Rethinking Security after the Cold War

Abstract

This paper examines aspects of the debate amongst traditionalist, widening and critical approaches to Security Studies. It looks at how the security agenda has expanded away from the narrow military focus generated by the Cold War, and argues against the traditionalist criticism that widening the concept of security necessarily makes it incoherent. To carry this argument, it proposes a constructivist method for security analysis that offers a way of confining the application of security, and some reintegrative potential, to all three schools. In this approach, security is understood not as the content of a particular sector (military), but as a particular type of politics defined by reference to existential threats and calls for emergency action in any sector. The paper concludes by examining some of the political issues raised by any attempt to widen the scope of security, setting the liberal case for narrowing security as much as possible against the pressures to widen the security agenda that ironically arise from the contemporary success of the liberal project.