Overcoming Security Dilemma Flashcards
Security Dilemma
Whereby the notion of states having to be self-helping leads to them looking after their security needs, regardless of intention. This increase in security through military or other means can lead to a rise in the same areas for other states as they perceive it as threatening. This theory is all about the uncertainty that surrounds state interactions.
Security Paradox
Derives from the SD -> Involves military confrontation with states misreading other states defensive moves and offensive. This creates a significant level of mutual hostility.
The 2 Phases of SD
- Dilemma of Interpretation
- Faced by decision makers: The motives of others -> is it defensive or offensive? - Dilemma of Implementation
- Decision makers ned to determine how to react
- Can risk leading to security paradox
What do we find in the Security Dilemma? And how do we define it?
Unresolvable Uncertainty: This condition characterises all of the human behaviour and is best depicted through governments having unresolvable uncertainties in SD and so act pre-emptively
What are the two different phenomena’s that may make up unresolvable uncertainty?
- Material phenomena (weapons, huge massing of armies, etc)
- Psychological phenomena (the ‘Other Minds Problem’ -> lack of knowing what leaders/ruling elites wish to do. E.G. Trump = To try to overcome the problem by studying the historical behaviour of them)
Iraq = Material or Psychological? Misinterpretations and wrong decisions
What are the 3 approaches/logics to the SD?
Fatalistic Logic: Security competition can never be escaped as the international realm is anarchic -> Classical realist ideology
Mitigator Logic: Competition can be dampened but never extinguished
Transcender Logic: Security competition can be overcome because human society has agencies -> trust and a community of peace can be created (UN?)
How does one mitigate the SD and what is its definition and conditions?
- Security Regimes: common self-interests so accept norms and rules which restraint behaviour
Conditions of Mitigating the SD through Security Regimes:
- Hegemon
- Common values
- Wars costly
- No expansion
Example of a Security Regime?
Example: Concert of Europe (1815)
- Great Powers came to mutual decision making and attempted to regulate war
- Self-interests understood more broadly = fate of the major powers was linked to each others self-interest and it could therefore be beneficial/detrimental to all
- The shared belief of avoiding war was their support to continue to act together
Who is the scholar of security _____ and what does he define it as?
Karl Deutsch and Security Communities: A group of communities which have integrated to the point that it is dependable upon to truly give peaceful change and war is unthinkable.
What are the two types of Security Communities?
Amalgamated Security Communities: Formal merger between two previously separate units E.G. UK
Pluralistic Security Communities: retains legal independence of separate governments E.G. EU
Example of a Security Community?
Example: EU
- Single Market
- Schengen Area
- Eurozone
- Economic + Political
- All EU policies
- What happens when an actor such as this becomes a threat? EU army? EU involved in missions, biggest market, huge normative power
Barkawi and Laffeys conclusions on DPT? Looked at how…
- Looked at how Democracy, liberalism and force may make peaceful or not-so-peaceful worlds. Found there is a correlation but inconclusive if that is of direct affect.
Critiques to DPT
Too soon to judge - less than 100 years that a world war occurred involving almost all democratic states. highly contested theory
What is the correlation between Democracies and War?
Liberal economic theorists believe modern industrial war is economically irrational and it is costly and capital is global
Adler’s imagine (security) communities argument
Nation states as ‘imagined’ communities: the idea that citizens within a state feel a sense of community and belonging amongst them yet may never meet.
