focused on extra-parliamentary forces or on parliamentary forms of influ-</p><p>ence. Combining these two dimensions, we get the four options shown</p><p>in Table 5.1.</p><p>Beginning with the extra-parliamentary combinations, this category</p><p>problematised political leaderships’ claims to represent society. The exis-</p><p>tence of social movements questioned the basic premise of modern demo-</p><p>cratic society, namely that those elected</p><p>provide legitimate and adequate</p><p>political solutions. The best example of this form of societal division was</p><p>the anti-nuclear peace movements which were formed from the late 1950s</p><p>with the so-called Easter marches first taking place in Britain in 1958. In</p><p>a few years, marches spread to most of Western Europe and North Amer-</p><p>ica, drawing such large attendances as, for instance, 25,000 and 35,000 in</p><p>Denmark in 1961 and 1962 (Boserup and Iversen, 1966: 345). As super-</p><p>power relations eased in the 1970s peace movements receded as well,</p><p>but the onset of the Second Cold War in the 1980s brought them back</p><p>into the streets, and research on the movements of the 1980s tended to</p><p>stress the transnational links that united movements across state borders</p><p>(Walker, 1988). Most Peace Researchers shared the normative goals of</p><p>the peace movements: nuclear disarmament, arms control or nuclear free</p><p>zones, but some did critically interrogate their tactics.</p><p>122 the cold war challenge to national security</p><p>In assessing the impact of peace movements, a major question that</p><p>divided Peace Researchers was the extent to which they had been instru-</p><p>mental in bringing about change, such as the Partial Test Ban Treaty in</p><p>1963 (Boserup and Iversen, 1966: 328; Wiberg, 1988: 44). Kenneth E.</p><p>Boulding’s ‘snowball theory’ held that small protests might grow to acti-</p><p>vate a large population. Against this optimistic vision of how passive, but</p><p>latently critical, individuals would be awakened by the vanguard, stood</p><p>the view (Boserup and Iversen, 1966; Galtung, 1964) that inactive popu-</p><p>lations may very well be more conservative than ‘their’ governments (who</p><p>had better access to the mass media) and peace demonstrations may thus</p><p>paradoxically strengthen the opponent. Another discussion concerned the</p><p>pros and cons of peace movements becoming like ‘real’ political parties</p><p>(Krasner and Petersen, 1986: 155; Wæver, 1989a).</p><p>Studies which focused on popular extra-parliamentarian contestations</p><p>at the domestic level (situated in the lower left corner of Table 5.1.)</p><p>worked along a similar structural logic, questioning the claim that soci-</p><p>etal contestations could be contained within the existing formal political</p><p>structures. The main case studied within this line of research was the so-</p><p>called ‘Negro movement’ and ‘ghetto riots’ that took place in America in</p><p>the 1960s (Goldberg, 1968; von Eschen et al., 1969; Monti, 1979). Moving</p><p>into the 1970s, these movements faded from the American political scene,</p><p>and so did their coverage by Peace Researchers. This body of literature</p><p>is worth noting, however, because it foreshadows later post-Cold War</p><p>concerns, empirically and analytically, with societal security problems</p><p>on the inside of Western states. It also, as hinted above, ties in with a</p><p>long-standing Realist anxiety about the production of domestic identity,</p><p>whether from a Conservative or a more Liberal perspective.</p><p>Peace Researchers also studied societal cohesion and parliamentary</p><p>settings. Popular opinion research combined with the Political Science</p><p>sub-discipline of election studies in generating complex models linking</p><p>attitudes to social, economic, cultural and later, gendered factors, iden-</p><p>tifying for instance a ‘gender gap’ in women’s and men’s foreign policy</p><p>attitudes (Boulding, 1984; Togeby, 1994). Opinion polls and surveying</p><p>techniques underwent a significant development in the 1960s as part of</p><p>the general behavioural revolution in the social sciences, and their adop-</p><p>tion by Peace Researchers was based on the ideal – drawn from Classical</p><p>democracy models of direct participation – that public opinion should</p><p>be reflected in the policies adopted (Galtung, 1964). The relevance of</p><p>public opinion – and more specifically, the ability to poll on questions of</p><p>peace and security – was clear: if ‘the public’ was more prone to conflict</p><p>structural violence, economics and the environment 123</p><p>resolution and peace than ‘its’ politicians, the latter would be pressured</p><p>by the former in the direction of peace. This push was built, first, on the</p><p>normative assumption that leaders would listen to their citizenry, and sec-</p><p>ond, on the strategic assumption that politicians would seek re-election</p><p>and therefore have to be responsive to the views of (the majority of)</p><p>the population. The general belief that the US withdrawal from Vietnam</p><p>was due to a massive popular mobilisation underscored the possibility</p><p>of popular opinion to influence such ‘high politics’ questions as those of</p><p>warfare (Verba et al., 1967; Hamilton, 1968; Modigliani, 1972; Russett and</p><p>Nincic, 1976). As the Cold War faded, this line of research expanded into</p><p>democratic peace theory (see chapter 6): the unwillingness of democra-</p><p>cies to go to war, at least against other democracies (Russett, 1975; Doyle,</p><p>1986).</p><p>Structural violence, economics and the environment</p><p>The conceptualisation of positive peace as integration was reworked in</p><p>1969 in Galtung’s seminal article on structural violence, defined as ‘the</p><p>distance between the potential and the actual, and that which impedes the</p><p>decrease of this distance’ (Galtung, 1969: 168, 171). Structural violence</p><p>entailed a more conflictual view of the world than peace as integration</p><p>and opened up for an incorporation of a host of issues related to eco-</p><p>nomic inequality and differences between the global North and South.</p><p>It provided a bridge between Classical Liberal–Idealist Peace Research</p><p>on the one hand and the new agenda of ‘Critical Peace Research’, which</p><p>drew upon theories in the Marxist tradition, on the other (Wiberg, 1988:</p><p>53). Although Marxian in some of its analytical form, structural violence</p><p>was opposed to violence, and therefore countered that strand in radi-</p><p>cal politics that sought to legitimise it as a response to oppression and</p><p>exploitation. As a consequence, most Critical Peace Researchers did not</p><p>think that structural violence was sufficiently ‘critical’ (Schmid, 1968).</p><p>Galtung’s insistence on non-violence resonated, however, with a longer</p><p>Gandhian tradition in Peace Research as well as with the work by other</p><p>prominent Peace Researchers, such as Gene Sharp (1973), who held that</p><p>since the state depended on the obedience of its citizens, it could be</p><p>resisted through non-violent means.</p><p>Structural violence referred to manifest injustices with physical mate-</p><p>rial consequences, for instance hunger-related deaths in the Third World,</p><p>but also to phenomena with a less immediate bodily impact such as illit-</p><p>eracy (which could have been prevented) (Galtung, 1969: 169). Crucially,</p><p>124 the cold war challenge to national security</p><p>particularly in the light of later debates over the concept of individual</p><p>security, Galtung located the concept of structural violence at the level of</p><p>collectives, not individuals: ‘when one husband beats his wife there is a</p><p>clear case of personal violence, but when one million husbands keep one</p><p>million wives in ignorance there is structural violence’ (Galtung, 1969:</p><p>171). The referent object in Galtung’s conceptualisation of structural vio-</p><p>lence was thus human collectivities, neither states nor individuals, and the</p><p>primary sectoral expansion was to include (critical Marxist) economics.</p><p>The delineation of the collective referent object in this body of Peace</p><p>Research differed from Strategic Studies and its (predominant) focus on</p><p>external security in two specific respects: it argued, first and in retro-</p><p>spect prophetically, that conflicts at the sub-state or trans-state level may</p><p>be equally as explosive, and hence threatening to the state, as those at</p><p>the interstate level; second, that groups needed to be given the normative</p><p>possibility of being referent objects, whether the threat in question came</p><p>in the form of states, other groups or global imperialist/economic struc-</p><p>tures. And where negative Peace Research constituted the referent object</p><p>in relation to the absence of war or violent conflict, structural violence</p><p>theory constituted it in relation to a longer list of issues.</p><p>It is important to stress – especially in the</p><p>light of the 1990s debates</p><p>over ‘individual security’ – that structural violence was a concept located</p><p>at the structural level and that it was distinct from interpersonal conflict</p><p>and from personal violence. True, there was a radical expansion of the</p><p>possible threats to peace/security, but the referent object was constituted</p><p>through its structurally disadvantaged position. An individual starving</p><p>to death was not by her- or himself a victim of structural violence, but</p><p>one who starves because of the global economic structures of imperialism</p><p>was. What this implies is an ambiguous constitution of the individual–</p><p>collective referent object dynamics: ‘individuals’ can appear in a way that is</p><p>impossible in state-centric Strategic Studies, but they do so because their</p><p>‘individuality’ is constituted in a way that has a particular structural–</p><p>political meaning, whether that meaning is religious, ethnic, racial, class-</p><p>based or gendered.</p><p>Debates between Galtung and his supporters and radicals like Schmid</p><p>were heated in the late 1960s and early 1970s, yet, by the mid-1970s,</p><p>and taking a broader view of the field, there was sufficient commonality</p><p>between ‘the Scandinavian school’ (Galtung, Eide), ‘the West German</p><p>school’ (Senghaas, Jahn, Krippendorff, Gantzel) and ‘the Neo-Marxist</p><p>school’ (Schmid, Dencik), argued Reid and Yanarella (1976: 317), that</p><p>they could all be seen as belonging to a Marxist Peace Research tradition.</p><p>structural violence, economics and the environment 125</p><p>This tradition had its stronghold in Scandinavia and West Germany (Sen-</p><p>ghaas, 1975: 252; Reid and Yanarella, 1976: 329) and the Journal of Peace</p><p>Research, founded by Galtung in 1964, provided the main outlet for its</p><p>dissemination (Chatfield, 1979: 174). The link between development and</p><p>structural violence was based on a critical Marxist/post-Marxist analysis</p><p>of global economic, particularly capitalist, structures. Galtung drew upon</p><p>early Frankfurt School theorist Marcuse in criticising capitalist consumer</p><p>society for promising ‘euphoria’, but this (apparent) providence of ‘plea-</p><p>sure rather than pain’ might be ‘worse in terms of being more manipula-</p><p>tory’ than more overtly repressive societies (Galtung, 1969: 170). In later</p><p>works, including ‘A Structural Theory of Imperialism’ (Galtung, 1971),</p><p>the links to dependency theory were made explicit. Dependencia theory</p><p>was developed in a Latin American context by Cardoso and Faletto (1979)</p><p>and Gunder Frank (1967), and in an African setting by Amin (1972, 1975,</p><p>1976). It held that ‘underdevelopment’ was not simply a sign of non-</p><p>Western countries being at a less advanced stage of modernisation, but a</p><p>structurally determined condition. Third World countries played a par-</p><p>ticular role within global capitalist structures as they were the suppliers</p><p>of raw materials or a few commodities on conditions set by the extracting</p><p>countries and companies of the West. As Western capitalism went through</p><p>stages of crisis – as predicted by classic Marxist–Leninist theory – these</p><p>crises were transposed onto the global South (Senghaas, 1975; Jackson and</p><p>Sørensen, 1999: 200–201). Broadening the scope of imperialism beyond</p><p>the economic, Galtung (1971) argued that political, military, communi-</p><p>cation and cultural imperialisms supported an exploitative North–South</p><p>global structure. Neoliberal regimes would perpetuate and deepen the</p><p>conditions of structural dependency to the detriment of the populations,</p><p>if not the elites, of Third World countries.</p><p>The call for the inclusion of development issues in Peace Research was</p><p>further supported by the argument that the number of deaths due to mal-</p><p>nutrition, hunger and human-induced disasters in the periphery rivalled</p><p>the hypothetical body count of a nuclear war – a logic subsequently</p><p>reiterated by many widening perspectives. Moreover, reasoned Senghaas</p><p>(1975: 252), the poverty of the Third World constituted an ‘explosive</p><p>potential for conflict and violence’, and although such conflicts had so far</p><p>been confined to the Third World itself, they were likely to start spreading</p><p>to the West and the socialist East. That Senghaas, Galtung and other</p><p>critical ‘development’ Peace Researchers were at least partially successful</p><p>in setting a broader Peace Research agenda is evidenced by the many</p><p>articles on structural violence, imperialism and development published</p><p>126 the cold war challenge to national security</p><p>in the Journal of Peace Research in the 1960s and 1970s (Klausen, 1964;</p><p>Höivik, 1971, 1972; Hveem, 1973, 1979). Institutionally, the convergence</p><p>of Development Studies and Peace Research was illustrated by the</p><p>establishment of PADRIGU, the Department for Peace and Development</p><p>Research, at the University of Gothenburg in 1971.</p><p>Comparing Marxist Peace Research – and understanding ‘Marxist’ as</p><p>comprising both Neo-Marxist and Critical as well as softer Marxist Ger-</p><p>man and Scandinavian approaches – to the literature on Third World</p><p>security mentioned in chapter 4, there is thus a more fundamental chal-</p><p>lenge to the Strategic Studies agenda. Those in Strategic Studies who</p><p>studied Third World security in its own right, and not just for its impli-</p><p>cations for the Cold War, did for the most part not challenge the focus</p><p>on national security, mainly wanting this concept to be applied to the</p><p>particular positions and problems of Third World states (Ayoob, 1984;</p><p>Azar and Moon, 1988). The literature on structural violence, by contrast,</p><p>took a highly critical view of the Western (and to some extent the Third</p><p>World) state as the producer of Third World insecurity.</p><p>Situating Marxist Peace Research within the larger story of the evolution</p><p>of ISS, it is clear that this was linked to a series of constitutive events. The</p><p>most prominent of these was the general trickling effect of decolonisation</p><p>that began in the 1940s, sometimes peacefully, sometimes not, as in the</p><p>case of the Indochina War between the French and the Viet Minh (Rogers,</p><p>2007: 37); the protracted wars in Korea and Vietnam (Boulding, 1978:</p><p>345; Wiberg, 1988: 44); the covert, and sometimes not so covert, US</p><p>political and economic involvement in Latin and South America; and the</p><p>adoption of development as a key priority within the UN system more</p><p>broadly (Rogers, 2007: 40). While these events directly boosted the calls</p><p>for giving attention to the Third World, the oil crisis in 1973 became a</p><p>particular impetus to focus on the relationship between global economics</p><p>and peace/war/security, particularly in how the resource-rich parts of the</p><p>Third World held a bargaining power vis-à-vis the First World.</p><p>The easing of superpower confrontation in the latter part of the</p><p>1960s and 1970s was also seen as opening up space for non-military</p><p>security/peace concerns in Peace Research more broadly. The incom-</p><p>ing editors of the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Russett and Kramer,</p><p>wrote in 1973 that they wanted to shift the balance a bit from the jour-</p><p>nal’s traditional primary focus on international conflict, particularly the</p><p>danger of nuclear war, to ‘justice, equality, human dignity’ and ‘ecolog-</p><p>ical balance and control’, as ‘other problems are competing with deter-</p><p>rence and disarmament studies for our attention’ (Russett and Kramer,</p><p>structural violence, economics and the environment 127</p><p>1973: 5). Kenneth E. Boulding held that there ‘was the feeling, certainly in</p><p>the 1960s and early 1970s, that nuclear deterrence was actually succeeding</p><p>as deterrence and that the problem of nuclear war had receded into the</p><p>background’ (Boulding, 1978: 346; Lopez, 1985: 125). With the election</p><p>of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the Second Cold War of the 1980s, the rel-</p><p>ative balance between military and development issues shifted back again</p><p>in the direction of the former (Gleditsch, 1989: 3; Rogers, 2007: 44), and</p><p>Third World countries were pushed towards the adoption of Liberal poli-</p><p>cies which ‘emphasized the role of free market forces and the downsizing</p><p>of state bureaucracies and state regulations’ (Jackson and Sørensen, 1999:</p><p>201).</p><p>The broadening and deepening</p><p>of the Peace Research agenda in the late</p><p>1960s and 1970s, and in particular the form that this took, was also influ-</p><p>enced by the way in which events interacted with the internal dynamics</p><p>of academic debates. The import of Marxist economic theory was in part</p><p>attributable to a general wave of Marxist and post-Marxist theory in the</p><p>social sciences in Western Europe in the wake of student radicalism in the</p><p>late 1960s (Gleditsch, 1989: 2). Scandinavian and especially West German</p><p>Peace Researchers drew on the older Frankfurt School theorists Adorno,</p><p>Horkheimer and Marcuse in pointing to the alienation and manipula-</p><p>tion of citizens in late-modern Western societies, and, younger ‘radical’</p><p>Peace Researchers went further back to classical Marxists and Leninist</p><p>writings (Gleditsch, 2004: 17). The older Frankfurt School held a rather</p><p>pessimistic view of the possibility of genuine democracy and popular</p><p>resistance to the machinations of political, financial and cultural elites,</p><p>whereas the younger Frankfurt School, represented by Habermas, allowed</p><p>for a more positive view of civil society, of the so-called ‘life world’s’ abil-</p><p>ity to resist systemic interests and of the possibility of emancipation.</p><p>The more pessimistic and radical branch of Neo-Marxist theory was the</p><p>stronger influence on 1970s Peace Research, whereas it was Habermas’s</p><p>theory that informed early Poststructuralist writings (Ashley, 1981) and</p><p>later Critical Security Studies (see chapter 7), which singled out ‘emanci-</p><p>pation’ as its core parallel concept (Alker, 1988; Booth, 1991, 1997, 2005a;</p><p>Wyn Jones, 1995, 1999, 2005).</p><p>During the 1980s, Peace Research becomes gradually more specialised</p><p>(Wiberg, 1981; Gleditsch, 1989: 2) and less is published on ‘pure’ eco-</p><p>nomic and development issues in key journals such as the Journal of Peace</p><p>Research. There is a growing division of labour between Peace Research</p><p>and Development Studies as the latter becomes a distinct specialism, and</p><p>a bigger differentiation between the sub-disciplines of IR and IPE. Peace</p><p>128 the cold war challenge to national security</p><p>Research remains the home of conflict studies, whereas development</p><p>economics become a part of IPE (Liberal or Neo-Marxist). As a conse-</p><p>quence, by the close of the Cold War, Peace Research is heavily dominated</p><p>by political scientists compared to its multidisciplinary make-up in the</p><p>1960s (Gleditsch, 1989: 3). But this does not mean, as we shall see in</p><p>chapter 7, that development disappears from the security–peace agenda</p><p>forever. In fact, one of the most successful new political concepts of the</p><p>1990s is Human Security, coined by the United Nations Development Pro-</p><p>gramme (UNDP) to locate questions of poverty and health more firmly</p><p>on the global security agenda.</p><p>Galtung’s structural violence theory did not explicitly foreground the</p><p>environment, but concern with the extraction of resources from the Third</p><p>World and a general worry about the impact of Western policies on future</p><p>generations clearly resonated with concerns about the environment which</p><p>arose in the 1960s and 1970s. Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring (1962)</p><p>described the accumulation of pesticides through the food chain, and</p><p>the belief that industrialisation had such significant side-effects that local</p><p>and planetary environments were dramatically endangered gained hold</p><p>(Barnett, 2007: 184–188). Parts of the environmental literature linked</p><p>quite explicitly with the traditional agenda of Strategic Studies by iden-</p><p>tifying environmental ‘resource wars’, particularly in the Third World</p><p>(Ullman, 1983). Others, such as Deudney (1990), argued that there was</p><p>a low probability that environmental conflicts would lead to war. Here</p><p>the referent object was still the state, and the environment a strategic</p><p>resource that might precipitate conflict. Peace Researchers, by contrast,</p><p>who approached the environment from a Galtungian perspective, called</p><p>for industrialised countries to reduce their energy consumption (Gjess-</p><p>ing, 1967; Poleszynski, 1977), or for seeing the environment as an arena</p><p>susceptible to conflict resolution (Westing, 1988). A particular line of</p><p>‘environmental literature’ linked to nuclear warfighting, as in Sagan’s</p><p>(1983/4) path-breaking critique of how it would precipitate an environ-</p><p>mental crisis in the form of a ‘nuclear winter’ (Nye, 1986). A more fun-</p><p>damental reorientation of the ISS agenda was undertaken by those who</p><p>incorporated the environment as a referent object itself, seeing some of</p><p>the bigger environmental problems as threatening to human civilisation</p><p>as a whole.</p><p>The broader constitution of environmental security as threatened</p><p>through climatic changes or through the degradation of land, biodiversity,</p><p>the atmosphere, water, forests, coastal areas and rivers (Barnett, 2007: 189)</p><p>arose mainly from overlapping scientific and political agendas that had</p><p>the internal dynamics of debates in peace research 129</p><p>little to do with the superpower military rivalry (Brundtland Commis-</p><p>sion, 1987; Nye and Lynn-Jones, 1988; Nye, 1989; Mathews, 1989; Buzan</p><p>et al., 1998: 71–72). In terms of the driving forces, this happened mainly as</p><p>a response to events in the slow-moving sense: a generally rising concern</p><p>about the (in)stability of the ecosphere. But processes of institutionali-</p><p>sation, such as the joint organising of a programme on Environmental</p><p>Security in the 1980s by PRIO and the United Nations Environment Pro-</p><p>gramme (UNEP) also worked to situate environmental security as one of</p><p>the first sectoral expansions of national security beyond the military.</p><p>The internal dynamics of debates in Peace Research</p><p>The expansion of the concept of ‘peace’ from negative to positive was not,</p><p>however, uncontested. Peace Research in the 1970s features heated, con-</p><p>ceptually focused, debates over the concept of peace, the sectors to which</p><p>it is applicable and its epistemology. This stands in contrast to Strategic</p><p>Studies, which contained fierce discussions of the logics of deterrence,</p><p>but which hardly examined the concept of security itself. The conceptual</p><p>debates within Peace Research are further significant to the evolution of</p><p>ISS in that several of them were to be continued in – or mirrored by –</p><p>subsequent widening decades, particular in the 1990s.</p><p>‘Broadeners’ such as Galtung were challenged by other leading Peace</p><p>Researchers who protested the move from military security to develop-</p><p>ment. Kenneth E. Boulding strongly opposed this shift since most Peace</p><p>Researchers were not, in his view, particularly well qualified to speak</p><p>on the subject of development (Boulding, 1978: 346). More important</p><p>still was Boulding’s argument that military threats came with an urgency</p><p>that exceeded that of ‘positive peace’: nuclear weapons had the potential</p><p>to incinerate the entire planet, thereby making them the biggest threat</p><p>to humankind. ‘It still remains true’, held Boulding, ‘that war, the break-</p><p>down of Galtung’s “negative peace,” remains the greatest clear and present</p><p>danger to the human race, a danger to human survival far greater than</p><p>poverty, or injustice, or oppression, desirable and necessary as it is to</p><p>eliminate these things’ (Boulding, 1978: 348). Without a solution to the</p><p>problem of nuclear war – and ‘negative peace’ – all other problems would</p><p>become irrelevant.</p><p>Boulding’s stressing of the urgency and different modality of military</p><p>security was not the only criticism aimed at positive peace and struc-</p><p>tural violence. Foreshadowing later traditionalist concerns, other critics</p><p>pointed to the conceptual imprecision of structural violence: it could</p><p>130 the cold war challenge to national security</p><p>not be ‘differentiated from related and equally important concepts’ and</p><p>there were no criteria on which researchers could decide whether posi-</p><p>tive peace was attained (Sylvester, 1980: 307). Boulding (1978: 346) put</p><p>it more bluntly arguing that to critics the concept of structural violence</p><p>included ‘anything that Galtung did not like’. Concepts, sceptics held, are</p><p>only meaningful if they can be distinguished from</p><p>other concepts and if</p><p>they can be identified empirically. With structural violence ‘everything</p><p>became peace’.</p><p>That the positive–negative peace debate was a fixture in Peace Research</p><p>is evidenced by the frequency with which the terms are used in publica-</p><p>tions, particularly in the late 1960s and 1970s. Another indication of the</p><p>constitutive nature of this distinction is that it features prominently in</p><p>studies of the field of Peace Research’s institutionalisation. In 1971, Everts</p><p>conducted a thorough study of Peace Research institutions on behalf of</p><p>UNESCO, a key promoter of Peace Research in the 1960s and 1970s. In</p><p>addition to Everts’s study, UNESCO sponsored a similar report in 1966,</p><p>and the committee under which Chatfield (1979) analysed the growth of</p><p>Peace Research journals. Everts found that 11% of the 140 Peace Research</p><p>institutions asked favoured the study of negative peace, 44% the study</p><p>of positive peace and 28% the study of both (18% provided no answer</p><p>or a different one). The significant change from 1966 was that at that</p><p>time 25% favoured positive peace, while 43% answered both; the 11% for</p><p>negative peace remained constant.</p><p>The debates over the concept of peace integrated normative, politi-</p><p>cal and epistemological concerns. Interestingly, when looking back on</p><p>Cold War Peace Research, there are striking similarities with contempo-</p><p>rary debates in ISS. There was an explicit debate on which epistemology</p><p>should be chosen, and on the normative implications thereof. There was</p><p>an engagement with the role that Peace Researchers should adopt vis-à-vis</p><p>the state apparatus, not least how Peace Researchers compare to strategic</p><p>experts. There was a strong sense that epistemological distinctions fol-</p><p>lowed a US–European divide. When comparing Cold War Peace Research</p><p>to Strategic Studies there was more explicit debate within the former</p><p>on epistemology and the identity of the discipline and its practitioners/</p><p>activists. This in part may be attributable to Peace Research being the</p><p>weaker player on the broader ISS terrain as concerns institutionalisation</p><p>in universities, think-tanks and government offices (if not necessarily in</p><p>terms of journals). But it may also be an outcome of Peace Research’s dou-</p><p>ble genesis as part mathematical and behavioural, and part philosophical,</p><p>historical and sociological.</p><p>the internal dynamics of debates in peace research 131</p><p>The dual epistemological roots of Peace Research go back to the found-</p><p>ing of the field itself. It was crucial to its self-identity that it was inter-</p><p>or even transdisciplinary, as evidenced for example by the listing of the</p><p>editorial board on the inside cover of Journal of Peace Research, which</p><p>announced the discipline of each member. In addition to the predictable</p><p>ones of Political Science, International Relations and Sociology, board</p><p>members came from Physics, Economics, Law, Psychology, Anthropol-</p><p>ogy, Biology, Philosophy, International Law and Chemistry. Beginning</p><p>with the mathematical, behavioural tradition, the first contributors usu-</p><p>ally identified as modern forefathers are Sorokin (1937), Quincy Wright</p><p>(1942), Lentz (1955) and Richardson (1960a, 1960b). Richardson was a</p><p>meteorologist and partly self-taught mathematician, who turned to the</p><p>study of war, particularly of arms racing, after having experienced the</p><p>trauma of the French battlefields during the First World War (Richard-</p><p>son, 1957: 301). Most of his work was not published until after his death</p><p>in 1953, but it drew the attention of other researchers such as Kenneth</p><p>E. Boulding (1978: 344; 1962), Rapoport (1957), Smoker (1964) and</p><p>Singer (1979, 1980). The next group of contributors were game theorists,</p><p>and game theory quickly became a key topic of concern in the jour-</p><p>nal Conflict Resolution, later Journal of Conflict Resolution, which from</p><p>1965 featured a special section on gaming edited by Anatol Rapoport.</p><p>The last group of contributors (Boulding, 1978: 345) came from Social</p><p>Psychology and worked on conflict processes and resolution in groups</p><p>(Osgood, 1953, 1959, 1962; Kelman, 1965; Gurr, 1970). Institutionally,</p><p>Conflict Resolution in 1957 located itself with the ‘sociologists, psycholo-</p><p>gists, educators, and pioneers of behavioral science’ (Conflict Resolution,</p><p>1957: 1–2), but interestingly also placed itself within the field of Inter-</p><p>disciplinaris internationalis, holding that ‘conflict resolution’ was a better</p><p>term, since ‘“peace” is a word too much abused in our day’. The Journal</p><p>of Conflict Resolution became the central launching pad for, in the words</p><p>of the incoming 1973 editors, Bruce Russett and Marguerite Kramer,</p><p>‘“hard-nosed peace research”, primarily formal theory and quantitative</p><p>research’, which formed the core of the field of Conflict Resolution (Rus-</p><p>sett and Kramer, 1973: 4). Taking stock of disciplinary developments,</p><p>Russett and Kramer (1973: 3) held that IR journals had seemed ‘hostile</p><p>or at best indifferent’ to quantitative research when the Journal of Con-</p><p>flict Resolution had been launched, thus giving Peace Research a stronger</p><p>behavioural foundation than IR or Strategic Studies. Russett and Kramer</p><p>(1973: 5) also argued – in keeping with the general 1970’s détente-related</p><p>turn – that they wanted to shift the balance from international conflict</p><p>132 the cold war challenge to national security</p><p>and nuclear war to ecological balance, and class, ethnic, racial and societal</p><p>conflict. Crucially though, this expansion of the substantial topic was not</p><p>followed by a broadening of the epistemological agenda. A little closer to</p><p>the middle of the epistemological spectrum, the Arms Control literature</p><p>was traditional, although there was much of it that was built on count-</p><p>ing military hardware. This literature was concerned with numbers and</p><p>material, quantifiable factors, but did not necessarily adopt more sophis-</p><p>ticated research designs seeking to demonstrate causal relationships. The</p><p>task was to work through the intricate balances between East and West</p><p>across a large set of elaborate classifications.</p><p>The other epistemological Peace Research tradition stretched back to</p><p>political theorists such as Kant’s Perpetual Peace and in the twentieth</p><p>century, writers such as Angell (1910, 1938) and Mitrany (1933, 1966)</p><p>(de Wilde, 1991). A broader historical agenda and epistemology was</p><p>adopted by the journal Peace and Change, first published in 1976 (Chat-</p><p>field, 1979: 172–173), and the journal Alternatives, edited by Rajni Kathari</p><p>and Richard Falk from the World Order Model Project, launched in 1975</p><p>and described by Chatfield (Chatfield, 1979: 174; see also Vasquez, 1976:</p><p>708) as ‘normative and policy-oriented’. Yet also Critical-positive Peace</p><p>Researchers were in favour of ‘disciplined methodology’ (Journal of Peace</p><p>Research, 1964: 4) even if it was not a formal, quantitative one, and</p><p>Scandinavian and German Peace Research were devoted to developing</p><p>key concepts and terminology. Epistemologically, this came closest to a</p><p>qualitative, sociological tradition with an empiricist, soft-positivist lean-</p><p>ing (Patomäki, 2001: 728) in that concepts had to be distinct and be</p><p>applicable to – or found in – the real world (Lawler, 1995; Väyrynen,</p><p>2004: 32). Theories referred to measurable material objects and actions,</p><p>and were structural rather than hermeneutic. When Galtung called for</p><p>an incorporation of case-studies, for instance, these were to be situated</p><p>inside structural analysis of economic and cultural imperialism. They</p><p>were not designed to uncover local constitutions of peace, development</p><p>and security issues. Nor were linguistic or discursive phenomena going</p><p>to be given much concern, as Galtung (1984: 128) put it: ‘Thoughts and</p><p>words come and go, actions depend on what is objectively possible, given</p><p>by the constraints of natural laws only.’</p><p>This epistemological diversity led to a concern in the 1970s with ‘the</p><p>two cultures problem’, that Peace Research might bifurcate into two epis-</p><p>temological camps unable to speak to each other, training students who</p><p>either would be ‘unable</p><p>to read, let alone critically assess, a number of</p><p>socially important pieces of quantitative research’ or alternatively ‘be</p><p>the internal dynamics of debates in peace research 133</p><p>insensitive to the suffering that can occur from the violation of ethi-</p><p>cal norms’ (Vasquez, 1976: 710–711). This two cultures problem was</p><p>– as today (see chapters 8 and 9) – also seen in geographical terms:</p><p>Western Europe was humanistic and post-Marxist, the United States was</p><p>behavioural and quantitative (Onuf, 1975; Reid and Yanarella, 1976). The</p><p>Europeans had, held Boulding (1978: 347), retreated from reality into</p><p>‘fantasies of justice’, whereas Americans had succumbed to a ‘niggling sci-</p><p>entism, with sophisticated methodologies and not very many new ideas’.</p><p>Then, as now, researchers in the critical-European tradition were more</p><p>concerned with engaging the US-behavioural mainstream than vice versa</p><p>(Reid and Yanarella, 1976: 317). But European-Marxist Peace Researchers</p><p>were also rebutted for being ‘a closed, complete system of thought’ and</p><p>for seeking to explain all conflict of the global South with economic struc-</p><p>tures in the North (Onuf, 1975: 72; Reid and Yanarella, 1976: 316). Some</p><p>individuals did not, of course, fall into these rigid categories, and the</p><p>most important European journal, the Journal of Peace Research, contin-</p><p>uously published articles from all corners of Peace Research (Gleditsch,</p><p>1993).</p><p>Worth noting in this debate is that the criteria for what constitutes a</p><p>humanistic epistemology are not at all fixed. Vasquez (1976: 710) defines</p><p>for instance the Journal of Peace Research as having shifted to ‘a more</p><p>humanist approach by publishing radical and normative work’, while</p><p>Reid and Yanarella (1976: 322) argue that this approach ‘tacitly share[s]</p><p>a scientistic foundation with establishment figures’. Certainly, to a con-</p><p>temporary audience, the ‘radical’ writings of the 1960s and 1970s would</p><p>in most cases not look particularly radical compared to how the epis-</p><p>temological fault-lines became established from the late 1980s onwards.</p><p>How a field is understood and divided into epistemological perspectives is</p><p>thus not based on trans-historical objective factors, but is itself something</p><p>that can change in hindsight as other approaches appear. Epistemological</p><p>differences and commonalities are, in short, socially constituted.</p><p>There are also numerous discussions of the normativity of Peace</p><p>Research, but no consensus on what that means. Sometimes human-</p><p>ism and normative theory are linked and opposed to quantitative studies</p><p>(Vasquez, 1976: 710; Lopez, 1985: 118) or it is held that the scientism</p><p>of behavioural approaches depoliticises the normative issues that should</p><p>be confronted (Reid and Yanarella, 1976). The latter position became</p><p>increasingly common as epistemological debates gained hold of IR and</p><p>ISS in the late 1980s and after the Cold War (see, for instance, Walker,</p><p>1987; Patomäki, 2001) and we will return to it in coming chapters. But</p><p>134 the cold war challenge to national security</p><p>many Peace Researchers in the scientific camp did conceive of them-</p><p>selves as normative. Kenneth E. Boulding (1978: 343) argued that Peace</p><p>Research had always been normative and Richardson’s son described how</p><p>his father had been strongly motivated by his Quaker faith, foregoing</p><p>wealth, vacations, hobbies and a professorship in his search for the causes</p><p>of war (Richardson, 1957). Gleditsch (2004: 17) also notes how Nor-</p><p>wegian Peace Researchers in the early 1960s linked behaviouralism to a</p><p>radical agenda – as did Finnish Peace Researchers (Väyrynen, 2004: 31) –</p><p>only to constitute it as a symbol of imperialism and US dominance</p><p>by the late 1960s. Marxist Peace Research at that time still adopted a</p><p>soft positivist epistemology, only not the quantitative, statistical one of</p><p>behaviourally influenced approaches. As both scientific and softer posi-</p><p>tivist Peace Research had normative foundations, their difference lay not</p><p>in whether normativity was involved, but where and how it entered the</p><p>research process. Peace Researchers should, according to Boulding, choose</p><p>important political problems, but subject them to scientific scrutiny. The</p><p>lessons learned should then be normatively assessed, but the scientific</p><p>testing should not be influenced by normative concerns. To Critical</p><p>Theorists, this cutting up of the research process was problematic at</p><p>best.</p><p>The view of Peace Research as normative also had consequences for</p><p>the conception of the role that Peace Researchers adopted – and should</p><p>adopt – vis-à-vis other disciplines and the political structures in place.</p><p>Galtung repeatedly described Peace Research as akin to medicine and</p><p>Peace Researchers as doctors: against the eradication of illness and in</p><p>favour of health. Many others held that Peace Research should have a</p><p>policy relevance (Journal of Peace Research, 1964: 4; Gleditsch, 1989: 4),</p><p>or act in ‘the dual capacities of scientists and reformers’ (Burtan, quoted</p><p>in Chaudri, 1968: 367). Yet as Wiberg (1981: 111) noted, this often took</p><p>on ‘a highly artificial impression’, with authors trying to squeeze out</p><p>general policy implications from quite specific studies. Particularly to</p><p>Peace Researchers in the Marxist tradition, there was a sense of being</p><p>different from ‘war researchers’ (Reid and Yanarella, 1976: 318), not only</p><p>in substantial research focus, but in one’s willingness to be complicit</p><p>with the state. Controversy arose, for instance, over Peace Researchers</p><p>who offered their advice to the US government during the Vietnam War</p><p>(Olsen and Jarvad, 1970). To others working on concrete questions of</p><p>arms reduction, conflict resolution and game theory, the disciplinary</p><p>distinctions and the self-identities of Peace Researcher versus security</p><p>strategist seemed less significant and more pragmatic.</p><p>from peace to security 135</p><p>From peace to security: Common Security, Feminism and</p><p>Poststructuralism</p><p>During the 1980s there is a gradual shift from ‘peace’ to ‘security’ as</p><p>the guiding concept of approaches critical of the Strategic Studies main-</p><p>stream. Gleditsch notes in 1989 that ‘most authors avoid the word peace,</p><p>possibly because it sounds too grand and pretentious’ (Gleditsch, 1989:</p><p>3). At the close of the 1980s, it seems thus as if Buzan’s (1983, 1984a) call</p><p>for changing the status of ‘security’ from underdeveloped to the concep-</p><p>tual common ground between Strategic Studies and Peace Research has</p><p>been heard. This section explores three approaches – Common Security,</p><p>Feminism and Poststructuralism – which grew out of early 1980s Peace</p><p>Research, yet, particulary in the case of the latter two, intersected with</p><p>social, political and feminist theories that propelled them away from the</p><p>mainstream of Peace Research as the Cold War ended.</p><p>Foregrounding ‘security’</p><p>Picking up the concept from Wolfers’s old article on security as an ambigu-</p><p>ous symbol, Buzan (1983: 6) looked back on thirty years of ‘security’ as</p><p>an unexplored and essentially contested concept. This was unfortunate,</p><p>argued Buzan (1983, 1984a), because ‘security’ had the ability to act as</p><p>a conceptual meeting ground between the extremes of Realist Strategic</p><p>Studies ‘power’ on the one side, and the ‘peace’ of Peace Research on</p><p>the other. Moreover, Buzan pointed to ‘[t]he hazards of a weakly con-</p><p>ceptualised, ambiguously defined, but politically powerful concept like</p><p>national security’, which ‘offers scope for power-maximising strategies</p><p>to political and military elites, because of the considerable leverage over</p><p>domestic affairs which can be obtained by invoking it’ (Buzan, 1983: 4,</p><p>9). Since ‘security’ was already in widespread high-politics use, one would</p><p>for academic as well as political–normative reasons be better off engaging</p><p>it directly.</p><p>Coining the terminology of ‘referent objects’, Buzan stressed the inter-</p><p>linkages and tensions across levels of analysis. As the subtitle of his book</p><p>People, States and Fear: The National Security Problem in International</p><p>Relations indicated, ‘national security’ stood at the centre of the analysis,</p><p>but it was simultaneously stressed that ‘people represent, in one sense,</p><p>the irreducible basic unit to which the concept of security can be applied’</p><p>(Buzan, 1983: 18). Echoing the view of security as always an individu-</p><p>alising and a collectivising concept laid out in chapter 2, Buzan (1983:</p><p>20, 31) held that there was a tension between the state as the protector</p><p>136 the cold war challenge to national security</p><p>of ‘its’ citizens’ security and the state as a threat to its own individu-</p><p>als, and that this was an inherent one rooted in the ‘nature of political</p><p>collectivities’. This did not mean that individual security should not be</p><p>taken into account, but rather that there would be no abstract ‘individual</p><p>security solution’ that could be laid out a priori. Security scholars needed</p><p>therefore to theorise the relationship between individual and collective</p><p>security and to analyse its empirical manifestations. Building on this ten-</p><p>sion, Buzan opened up the concept of the state to see it as constituted</p><p>by its physical base, the idea supporting it and its institutional expres-</p><p>sion. A central point here, which was later developed into the theory on</p><p>societal security, was to stress that the idea of the state might be more,</p><p>or less, accepted and that questions of nationality might either support it</p><p>(in a nation-state) or weaken it (in multinational states where minority</p><p>nations feel repressed or maltreated). National security thus has an ‘inside</p><p>dimension’ and unless this is relatively stable, ‘the image of the state as a</p><p>referent object for security fades into a meaningless blur’ (Buzan, 1983:</p><p>69). The question of the weakness/strength of the state should therefore</p><p>be separated from the question of the power that a state wields against</p><p>other states. On the outside, international security is dependent upon the</p><p>character of the international system, not only, as Neorealists pointed out,</p><p>on the polarity of the system, but also on whether its character is one of</p><p>immature anarchy (an unmediated Hobbesian world) or a mature anar-</p><p>chy where states have developed in Bull’s terms an international society</p><p>of norms, rules and institutions to mediate the effects of the anarchical,</p><p>fragmented system (Buzan, 1983: 96). Buzan’s conceptualisation of secu-</p><p>rity as individual, national and international pointed to a deepening of</p><p>security along the axis of referent objects. The second significant expan-</p><p>sion advocated by People, States and Fear was along the axis of sectors,</p><p>where the traditional military sector that Strategic Studies had concen-</p><p>trated on should be widened to include the economic, the political and</p><p>the ecological.</p><p>In parallel with this new agenda, criticism of traditional national secu-</p><p>rity rhetoric triggered a discussion about new concepts: Common Security</p><p>(Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues, 1982;</p><p>Väyrynen, 1985; Windass, 1985; Buzan, 1987b; Dewitt, 1994) and com-</p><p>prehensive security (Chapman et al., 1983; Akaha, 1991; Dewitt, 1994).</p><p>Comprehensive security, particularly linked to thinking in Japan, but also</p><p>elsewhere in East Asia, retained a national security focus but widened the</p><p>agenda away from just military security to other concerns, particularly</p><p>economic, political and environmental threats.</p><p>from peace to security 137</p><p>The single most successful ‘expansive’ concept of the 1980s, is, however,</p><p>probably ‘Common Security’, coined by the Independent Commission on</p><p>Disarmament and Security Issues chaired by Olof Palme in 1982. Com-</p><p>mon Security was picked up by Peace Researchers, particularly perhaps in</p><p>Germany, where the concept resonated with central policy debates (Meyer,</p><p>1989; Wæver, 1989b) The underlying assumption of Common Security</p><p>was that ‘the main threats to international security come not from indi-</p><p>vidual states but from global problems shared by the entire international</p><p>community: nuclear war, the heavy economic burden of militarism and</p><p>war, disparities in living standards within and among nations, and global</p><p>environmental degradation’ (Porter and Brown, 1991: 109). Starting from</p><p>national security, the report stressed that many aspects of the security</p><p>agenda were collective and pointed to the ‘less tangible dimensions to</p><p>security’. It held that ‘Citizens of all nations want to be able to remain</p><p>true to the principles and ideals upon which their country was founded,</p><p>free to chart futures in a manner of their own choosing’ (Independent</p><p>Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues, 1982: 4). Clearly, this</p><p>should be read against the backdrop of the Second Cold War. To say</p><p>that citizens wanted to be true to their countries’ ideals was to reiterate</p><p>not only the (fictitious) harmony between state and individual held by</p><p>state-centric conceptions of security, but also to invoke the principle of</p><p>‘non-interference in domestic affairs’: state sovereignty protected states</p><p>from others meddling in their domestic ideological, religious, political</p><p>or economic choices. The Palme Commission was thus firmly embedded</p><p>within the bipolar confrontation where states were seen as the key to</p><p>a more peaceful world. Suggesting that states could override the prin-</p><p>ciple of non-interference in domestic affairs to defend the insecurities</p><p>of threatened populations, as became the norm in humanitarian opera-</p><p>tions/wars in the 1990s (Kosovo being the strongest example), was not on</p><p>the agenda. The way in which questions of military technology saturated</p><p>critical security thinking in the early 1980s is also evidenced in that after</p><p>the first 12 pages laying out more general links between Common Secu-</p><p>rity, national security, development and the Third World, the rest of the</p><p>Palme Commission Report’s 177 pages are devoted to detailed discussions</p><p>of different disarmament and arms control scenarios. ‘True security’ was</p><p>defined as ‘ending the danger of nuclear war, reducing the frequency and</p><p>destructiveness of conventional conflicts, easing the social and economic</p><p>burdens of armaments’ (Independent Commission on Disarmament and</p><p>Security Issues, 1982: 6) and underdevelopment was considered through</p><p>its relationship to military conflict: either because the militarisation of</p><p>138 the cold war challenge to national security</p><p>Third World countries tied up resources that could have been spent on</p><p>welfare and poverty reduction, or because scarcity, hunger and underde-</p><p>velopment may cause conflict.</p><p>Yet, to articulate citizens’ ability to chart their own future introduced</p><p>a certain ambiguity: did this refer to citizens happily applauding ‘their’</p><p>government’s choices, or did it refer to each individual’s right to choose a</p><p>future different from the one sanctioned by the state? This ambiguity, as</p><p>well as the remark that the ‘furtherance of human rights must continue’</p><p>(Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues, 1982:</p><p>6) makes it possible to read the Palme Commission as sowing the seeds</p><p>of a concept of individual security. Although the state was supposedly the</p><p>guarantee of citizens’ security, this may not always be the case in real life.</p><p>This ambiguity has made Common Security a concept that is often used</p><p>in opposition to state-centric security, and viewed as setting the scene for</p><p>individual security. It becomes in this respect the forerunner to Human</p><p>Security, launched in 1994 by UNDP, which explicitly constituted the</p><p>individual as the referent object for security.</p><p>Women as a particular group: the birth of Feminist Security Studies</p><p>A particularly noteworthy case of the negotiation of the tension between</p><p>an individual and a collective–structural concept of security was the one</p><p>over ‘women’ which began in the late 1970s and developed into the 1980s.</p><p>Of the long list of issues falling under the rubric of structural violence, or</p><p>linking to questions of conflict and group-formation, gender was not one</p><p>given pride of place. Gleditsch (1989: 4) summed up the state of affairs</p><p>in 1989: ‘Only 8% of the articles in the JPR’s [Journal of Peace Research]</p><p>first 25 years were written by women; this figure shows</p><p>the dynamic nature of academic disciplinary evolution in a way that a</p><p>monocausal framework would not. It also opens a more structural view</p><p>6 introduction</p><p>of ISS, hopefully allowing those within it to see their own environment</p><p>more clearly.</p><p>The fifth and final advantage of a historical approach is directly related</p><p>to our normative view of how ISS should ideally develop at the level of</p><p>sociology of science. Our normative position, to which we will return</p><p>in chapter 9, ‘Conclusions’, is that ISS is well suited by being home to</p><p>multiple perspectives. This end is served by the processes of institution-</p><p>alisation which have given everybody from rational choice Neorealists to</p><p>Poststructuralist Feminists places to publish and foundations to apply to</p><p>(although the balance may not be an even one!). With our belief that</p><p>ISS is and should be home to several perspectives, follows a normative</p><p>commitment to debate and engagement not only within but between</p><p>ISS approaches. Several security scholars have recently observed that ISS</p><p>develops along increasingly separate tracks, on distinct European and</p><p>American ones (Wæver, 1998, 2004a; Wæver and Buzan, 2007) or along</p><p>the lines of Realism, Poststructuralism, Feminism and so on (Sylvester,</p><p>2007b). Assuming that this picture of ISS is correct, that the sub-field is</p><p>branching out but that the branches (no longer) come together at the</p><p>trunk of the tree, a historical analysis allows us to trace when particular</p><p>approaches were formed and what their connection was to the central</p><p>questions of the sub-field of ISS. An intellectual history facilitates the</p><p>uncovering of conversations that were once there, and by bringing them</p><p>back together a renewed engagement and dialogue may be generated.</p><p>For all of these reasons, this book offers something different from, but</p><p>complementary to, the current crop of introductory textbooks to ISS. Our</p><p>hope is that they will be read in conjunction.</p><p>Chapter 1 provides a more detailed account of the challenges involved in</p><p>defining ISS. We argue in favour of including literature that self-identifies</p><p>as ISS or as one of the many specific Security Studies approaches regardless</p><p>of whether all other ISS perspectives agree that they should be included.</p><p>We then suggest that the delineation of ISS and the substantial debates</p><p>within it can be understood through four questions (referent object,</p><p>location of threats, security sector and view of security politics) and that</p><p>the concept of security is supported by three adjacent forms of concepts:</p><p>complementary, parallel and oppositional. The last part of the chapter</p><p>turns to the relationship between ISS and other academic disciplines,</p><p>particularly IR. Chapter 2 looks at the central concepts at the heart of</p><p>ISS: the state, government, sovereignty and authority and how they were</p><p>produced historically. The chapter also introduces the importance of</p><p>epistemology and the main ways in which it has influenced ISS. Part</p><p>introduction 7</p><p>of our purpose is to describe how ISS unfolded, but we also want to</p><p>understand why it evolved in the way it did, and chapter 3 looks at the</p><p>five driving forces that shaped the formation and evolution of ISS. These</p><p>three introductory chapters set up the framework that we use in chapters</p><p>4 to 8 to trace and explain how the subject has evolved.</p><p>Chapters 4 and 5 cover the Cold War period. Chapter 4 surveys the</p><p>traditionalist perspective, looking at the ‘golden age’ of Strategic Stud-</p><p>ies and its decline. Chapter 5 looks at those who challenged it, whether</p><p>from Peace Research and Arms Control, or from the beginnings of the</p><p>widening (economic and environmental security) and deepening (Fem-</p><p>inism, Poststructuralism) perspectives that began to emerge during the</p><p>1980s. Chapters 6 and 7 cover the period from the end of the Cold War</p><p>to the terrorist attack on the US on 9/11. Again, we start with the tradi-</p><p>tional military–political perspective, and then look at the widening and</p><p>deepening challenges to this, some of which move onto quite different</p><p>ground from those during the Cold War. We are aware that the chrono-</p><p>logical structure of chapters 4 to 7 might reinforce the idea of a great</p><p>divide between pre- and post-1990, but we hope that the continuities</p><p>show through as strongly as the changes. Chapter 8 looks at the short</p><p>period since 9/11 and tries to assess the impact of that benchmark event</p><p>on all the strands of ISS. Chapter 9 sums up the main conclusions about</p><p>the changing shape of ISS, it reconsiders the utility of the driving forces</p><p>framework for explaining the evolution of ISS, and reflects on the outlook</p><p>for ISS.</p><p>Since we are, among other things, providing a history of the ISS lit-</p><p>erature, our referencing will favour citing first editions rather than later</p><p>ones. We certainly have not cited everything in the literature, and even</p><p>so our list of references is enormous. We have tried to take on board all</p><p>of the landmark writings and authors, and beyond that to give fair repre-</p><p>sentations of all the significant lines of literature. When we group a set of</p><p>references under a given topic this may include things that both represent</p><p>and criticise a given position, school or point. We chose the Harvard sys-</p><p>tem of referencing because of its economy of wordage and its placement</p><p>of author information at the precise relevant points. Even without trying</p><p>to include everything, in later chapters the citations sometimes become</p><p>sufficiently dense that they interfere with the smooth reading of the text.</p><p>Where this happens, we put the references into footnotes.</p><p>1</p><p>Defining International Security Studies</p><p>International Security Studies (ISS) grew out of debates over how to pro-</p><p>tect the state against external and internal threats after the Second World</p><p>War. Security became its watchword (Wolfers, 1952; Yergin, 1978), both</p><p>distinguishing ISS from earlier thinking and the disciplines of War Studies</p><p>and Military History, and, as it evolved, serving as the linking concept</p><p>connecting an increasingly diverse set of research programmes. Look-</p><p>ing back on more than sixty years of academic writing on international</p><p>security, the first pertinent question for an intellectual history of ISS is</p><p>to define what makes up the sub-field and where the boundary zones</p><p>between it and adjacent academic disciplines are located.</p><p>To delineate ISS is unfortunately not as straightforward an exercise as</p><p>one might wish. The label ‘international security’ was not adopted from</p><p>the outset, but only gradually became accepted, and there is no univer-</p><p>sally agreed definition of what ISS comprises, and hence no accepted</p><p>archive of ‘ISS-documents’ that define our object of study. As this book</p><p>will demonstrate, not only is there a large body of ISS literature, it is one</p><p>whose themes, discussions and participants change across time and place.</p><p>The composition of ISS has mainly been taken for granted, with the con-</p><p>sequence that little self-reflection on what made up ISS or its boundaries</p><p>has been produced. The absence of a universal definition of what makes</p><p>up ISS means that ISS has at times become a site for disciplinary politics</p><p>with different perspectives arguing that they should be included while</p><p>others (usually different sorts of widening perspectives) should not.</p><p>The delineation of ISS is complicated by the fact that as time goes</p><p>by we get a different perspective on what falls in and what does not.</p><p>To paraphrase Foucault’s genealogical understanding of history as always</p><p>being told from the point of the present, the fact that we tell the story of</p><p>ISS from a 2008 perspective means that we look at a field which has some</p><p>strikingly different preoccupations, both substantive and epistemological,</p><p>from those that dominated it in, say, 1972. And it would have been easier</p><p>to delineate ISS had it always been explicitly centred on the concept</p><p>8</p><p>defining international security studies 9</p><p>of security. Unfortunately, this has not been the case. Indeed, after its</p><p>first decade of explicit theoretical and conceptual innovation, the field’s</p><p>mainstream</p><p>little change over</p><p>time. Moreover, we have not had very much to say on such issues as</p><p>feminist approaches to peace.’ In this the JPR was not alone: of the eighty</p><p>subjects of research identified by Peace Research institutions in Everts’s</p><p>1972 study none included gender, while class, imperialism, religion and</p><p>race are prominently mentioned (Everts, 1972: 500–501). The absence</p><p>of gender in Galtung’s theory on structural violence may also be related</p><p>to the downplaying of gender in post-Marxist theory in the late 1960s</p><p>and 1970s. Marxists held that class relations were more fundamental,</p><p>hence solving the problems of capitalist societies would also bring gender</p><p>equality. In the 1960s and 1970s a few game-theoretical studies of women’s</p><p>behaviour in prisoner’s dilemma appeared (Lutzker, 1961; Ingram and</p><p>Berger, 1977), but these were situated inside a general game-theoretical</p><p>from peace to security 139</p><p>research agenda and were concerned neither with women’s contributions</p><p>to Peace Research nor with the question of whether women might be</p><p>facing particular security problems.</p><p>The absence of gender was not a particular feature of ISS, but a general</p><p>trait of IR as a whole, and the writings on gender, peace and security</p><p>that first materialised in the early 1980s grew out of Peace Research.</p><p>These works were particularly concerned with how women’s role as nur-</p><p>turer gave them a different view of war, peace and security. Opinion polls</p><p>showed, argued Elise Boulding (1984), that women to a greater extent than</p><p>men oppose military spending, intervention and environmental exploita-</p><p>tion, while being in favour of aid to the poor at home and abroad. But</p><p>the significance of gender goes beyond mobilising women in the electoral</p><p>process: women hold different values, behave more cooperatively, favour</p><p>holistic critical epistemologies and are ‘more interested in identifying</p><p>alternative security systems than in studying arms control’ (Boulding,</p><p>1984: 2–3). Women are, in short, more peaceful than men.</p><p>Another first stage security feminist was Ruddick, who in Maternal</p><p>Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace (1989) argued that ‘women have a</p><p>cognitive style distinctly more concrete than men’s’ and that the military</p><p>is built on notions of masculinity, not only because most soldiers are</p><p>men, but because military thinking – including just war theory – turns</p><p>our attention ‘from bodies and their fate to abstract causes and rules for</p><p>achieving them’ (Ruddick, 1989: 95, see also 150; see also Cohn, 1987: 715,</p><p>717). First stage security feminists were careful to point out that gender is</p><p>not a fixed biological identity, but produced through practices of sociali-</p><p>sation: ‘a boy is not born, but rather becomes, a soldier’ (Ruddick, 1989:</p><p>145). ‘Gender’ therefore refers to cultural, political, social and discursive</p><p>structures: the concepts of masculinity and femininity do not represent</p><p>how ‘women’ and ‘men’ actually are, but how they have been formed</p><p>through a complex political history that situates women within the pri-</p><p>vate sphere and men within the public (Elshtain, 1981; Pateman, 1988).</p><p>Men are constructed as protectors, domestically of the patriarchal family</p><p>and internationally of the body politic, as self-sacrificing, patriotic, brave,</p><p>aggressive and heroic. Women, by contrast, are in Elshtain’s words ‘Beau-</p><p>tiful Souls’, who offer emotional support and bestow romantic validation</p><p>on the bravery of their Just Warrior men (Elshtain, 1987).</p><p>The second stage in developing a feminist approach to security involved</p><p>an explicit challenge to women’s peacefulness and thus, in Sylvester’s</p><p>(1987) words, a pointing to the dangers of merging feminist and peace</p><p>projects. This also entailed a shift from to what extent peace-proneness</p><p>140 the cold war challenge to national security</p><p>was biological or cultural or not at all, to the argument that ‘women’</p><p>should be seen as a separate referent object for security. The first book</p><p>to include an extensive conceptual engagement with security from a fem-</p><p>inist perspective was Tickner’s Gender in International Relations which</p><p>explicitly acknowledged the influence of Scandinavian Peace Research</p><p>(Tickner, 1992: xiii). Her conceptualisation of the referent object implied</p><p>a shift from the state and towards the individual: ‘national security often</p><p>takes precedence over the social security of individuals’ (Tickner, 1992:</p><p>28). Thus to ‘consider security from the perspective of the individual’ is to</p><p>argue in favour of ‘definitions of security that are less state-centered and</p><p>less militaristic’ (Tickner, 1992: 53). Situating Feminist Security Studies</p><p>on the broader terrain of ISS, feminists broke with the positivist epis-</p><p>temology of quantitative Peace Research and adopted a ‘multilevel and</p><p>multidimensional’ conceptualisation based on the experiences of women</p><p>(Tickner, 1992: 66). Cynthia Enloe showed, for example, how military</p><p>bases depend on the unpaid work of military wives, how a gendered</p><p>economy of prostitution is tolerated in the name of ‘national’ security</p><p>and how the global politics of nuclear deployment was countered by</p><p>women protesting at Greenham Common (Enloe, 1989).</p><p>Locating Feminism within the general debates on security in the 1980s,</p><p>it makes a strong call to include ‘women’ and ‘gender’ as referent objects</p><p>for security. Looking more closely at the way in which those two referent</p><p>objects are defined, Tickner sees gender as social, not biological, yet she</p><p>maintains ‘women’ as a referent object with a real-world existence, a con-</p><p>ceptualisation that concurs with standpoint feminism’s view of women</p><p>as pre-given subjects who are structurally disadvantaged. Work in this</p><p>tradition has generated important accounts of how women are being</p><p>adversely affected by a multitude of state practices, for instance of how</p><p>women and children suffer disproportionately as refugees, how domes-</p><p>tic violence is deemed acceptable in a manner that ‘public’ violence is</p><p>not and how states until recently have constituted wartime rape as an</p><p>expectable ‘by-product’ of conquering soldiers (for an overview see Blan-</p><p>chard, 2003). State security is supposed to provide security for all citizens,</p><p>yet there is a gendered difference in how men and women are affected</p><p>and what problems are considered ‘proper’ security problems. Women</p><p>are not inherently peaceful or necessarily more likely to die, but they are</p><p>threatened in other ways than men and their insecurities are validated</p><p>differently within state-centric security discourses – women and men</p><p>are not in other words equal referent objects before the state. It is also</p><p>shown that many of the insecurities experienced by women have no direct</p><p>from peace to security 141</p><p>connection with military state-centric security: women die from malnu-</p><p>trition, impoverished health care, environmental hazards and economic</p><p>deprivation, issues that only figure within Strategic Studies to the extent</p><p>that they impact on the military capabilities of the state.</p><p>What drove the arrival of Feminism to ISS in the 1980s and why did</p><p>it take the form that it did? Great power politics and nuclear technol-</p><p>ogy were significant in that bipolar confrontation formed the particular</p><p>political context that Feminist writings addressed. Militarism, nuclear</p><p>and conventional, was a central concern as was the way in which mili-</p><p>tarised societies marginalised women’s security problems economically,</p><p>socially and politically. There were also constitutive events that linked</p><p>in with these concerns, most clearly when women played a key role in</p><p>peace movements, as at the women’s camp at Greenham Common. Yet</p><p>the most significant driving factor for Feminist Security Studies was in</p><p>all likelihood the internal dynamics of academic debates which was, again,</p><p>linked to broader societal processes of women’s liberation in the 1960s</p><p>and 1970s. The late 1970s and early 1980s had witnessed a growth in</p><p>Feminist literature in the humanities and the fields of the sociology of</p><p>science and Political Theory, and this started to make an impact on IR</p><p>around</p><p>carried out its work without much conceptual reflection</p><p>(Baldwin, 1997). During the ‘golden age’ of Strategic Studies it would have</p><p>been easy to think that ‘strategy’ was the dominant concept, albeit strategy</p><p>now dominated by civilian rather than military thinkers. Thus in 1983,</p><p>Buzan (1983: 3) could point out that security was an ‘underdeveloped</p><p>concept’ and ‘seldom addressed in terms other than the policy interests</p><p>of particular actors or groups, and the discussion has a heavy military</p><p>emphasis’. ‘Security’ is, as this and the next chapter will lay out, about</p><p>crucial political themes such as the state, authority, legitimacy, politics</p><p>and sovereignty, but even today the majority of articles and books that</p><p>fall within the discipline of ISS do not contain lengthy meta-theoretical</p><p>or philosophical discussions, but speak from within an implicit position</p><p>on the conceptual terrain.</p><p>Our solution to the problem of delineating ISS starts from understand-</p><p>ing conceptual security debates as ‘the product of an historical, cultural,</p><p>and deeply political legacy’ (M. C. Williams, 2007: 17), not as some-</p><p>thing that can be solved through references to ‘empirical facts’ (Baldwin,</p><p>1997: 12). This means that we take the power of inclusion and exclusion</p><p>seriously. We cast our net widely and include the work of those who self-</p><p>identify as participants in ISS (mainly in terms of how they title their work,</p><p>who they seem to regard as their appropriate audience and, up to a point,</p><p>where they publish) regardless of whether all others who self-identify with</p><p>the sub-field accept them as ‘members’ or not. Our ambition is not to find</p><p>the ISS-winner, but to provide a rich and structured account of ISS that</p><p>shows how multiple perspectives connect to a set of shared discussions on</p><p>security. Since our point of reference is the (contested) disciplinary history</p><p>of ISS, rather than the elaboration of what we think should be the theory</p><p>or concept of security, we do not follow Kolodziej (2005) in coming up</p><p>with suggestions for new concepts or dimensions to be included. Nor do</p><p>we offer free-standing discussions of Hobbes, Clausewitz and Thucydides</p><p>or other pre-ISS Classical figures. Clearly these and other early Realist and</p><p>Liberal writers have been important to the foundation and development</p><p>of IR, but our concern is with the evolution of modern ISS and the use</p><p>to which Classical political and military theorists have been put in the</p><p>post-1945 literature, rather than with these classics in their own right.</p><p>Our specific way of delineating ISS is set out in the rest of this chapter.</p><p>The next section argues that despite the surface appearance of being pre-</p><p>occupied with policy debates, underneath, ISS can be seen as structured</p><p>10 defining international security studies</p><p>by engagement with four questions: whether to privilege the state as the</p><p>referent object, whether to include internal as well as external threats,</p><p>whether to expand security beyond the military sector and the use of</p><p>force, and whether to see security as inextricably tied to a dynamic of</p><p>threats, dangers and urgency. To see ISS as structured by these four ques-</p><p>tions allows us to see how deeper theoretical and political themes are</p><p>implicated in ISS, and as a consequence to point out how perspectives</p><p>share common conversational ground. The third section addresses the</p><p>problem that far from all ISS literature goes directly through ‘security’.</p><p>We suggest that ISS can be understood through ‘security’ itself plus three</p><p>‘adjacent’ concepts that support it in different ways: by being comple-</p><p>mentary and more concrete; by being more general and linking to larger</p><p>literatures; and by being oppositional challenges to ‘security’. The fourth</p><p>section discusses the disciplinary boundary zones between ISS and other</p><p>established areas of academic study, particularly IR. The fifth section lays</p><p>out the Western-centric nature of ISS and discusses the ways in which this</p><p>bias can be addressed by granting retrospective attention to Post-colonial</p><p>criticism.</p><p>Four questions that structure ISS</p><p>There are four questions which have, either implicitly or explicitly, struc-</p><p>tured debates within ISS since the late 1940s. These questions can have</p><p>different answers, but that is not to say that they are always explic-</p><p>itly discussed: a large part of the ISS literature simply takes particular</p><p>answers/concepts as givens. The four questions are analytical lenses or</p><p>tools through which to read the evolution of ISS; they are the deeper, sub-</p><p>stantial core that defines what ‘international security’ is about and what</p><p>brings the literature together. Explicit discussions usually happen when</p><p>established approaches are contested and their answers cannot be taken</p><p>for granted. Viewing ISS through these questions makes it clear that there</p><p>are fundamental political and normative decisions involved in defining</p><p>security and that this is what makes it one of the essentially contested</p><p>concepts of modern social science. Security is always a ‘hyphenated con-</p><p>cept’ and always tied to a particular referent object, to internal/external</p><p>locations, to one or more sectors and to a particular way of thinking about</p><p>politics.</p><p>The first question is whether to privilege the state as the referent object.</p><p>Security is about constituting something that needs to be secured: the</p><p>nation, the state, the individual, the ethnic group, the environment or</p><p>four questions that structure iss 11</p><p>the planet itself. Whether in the form of ‘national security’, or later,</p><p>as traditionalist ‘international security’, the nation/state was the ana-</p><p>lytical and normative referent object. ‘International security’ was not</p><p>about replacing the security of the state with the security of human-</p><p>ity, or the individual or minorities within or across state boundaries.</p><p>Securing the state was seen instrumentally as the best way of protecting</p><p>other referent objects. ‘National security’ should thus, as many observers</p><p>have pointed out, more appropriately have been labelled ‘state security’,</p><p>yet, what the Cold War concept of ‘national security’ entailed was more</p><p>accurately a fusion of the security of the state and the security of the</p><p>nation: the nation supported a powerful state which in turn reciprocated</p><p>by loyally protecting its society’s values and interests. To what extent</p><p>this was a proper way of understanding the relationship between states</p><p>and their nations, between governments, citizens and populations – that</p><p>is, the question of ‘what or whom should be the “referent object” for</p><p>security?’ – has been one of the central lines of debate within ISS and will</p><p>be further explored in chapter 2.</p><p>The second question is whether to include internal as well as exter-</p><p>nal threats. Since security is tied into discussions about state sovereignty</p><p>(whether as something to be protected or criticised), it is also about</p><p>placing threats in relation to territorial boundaries. Wolfers famously</p><p>described ‘national security’ as ‘an ambiguous symbol’ and he contrasted</p><p>the post-Second World War political climate with the one of inter-war</p><p>American economic depression, holding that the ‘change from a welfare</p><p>to a security interpretation of the symbol “national interest” is under-</p><p>standable. Today we are living under the impact of cold war and threats</p><p>of external aggression rather than depression and social reform’ (Wolfers,</p><p>1952: 482; emphasis added). ‘National security’ had shifted from a con-</p><p>cern with domestic economic problems to external threats stemming from</p><p>ideologically opposed, and thus presumed hostile, powers (Neocleous,</p><p>2006a). As this shift became institutionalised, the concept of ‘interna-</p><p>tional security’ came to accompany, but not replace, ‘national security’,</p><p>and was eventually more influential in giving the discipline its name,</p><p>hence International rather than National Security Studies. This labelling</p><p>concurred with the growing disciplinary status of International Relations</p><p>(International Security, 1976), which was based on distinguishing inter-</p><p>national from domestic politics,</p><p>of which ISS was increasingly a sub-field.</p><p>The internal/external dimension was partly re-opened as the Cold War</p><p>ended and the overriding concern with the external threat of the Soviet</p><p>Union disappeared from American and Western security discourses. Both</p><p>12 defining international security studies</p><p>IR and ISS faced mounting challenges from globalisation to blur, or even</p><p>collapse completely, the inside/outside distinction.</p><p>The third question is whether to expand security beyond the mili-</p><p>tary sector and the use of force. Since ISS was founded during the Cold</p><p>War and the Cold War was so overwhelmingly about the military (con-</p><p>ventional and nuclear) capabilities of foes, friends and Self, ‘national</p><p>security’ became almost synonymous with military security. This did not</p><p>mean that other capabilities were not considered, the editors of Interna-</p><p>tional Security stressed, for instance, the need to incorporate economic</p><p>vigour, governmental stability, energy supplies, science and technology,</p><p>food and natural resources. These were, however, to be incorporated</p><p>because they impacted on ‘the use, threat, and control of force’, and thus</p><p>on military security, not because they were to be considered security issues</p><p>in their own right (International Security, 1976: 2). But this conception</p><p>of security was not entirely uncontested. During the Cold War, Peace</p><p>Researchers pointed to the necessity of granting equal priority to basic</p><p>human needs and ‘structural violence’, and challenges to military secu-</p><p>rity became an established part of ISS from the 1980s onwards as scholars</p><p>called for the inclusion of environmental and economic security (Ullman,</p><p>1983; Buzan, 1983, 1984b; Mathews, 1989). Later a more general sectoral</p><p>widening of security included societal, economic, environmental, health,</p><p>development and gender.</p><p>The fourth question is whether to see security as inextricably tied to</p><p>a dynamic of threats, dangers and urgency. ‘National security’ developed</p><p>in a political climate where the United States, and the West more broadly,</p><p>understood themselves as threatened by a hostile opponent. As in Herz’s</p><p>(1950) famous formulation of the security dilemma, ‘security’ had to do</p><p>with attacks, subjection, domination and – when pushed to the extreme –</p><p>annihilation. This would lead groups to acquire more capabilities, in the</p><p>process rendering their opponent insecure and thus compelling both sides</p><p>to engage in a ‘vicious circle of security and power accumulation’ (Herz,</p><p>1950: 157). Security was about the extreme and exceptional, with those</p><p>situations that would not just raise inconveniences, but could wipe out</p><p>one’s society (Williams, 2003). During the Cold War, this seemed rather</p><p>common-sensical to the mainstream of ISS: the Soviet Union constituted a</p><p>clear threat, and nuclear weapons were justified as a way to deter the Soviet</p><p>Union from a first strike. As the debates over the expansion of the concept</p><p>of security gained ground in the 1990s, this linkage of security to urgency,</p><p>and to extreme and radical defence measures, was central. Some, most</p><p>prominently the Copenhagen School, argued that the concept could be</p><p>security and its adjacent concepts 13</p><p>expanded as long as referent objects, threats and dangers were constituted</p><p>with this logic of urgency and extreme measures (Wæver, 1995; Buzan</p><p>et al., 1998). Critics countered that this understanding of security was</p><p>itself linked to a particular Realist view of the state and international</p><p>politics. In keeping with a longer critical and Liberal tradition, it was</p><p>argued on normative grounds that politics could be different and that</p><p>one’s analytical framework should incorporate this possibility (Williams,</p><p>2003; Huysmans, 2006b: 124–144).</p><p>Security and its adjacent concepts</p><p>We have defined ISS as those approaches that self-define either with the</p><p>label of ISS, or with some branch of Security Studies (Human Security,</p><p>Critical Security Studies, the Copenhagen School of Security Studies,</p><p>Constructivist Security Studies and so on), and held that ISS is organised</p><p>around different responses to the four questions laid out above. A further</p><p>way to both delineate and to get at the ways in which ISS has evolved is to</p><p>understand the field as structured by a set of key concepts. Obviously, the</p><p>central concept of ISS is ‘security’, but it is also the case that conceptually</p><p>explicit discussions were few and far between after the first decade of the</p><p>Cold War. Even those who challenged Strategic Studies and ISS generally</p><p>did not go through the concept of security, but through the concept of</p><p>peace or more concrete discussions of disarmament, arms control, peace</p><p>movements and world order. The concept of security was underdeveloped</p><p>and unproblematised by those who used it, and an antagonistic concept to</p><p>Peace Researchers insofar as it was located on the Realist, Strategic, mili-</p><p>tary side of the political and academic battles. From the mid-1980s, as the</p><p>Cold War unravelled, security became increasingly explicitly addressed</p><p>and it became adopted by new and former critics of Strategic Studies.</p><p>Security approaches thus appeared which fifteen years earlier would have</p><p>been unlikely to adopt this label: Critical Security Studies (with key con-</p><p>cepts of individual security and emancipation); the Copenhagen School</p><p>of Security Studies based at the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute; and</p><p>the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO) based journal</p><p>Bulletin of Peace Proposals changed its name to Security Dialogue. This</p><p>certainly did not mean that ‘security’ was an uncontested concept, in fact</p><p>it became more contested than ever, but it showed that after the Cold War</p><p>‘security’ became a concept which generated – and hence could unify –</p><p>debates across perspectives previously opposed.</p><p>14 defining international security studies</p><p>SECURITY</p><p>Complementary</p><p>concepts</p><p>Point to a more specific</p><p>and narrower set of</p><p>questions, i.e. deterrence,</p><p>strategy, containment.</p><p>Parallel</p><p>concepts</p><p>Take security into a</p><p>Political Theory or wider IR</p><p>frame of reference, i.e. power,</p><p>sovereignty, identity.</p><p>Oppositional</p><p>concepts</p><p>Work through security,</p><p>but argue that it should</p><p>be replaced with other</p><p>concepts, i.e. peace, risk.</p><p>Figure 1.1. Security and its adjacent concepts</p><p>A delineation of what falls within ISS based religiously on an explicit</p><p>discussion of the concept of security would as a consequence leave out the</p><p>majority of the Cold War contestants. This in turn would make it difficult</p><p>to explain the resurgence of widening approaches in the 1990s, as these</p><p>grew out of Cold War Peace Research, Feminism, Poststructuralism and</p><p>Critical Theory. To tell the story of Cold War ISS without incorporating</p><p>the criticism it generated would unduly homogenise the academic and</p><p>political terrain on which ISS was situated. What we suggest is thus to</p><p>see ‘security’ as supported by or conducted through three kinds of con-</p><p>cepts: first, through complementary concepts, like ‘strategy’, ‘deterrence’,</p><p>‘containment’ or ‘humanitarianism’, which point to a more specific and</p><p>narrower set of questions; second, through parallel concepts, like ‘power’,</p><p>‘sovereignty’ or ‘identity’, which take security into a broader, Political The-</p><p>ory or wider IR frame of reference; and third, oppositional concepts which</p><p>work through security, but argue that it should be replaced, such as by</p><p>‘peace’ in Cold War Peace Research (see chapter 5) or ‘risk’ or ‘the excep-</p><p>tion’ in twenty-first-century widening debates (see chapter 8). Figure 1.1</p><p>illustrates the three kinds of adjacent concepts and their relationship to</p><p>the concept of security.</p><p>The advantage of the security plus three adjacent concepts framework is</p><p>that it allows us to conduct a structured conceptual analysis, particularly</p><p>security and its adjacent concepts 15</p><p>of those literatures that do not explicitly link to debates over the con-</p><p>cept of security in ISS. Literatures may be ‘conceptually silent’ because</p><p>they are adopting a taken-for-granted concept, are written in a rather</p><p>straightforward empirical manner</p><p>that downplays lengthy conceptual</p><p>discussions, or because they come from other disciplines less reliant upon</p><p>‘security’ debates. Even if an approach does not explicitly discuss its con-</p><p>ceptualisation of security, the way it mobilises complementary, parallel or</p><p>oppositional concepts allows us to see the river delta of ISS perspectives</p><p>as engaged in the same meta-conversation about what ‘security’ entails.</p><p>An understanding of such conceptual points of engagement is, as we will</p><p>return to in chapter 9, an important element in providing ISS with enough</p><p>cohesion to make it an academic sub-field with a shared identity rather</p><p>than a set of fragmented camps.</p><p>A different, but related, boundary-drawing question concerns litera-</p><p>tures on security that are attached to prefixes not normally considered</p><p>part of the ISS repertoire. Noteworthy examples include ‘social secu-</p><p>rity’ and ‘computer security’. Social security is usually considered part</p><p>of discussions of wealth, income distribution and domestic justice, not</p><p>‘security proper’. Computer security is a technical term used by com-</p><p>puter scientists referring to problems in computer hard- and software,</p><p>some of them accidental bugs, others as outcomes of malicious outside</p><p>attackers. The standard ISS reply is that such concepts lack the drama and</p><p>urgency of ‘national/international’ security, that they deal with domestic–</p><p>individual questions in the case of social security and ‘technical’ rather</p><p>than political–military threats in the case of computer security. In spite</p><p>of a semantic similarity to (national) security, there is not a substantial,</p><p>discursive resemblance.</p><p>This reply may be accurate in that these literatures do lack these charac-</p><p>teristics and that they have historically not been considered part of ISS. But</p><p>we should keep in mind that ISS is also a dynamic field that has expanded</p><p>its legitimate contenders quite significantly in the past twenty years, and</p><p>that what is considered to be part of it or not is not (solely) based on some</p><p>static ‘national/international security essence’, but on how ISS evolves</p><p>with its political environment. What academic and political actors man-</p><p>age to get accepted as part of ’international security’ changes over time.</p><p>Environmental security was not considered part of mainstream ISS in the</p><p>early 1980s, yet it is hard to imagine it being excluded today. Such concep-</p><p>tual inclusion may be aided by the securitisation of hyphenated concepts,</p><p>that is the constitution of something/somebody as radically threatening,</p><p>as has been the case with health/disease security by prominent politicians</p><p>16 defining international security studies</p><p>or the media (Wæver, 1995; Buzan et al., 1998; Peterson, 2002/3; Elbe,</p><p>2003, 2006; McInnes and Lee, 2006). Hyphenated securities might also</p><p>make it onto the security agenda proper through conceptual analysis that</p><p>explores and problematises the ways in which they are being excluded. A</p><p>recent analysis by Neocleous (2006a) shows, for instance, how ‘national</p><p>security’ was tied to domestic economic concerns during the 1930s and</p><p>that this discourse mobilised the same drama and urgency as ‘national</p><p>security’ did in the 1950s.</p><p>The disciplinary boundary of ISS</p><p>To see ISS as constituted through the questions and conceptual framework</p><p>above still leaves the question of where ISS ends and other academic</p><p>disciplines, particularly IR, begin. The boundary between ISS and IR is</p><p>difficult to draw. In the early decades following the Second World War,</p><p>the answer to this problem could have been given with some accuracy as:</p><p>‘What distinguishes ISS from the general field of IR is its focus on the</p><p>use of force in international relations.’ In the traditionalist perspective</p><p>on ISS, ‘use of force’ was and is primarily defined as ‘state use of military</p><p>force’ and the threats states face are predominantly military in kind. Yet</p><p>even this apparently narrow framing implies potentially quite a broad</p><p>scope. It is about war and the various ways in which military power can</p><p>be deployed, but also about the foundations of military power (and thus,</p><p>up to a point, about economics and the socio-political structures of the</p><p>state), and about the causes of conflict in international relations that result</p><p>in states and other actors creating, maintaining and sometimes using</p><p>military power (thus potentially bringing in not just economic, but also</p><p>environmental and identity issues). This type of ISS features the general</p><p>dynamics of interaction amongst rival armed forces: arms racing, arms</p><p>control, the impact of technological developments and suchlike. Because</p><p>of its strong state-centrism and assumptions about power struggles, it can,</p><p>at the risk of some simplification, be thought of as the specialist military–</p><p>technical wing of the Realist approach to IR. In the UK literature this</p><p>whole understanding and approach is often labelled Strategic Studies.</p><p>By the 1970s, however, the simple ‘use of force’ answer was becoming</p><p>increasingly inaccurate. It remained true that the traditionalist position</p><p>provided the foundational template, focusing on the international level</p><p>and on threats that were about survival (Buzan et al., 1998: 21). But</p><p>as the agenda of ISS began to widen towards the end of the Cold War,</p><p>and more rapidly after it, the ‘use of force’ answer became too narrow</p><p>the disciplinary boundary of iss 17</p><p>a description of what the field was about (at least for a large number of</p><p>those participating in its debates). What increasingly distinguished ISS</p><p>from IR was that it centred itself either on assumptions or on debates</p><p>around and about the concept of international security.</p><p>Still there are inevitable overlaps between IR and ISS, particularly inso-</p><p>far as ISS has become more theoretically driven and that important IR</p><p>debates simultaneously have evolved around security. As an example of</p><p>the former, Waltzian Neorealism has been key to debates in the more the-</p><p>oretically informed parts of Realist Security Studies, particularly on how</p><p>the polarity of the system impacts stability and grand strategy. There is,</p><p>for instance, a rich literature on how to define polarity that is not strictly</p><p>speaking about the concept of security as such, or how it may change in</p><p>the light of shifting polarities, etc. (Goldgeier and McFaul, 1992; Hunt-</p><p>ington, 1993b, 1999; Waltz, 1993; Posen and Ross, 1996/7; Kupchan, 1998;</p><p>Kagan, 2002). One reason this literature does not explicitly discuss the</p><p>concept of security is that it takes a conventional conception of security</p><p>as national security for granted.</p><p>The overlaps between IR and ISS have also multiplied in that ‘secu-</p><p>rity’ has been selected as the arena for IR debates of a more general</p><p>kind, noticeably over the status of Constructivist theory from the 1990s</p><p>onwards. The programmatic statement of Conventional Constructivism</p><p>in Katzenstein’s The Culture of National Security explicitly adopted ‘secu-</p><p>rity’ as the ‘hard case’ where Constructivist theories emphasising ideas,</p><p>culture, norms and identity should stand trial in comparison with Neo-</p><p>realist and Neoliberalist approaches (Katzenstein, 1996a). Yet there was</p><p>no explicit discussion of ‘security’ itself: what was contested were Real-</p><p>ist explanations of state behaviour in the area of security, not whether</p><p>the state should be the referent object, or whether the sector of concern</p><p>should be the one of military and external threats.</p><p>Such works usually draw upon general IR literatures and debates, and</p><p>there is therefore a link between telling the story of the evolution of ISS</p><p>and the one of IR. Yet it should be kept in mind that our concern is</p><p>with the evolution of ISS, not IR, and we will therefore not go extensively</p><p>into IR literatures that have not addressed security or which have not</p><p>been drawn upon explicitly by ISS. It should be stressed also that while</p><p>IR is by far the main overarching discipline to ISS, it is not the only</p><p>one to influence it: some of the first key thinkers on game theory, which</p><p>influenced deterrence theory during the Cold War, were economists and</p><p>physicists and other ‘hard scientists’ explicitly engaged in debates over the</p><p>nuclear condition. As conceptual debates started to take off in the 1980s</p><p>18 defining international security studies</p><p>and flourished in the 1990s, a series of sociologists, feminist theorists,</p><p>philosophers, development theorists, anthropologists and media theo-</p><p>rists have also joined the debates in ISS. Like the classical empires of</p><p>old, ISS therefore does not have clearly defined borders. Instead, it has</p><p>‘frontier zones’ where its debates blend into adjacent subjects, ranging</p><p>from IR theory and International Political Economy (IPE), to foreign</p><p>policy analysis and Political Theory. Since we cannot meaningfully cover</p><p>both ISS and all of these frontier zones, we are often going to discuss</p><p>the particular ISS engagements that bring in the frontier, while noting</p><p>that there is a larger literature that those who wish to pursue a given</p><p>theme should consult more thoroughly. We mention, for instance, the</p><p>democratic peace literature in chapter 6, but do not have the space to go</p><p>into all of its detailed arguments. Also, like the classical empires, these</p><p>frontier zones can change, becoming more, or less, active as fashions and</p><p>imperatives change. We try to show these movements in our analysis of</p><p>the ISS literature in chapters 4 to 8.</p><p>Even taking a broad view of what counts as ISS has not enabled us to</p><p>avoid all the difficult decisions about inclusion and exclusion. This book</p><p>is much longer than we or Cambridge University Press originally thought</p><p>it would be, and space constraints have been a real issue. In seeking to</p><p>identify the core of the subject, and to reflect the uniqueness of its civilian</p><p>strategy character, we have favoured conceptual issues over operational</p><p>ones. This means that we have largely excluded the large literature on</p><p>intelligence, which comes up mainly in the context of imperfect infor-</p><p>mation and strategy.1 We cover some aspects of military operations, but</p><p>have not included the enormous literatures to be found in the many</p><p>journals that are closely linked to the armed services, and which reflect</p><p>professional military discourses. Turning to the boundary between ISS</p><p>and Peace Research, we have included the literature dealing with substan-</p><p>tial issues and conceptual debates on ‘peace’ that either mirrors debates</p><p>in ISS or directly challenges ISS perspectives, but not covered more dis-</p><p>tinct Peace Research concerns such as peace education or the substantial</p><p>literature on the practical side of conflict resolution, including conflict</p><p>mediation, dispute settlement and suchlike (Bercovitch et al., 2008; San-</p><p>dole et al., 2008). Some will no doubt think these exclusions a mistake,</p><p>and they may be right. Our judgement has been that with a few excep-</p><p>tions, these literatures exist in their own worlds, and have played only a</p><p>1 On intelligence, see, inter alia, Intelligence and National Security, The Journal of Intelli-</p><p>gence History, ISA Intelligence Studies Section (http://iss.loyola.edu/index.html – accessed</p><p>27 August 2008) and Johnson (2007).</p><p>the western-centrism conundrum 19</p><p>marginal part in what we see as the great conversation of ISS. If we are</p><p>wrong about this, then there is an opening for someone else to write that</p><p>book.</p><p>The Western-centrism conundrum</p><p>Our focus on the evolution of ISS also implies that our analysis to some</p><p>extent reflects the strengths, weaknesses and blind-spots of the discipline</p><p>itself. Although ISS has evolved through engagement with particular pol-</p><p>icy events, it has not treated all events as equally important. The majority</p><p>of traditional Cold War Strategic Studies was for example overwhelmingly</p><p>concerned with bipolarity and nuclear deterrence, while Third World</p><p>security issues were addressed almost exclusively only to the extent that</p><p>they impacted on superpower relations. Questions that concerned local</p><p>and internal wars, not to mention non-military security issues, simply</p><p>did not register with the mainstream of the field (Barkawi and Laffey,</p><p>2006). Moreover, ISS is by birth an Anglo–American discipline which</p><p>has been based on a Western conception of the state. This conception</p><p>has arguably limited empirical and political relevance for major parts of</p><p>the non-Western world, where the drawing of colonial boundaries irre-</p><p>spective of local communities and allegiances has produced a radically</p><p>different set of political, economic and cultural structures (Ayoob, 1984;</p><p>Krause, 1996; Bilgin, 2008).</p><p>This history of Anglo-centric (and militaristic and patriarchal) bias</p><p>leaves us in a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, it is our ambition to</p><p>analyse the evolution of ISS as it has taken place, not as we wish that it</p><p>should have gone. Chapter 4 on Strategic Studies during the Cold War is,</p><p>for instance, concerned predominantly with the logics of nuclear deter-</p><p>rence under a system of bipolarity, which implies that certain events, like</p><p>the Vietnam War, are played down precisely because that was the case in</p><p>ISS. On the other hand, it is clearly unsatisfactory merely to register this</p><p>bias without subjecting it to critical scrutiny, and we do seek to address</p><p>this bias in two ways. First, we grant critical, including Post-colonial,</p><p>approaches more space than they have held quantitatively. The analysis of</p><p>ISS during the Cold War in chapters 4 and 5 includes, for instance, a rather</p><p>substantial account of Feminism and Poststructuralism, which, relatively</p><p>speaking, generated many fewer writings than did conventional military</p><p>Strategic Studies at the time. Some sense of quantitative measure is signifi-</p><p>cant in that it registers how the dominant parts of ISS approached security,</p><p>but a qualitative measure that registers key articles, new challengers and</p><p>20 defining international security studies</p><p>contestation is equally significant in that it shows the way in which the</p><p>field moves and changes. This implies also that more attention is devoted</p><p>to the – often critical – texts that make up ISS’s canon. These texts are</p><p>usually more theoretical than the average one, hence our focus on sig-</p><p>nificant conceptual articles and books that define or coin a particular</p><p>hyphenated security concept such as Wolfers (1952) on ‘national secu-</p><p>rity’, Herz (1950), Jervis (1978) and Booth and Wheeler (2008) on the</p><p>‘security dilemma’, the Copenhagen School on ‘societal security’ (Wæver</p><p>et al., 1993) and ‘securitisation’ (Wæver, 1995; Buzan et al., 1998) and</p><p>Deutsch et al. (1957) on ‘security communities’. It also implies that there</p><p>is an emphasis on those periods where approaches and concepts were</p><p>formed and contested, usually when there was no established consensus</p><p>on what was ‘normal science’ (Kuhn, 1962) and the security concept.</p><p>Second, the biases and centrisms of ISS are also acknowledged through</p><p>the signposting of later critiques. Thus the Western-centric notion of the</p><p>state which underpins Strategic Studies is, for instance, noted in chapter</p><p>4 and discussed in chapter 5 and even more thoroughly in chapter 7.</p><p>The next chapter continues this discussion of the basic questions at the</p><p>heart of ISS by turning to the historical developments that have produced</p><p>the field’s understanding of the state, government and politics.</p><p>2</p><p>The key questions in International Security</p><p>Studies: the state, politics and epistemology</p><p>The beginning of chapter 1 briefly laid out four central questions that</p><p>have been at the centre of ISS: Whose security should be protected and</p><p>studied? Should the military be considered the primary sector of security?</p><p>Should security be concerned exclusively with external threats or also with</p><p>domestic ones? And, is the only form of security politics one of threats,</p><p>dangers and emergency? This chapter will examine these questions in</p><p>further detail and add a fifth: What epistemologies and methodologies</p><p>should be brought to the study of security?</p><p>The majority of writings in ISS do not go to great lengths to discuss their</p><p>analytical, philosophical, normative and epistemological assumptions,</p><p>but it is nevertheless important</p>