International Security in an Age of Choice

Abstract

International security addresses questions of force: how to spot it, stop it, resist it and occasionally threaten and even use it. It considers the conditions that encourage or discourage organised violence in international affairs and the conduct of all types of military activity. It therefore deals with the most fundamental questions of war and peace and so the highest responsibilities of government. For this reason it has long been an area of academic endeavour where it is considered both appropriate and possible for scholarship to feed into the policy process. Yet as the danger of total war has receded, and as the complexities of the workings of the international system have come to be appreciated, many now question whether there is a research agenda here that is either intellectually coherent or of more than passing policy interest. This article argues that the issues here are still of vital importance, but they need to be recast to take account of the changing patterns of world politics, and in particular those that allow for a more discretionary engagement by the stronger states in the problems of the weak.