International Relations

This article develops a critical conception of security by showing the limits of traditional realist and pluralist discourses. It does this by exploring the deficiencies of realist and pluralist approaches when it comes to thinking about the promotion of human rights. Realism leads to moral indifference and a myopic approach to security and pluralism is complacent about how the rules and norms of international society exclude humanitarian concerns. The article argues for a critical approach to security that places human rights at the centre of theory and praxis, reflecting the fundamental indivisibility of security and human rights. The article concludes by reflecting on the implications for agency of this position.

Contesting those approaches that present the ‘Middle East’ as a region that ‘best fits the realist view of international politics’, this article submits that critical approaches are relevant to this part of the world as well. It is argued that instead of taking the relatively little evidence of enthusiasm for addressing the problem of regional insecurity in the Middle East for granted, a critical place for such approaches to begin is a recognition of the presence of a multitude of contending perspectives on regional security each one of which derives from different conceptions of security that have their roots in alternative worldviews. When rethinking regional security from a Critical Security Studies perspective, both the concepts ‘region’ and ‘security’ need to be opened up to reveal the mutually constitutive relationship between (inventing) regions and (conceptions and practices of) security.

The socio-political situation in Central Europe in the years after the fall of communism shows a sharp break from that system, but the region is not yet characterized by fully-formed and mature liberal democracies. These countries are still undergoing a phase of transition. At the heart of non-military security issues in Central Europe are problems that are new for these societies, and this novelty makes the problems especially challenging. There must be fostered among national populations a more sophisticated understanding of the free-market economy and of democratic principles. Particularly significant is the search for identity which is taking place on many levels – ethnic, cultural, religious and historical among others. This experience is important not only for Central European countries; it is also important for the European Union, whose members in 2004 they will become. This challenge is part of understanding the factors influencing the development of a democratic culture.

This article contrasts the quality of security afforded by evolving community values in Latin America with the alleged virtues of security founded on nuclear deterrent postures between India and Pakistan in South Asia. A case is made for ‘security through community’ as a preferred basis for long-term regional security planning and some thoughts are offered on the means by which common security practices may be fostered in regions where the risks of nuclear conflict remain high. Important similarities between the conflictual history of Argentine–Brazilian relations and the current Indo-Pakistani nuclear stand-off suggest that it may be possible to learn substantively from the Latin American experience. In particular, analysis of the evolving Argentine–Brazilian relationship suggests that the cooperative security practices associated with regional security regimes such as Nuclear Free Zones can play a significant part in positively transforming security relations between otherwise mistrustful states.

Mainstream International Relations constructs southern Africa through the power and omnipresence of the region’s nation states. Using an interpretative opening offered to social science by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, this article challenges this particular approach to the idea of regional community. It argues that the construction of the region’s first Westphalian state, South Africa, was an incidental occurrence contingent on a series of other events, including the discovery of mineral wealth. While the grand historical narrative near-obliterated forms of community that lie below the region’s modernist framing, other forms of community are increasingly identifiable. Although apartheid has ended, these other forms, rather than the states, offer the region’s people the opportunity for lasting emancipation.

Part of the Critical Security Studies agenda is to understand what security means at different times and in different places. This article tells a story of how women in Soviet Central Asia were affected by political/security strategies adopted by Moscow. It focuses on the way in which the Kremlin attempted to use the emancipation of women as a strategy to mitigate the historic influence of Islam in the region and to build a secular and unified USSR. The story raises issues for Critical Security Studies in terms of the referents of security, especially the tensions which arise between the construction of state security and the place of women.

The call to develop self-consciously critical approaches to security stands as one of the more hopeful intellectual developments in recent years. It is argued that a critical – and hence, emancipatory – strategy is one which focuses on the more ‘empirical’ question of how security issues are framed in political discourse. Here the emphasis is on exploring how different conceptions of security – both traditional and expanded – find their way into public debates; how specific values are made socially concrete in this process, and how people both act and are acted upon in the process of history unfolding. The merits of this approach are illustrated by examining a concrete case: the evolution of security discourse in Canada in the latter half of the 20th century, and the function of that discourse in terms of changing forms of state and world order.

This article describes the direct action and ensuing trial of the ‘Ploughshares Women’ who were acquitted by the Crown Court at Liverpool in 1996, having damaged a Hawk aircraft being sold by the British government to Indonesia. The women argued that the Hawk aircraft were being used as part of the Indonesian government’s campaign against East Timor, a country it was illegally occupying, and in which it was carrying out gross human rights abuses. The women persuaded the jury that by selling the aircraft to Indonesia the British government was in violation of domestic and international law as well as ‘simple humanity and love’. Direct action was said to have been necessary after the failure of groups to persuade the British government to stop resolving ethical dilemmas in favour of profit in their dealings with Indonesia. The article ends with a discussion of individual responsibility in relation to global problems, and urges readers to take seriously concepts of global responsibility and global citizenship, and working towards reconfiguring society and economics to serve human interests.