Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases (Borderlines series)

404 Pages·1997·19.11 MB·English

by  Keith Krause

Critical Security Studies
BORDERLINES
A BOOK SERIES CONCERNED WITH REVISIONING GLOBAL POLITICS
Edited by David Campbell and Michael J. Shapiro
Volume 8 Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams, editors, Critical
Security Studies: Concepts and Cases
Volume 7 Costas M. Constantinou, On the Way to Diplomacy
Volume 6 Gearoid C Tuathail, Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of
Writing Global Space
Volume 5 Roxanne Lynn Doty, Imperial Encounters: The Politics of
Representation in North-South Relations
Volume 4 Thorn Kuehls, Beyond Sovereign Territory: The Space of
Ecopolitics
Volume 3 Siba N'Zatioula Grovogui, Sovereigns, Quasi Sovereigns,
and Africans: Race and Self-Determination in International Law
Volume 2 Michael J. Shapiro and Hayward R. Alker, editors, Chal-
lenging Boundaries: Global Flows, Territorial Identities
Volume 1 William E. Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization
Critical Security Studies
Concepts and Cases
KEITH KRAUSE AND MICHAEL C. WILLIAMS, EDITORS
BORDERLINES, VOLUME 8
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
Copyright 1997 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, elec-
tronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the
prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Critical security studies : concepts and cases / Keith Krause and
Michael C. Williams, editors.
p. cm. — (Borderlines ; v. 8)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8166-2856-4 (he : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-8166-2857-2
(pb : alk. paper)
1. Security, International. I. Krause, Keith. II. Williams,
Michael C. III. Series: Borderlines (Minneapolis, Minn.) ; v. 8.
JX1952.C735 1997
327.17—dc20 96-32885
CIP
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
Contents
Preface: Toward Critical Security Studies vii
Michael C. Williams and Keith Krause
Acknowledgments xxiii
PART I
Conceptual Debates and Approaches
1. Contesting an Essential Concept: Reading the Dilemmas
in Contemporary Security Discourse 3
Simon Dalby
2. From Strategy to Security: Foundations of Critical
Security Studies 3 3
Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams
3. The Subject of Security 61
R. B. J. Walker
4. Security and Self: Reflections of a Fallen Realist 83
Ken Booth
5. Defining Security: A Subaltern Realist Perspective 121
Mohammed Ayoob
PART II
The Discourses of Security
6. Discourses of War: Security and the Case of Yugoslavia 149
Beverly Crawford and Ronnie D. Lipschutz
7. Reimagining Security: The Metaphors of Proliferation 187
David Mutimer
V
vi CONTENTS
8. Changing Worlds of Security 223
Karin M. Fierke
PART III
World Order and Regional Imperatives
9. Between a New World Order and None: Explaining the
Reemergence of the United Nations in World Politics 255
Thomas Risse-Kappen
10. The Periphery as the Core: The Third World and
Security Studies 299
Amitav Acharya
11. Critical Security Studies and Regional Insecurity: The
Case of Southern Africa 3 29
Ken Booth and Peter Vale
12. Conclusion: Every Month Is "Security Awareness Month" 3 59
Bradley S. Klein
Contributors 3 69
Index 373
Preface: Toward Critical Security Studies
MICHAEL C. WILLIAMS AND KEITH KRAUSE
This book emerged out of a desire to contribute to the development
of a self-consciously critical perspective within security studies. Intel-
lectually, the rationale for this is straightforward: security studies
(however broadly defined) has been among the last bastions of or-
thodoxy in International Relations to accept critical or theoretically
sophisticated challenges to its problematic. Yet lurking in the inter-
stices of the discipline, one can without much effort find a wide
range of scholarship that is "about" security (and its core subject
matter), but that its authors, or the discipline, refuse to label as
such.1 Simply bringing together some of these perspectives serves to
make the challenges to orthodoxy more clear, and to signal that criti-
cal approaches to security studies are more than a passing fad or the
idiosyncratic obsession of a few scholars.
Ultimately, this is healthy for security studies as a whole. For
some time now, security studies has been treated as a theoretically
impoverished cousin to the sturdy children of International Rela-
tions, which could include (depending on your preference) liberal
and radical approaches to international political economy, neoliberal
institutionalist analyses, regime theory, and so forth. Debate among
competing approaches, and a greater conceptual clarity, can only
strengthen the claims of security studies scholars for intellectual
respect. Moreover, it is possible to argue that far from falling into
desuetude with the end of the Cold War, many of the most interest-
vii
viii PREFACE
ing theoretical issues in International Relations—concerning, for
example, identity politics, the role of multilateral institutions, the
development of norms and practices, and so-called new issues in
world politics—can be most usefully studied through a prism labeled
"security studies."
Our main goal in this volume is not to invoke a new orthodoxy of
critical security studies or to participate in polemical recriminations,
but to engage directly with issues and questions that have been taken
as the subject matter of security studies. We have tried to do this in
two ways. First, we have solicited contributions from a variety of
critical perspectives on security studies that address a diverse scope
of theoretical concerns, ranging from the place of the Third World in
security studies, to the conceptions of "the political" that underlie
prevailing approaches. Second, we have encouraged some authors to
examine substantive issues in security studies, such as the emerging
issue of weapons proliferation (and how it is defined), the role of
multilateral institutions in peace and security operations, or the
changing meaning of security for actors in the erstwhile East-West
conflict, in order to demonstrate that critical approaches can de-
scend from the level of metatheory to tackle issues that are at the
heart of the classical problematic of security studies: the causes of
war and the conditions of peace. Obviously, this book does not pre-
tend to present a comprehensive overview of alternative approaches
to security studies. Our choices were in part guided by a desire to
present a broad survey and to complement the worthy contributions
that have already been made. Hence, for example, there is no chap-
ter that directly addresses the environment and security, nor one that
examines the complex dimensions of gender and international secu-
rity.2 Equally, we have not sought to define a precise meaning of the
term critical in either a methodological or political sense.
This may risk seeming to some (at any point of the theoretical
map) as if we have avoided important issues and left out important
perspectives. Undoubtedly, we have. But part of the development of
a broader conception of security studies (and critical security studies)
requires that its growth not be strait jacketed by the imposition of
criteria of inclusion and exclusion or by a renewed call for definitive
answers. Indeed, it might be fair to say that these disciplining dy-
namics within so much of contemporary security studies are part of
the problem, and that there is therefore a double need to resist them
PREFACE ix
in the fostering of alternative positions. This collection, we hope,
marks a small move in such a direction.
POLITICS, THE STATE, AND THE DISCIPLINE OF SECURITY STUDIES
There are still, of course, some guiding themes within this collection.
One of these (which emerged from a series of discussions among
many of the contributors) is that only by coming to terms with the
shifting nature of "the political" in International Relations can we
understand the various axes of the contemporary debate in security
studies. In this light, the very name of the field—security studies—
should give us pause. The implication is that scholars in the field are
studying security. But what, precisely, does this mean? A moment's
reflection reveals a basic problem: security is a derivative concept; it
is in itself meaningless. To have any meaning, security necessarily
presupposes something to be secured; as a realm of study it cannot
be self-referential.
To some, this no doubt seems pedantic. But that the question
seems nonsensical or uninformed illustrates an important point. To
be a member of the security studies community has traditionally
meant that one already knows what is to be studied. Both the object
of security (what is to be secured) and the means for studying it are
treated as largely given and self-evident. In this way, the discipline
provides a shared framework, a common analytic culture for under-
standing. While there is room for considerable argument within this
framework, the framework itself is not seen as subject to debate, and
challenges to its way of understanding the world have been vigor-
ously met. Thus, Stephen Walt seems to argue that one of the biggest
threats to security is the seductive appeal of contrary methods for
understanding it.3 The security of the discipline, in this view, is made
into an element—perhaps even a prerequisite—of security itself!
What is it that needs to be secured (both intellectually and practi-
cally) within the conventions of security studies? A simple and not
wholly misleading answer is, "the state."4 Recent trends in world
politics and intellectual developments in International Relations have
challenged this answer in many ways. New issues and perceived
threats, the twin dynamics of the fragmentation and integration of
existing states, and the challenges to sovereignty from a range of
transnational and subnational forces have provided considerable
grist for current discussions of the nature of security and the ade-