Security studies

The United Nations Security Council Chamber in New York, also known as the Norwegian Room

Security studies, also known as International security studies, which advanced rapidly during the Cold War and is traditionally held to be an academic sub-field of the wider discipline of international relations.^[1] However, the term is also often extended to include the academic study of Homeland Security.

At its core, international security studies, as an area of inquiry, takes organized violence as its focus, and the steps individuals and aggregations of individuals can take to both employ organized violence effectively and, much more importantly, to protect themselves from organized violence (accumulation of knowledge in the former being essential for the accumulation of knowledge in the latter). Thus subjects can range from the micro—weapons types, effectiveness, tactics, human-weapons interfaces, individual and group motivations—to the macro; including the causes of war, nuclear strategy, military doctrine, defense spending, and conventional and unconventional strategy.

In recent decades however, the international security studies field has come under sustained pressure to widen to include areas of inquiry which have not traditionally been the concern of international relations. Traditional approaches to understanding insecurity and security have been taken up by realism, liberalism, and radicalism and their variants. Realism and its variants are held to be closest in spirit to the study of security and strategy because realism holds, at its core, that the global distribution of the threat of war can never be reduced to zero; and because realism and its variants give unit-of-analysis priority to states. Liberalism and Radicalism (and variants) tend to hold out some optimism regarding the eventual withering away of war. A so-called British School, founded for the most part by Hedley Bull, argues that because states are inherently sociable, international politics cannot be reduced to individual states but must focus on aggregations of states much like Samuel Huntington's later "civilizations" thesis.

More recently, however, these traditional approaches to security have been supplemented (one leaves the utility open to argument) by variants such as critical security studies, and the Copenhagen School. Clearly useful contributions to our understanding of insecurity and security have also come from constructivism (international relations), peace studies and critical theory. As implied by the close association of the Cold War with the advent and establishment of international security studies as such, broader historical trends (or rather perceptions of them) created the openings that these alternative schools have sought, with mixed effect, to provide an array of theoretical foundations. In particular, WWII marked a watershed in the presumed interest and capacity of states in protecting their own citizens from physical harm. The original principle of sovereignty was an odious bargain whose chief benefit was reducing the likelihood of interstate war and, by extension, the mass killing (or other harm) of people. But after WWII, it became progressively necessary to abridge the principle of sovereignty in order to protect the lives of ordinary people who in previous centuries would have been axiomatically protected—at least from physical harm—as supports to state power. This has led to a great deal of contestation over what "security" means, and whether states remain as useful as foci of interest and explanation as convention would have it.

Contemporary security studies is therefore as contested a field of inquiry as it is both interesting and important.^[2]

See also

• National Defense University, College of International Security Affairs
• International Relations theory
• Peace and conflict studies
• Welsh School (security studies)
• Human security
• Environmental security
• The Institute of World Politics

Journals

• PRISM
• International Security
• Security Dialogue
• Security Studies
• Armed Forces & Society

Universities with academic programs in Security Studies

• Australian National University, Bachelor of International Security Studies
• Charles University in Prague, Master in International Security Studies
• Georgetown University, Master in Security Studies, PhD in Government with Security Studies concentration
• Johns Hopkins University, Master in Global Security Studies
• Kansas State University, PhD in Security Studies
• Macquarie University, Bachelor of Security Studies
• Masaryk University, Bachelor and Master of Security and Strategic Studies
• Stanford University, Graduate Certificate in International Security
• University of Arizona, Master in International Security Studies
• University of Central Florida, PhD in Security Studies
• University of Pittsburgh, Master of Public and International Affairs in Security and Intelligence Studies
• University of Sydney, Master of International Security
• University of Groningen, Master of International Security
• University of Copenhagen, Master of Science in Security Risk Management

References

Sources

• Rappa, Antonio L (2012), Security and Modernity in Southeast Asia, Cengage.
• Rappa, Antonio L. (2007), "Schadenfreude: The Anti-Hero in Conrad's Heart of Darkness" (APSA paper)
• Williams, Paul (2008) Security Studies: An Introduction, Abingdon: Routledge