THE RELEVANCY OF WALTER LIPPMANN FOR ARNOLD WOLFERS’ UNDERSTANDING OF SECURITY

Abstract

Currently, the definition of security that was put forward in 1952 by Arnold Wolfers in his article “National Security as an Ambiguous Symbol” is widely cited within the field of security studies while the definition of this concept that have been advanced by Walter Lippmann in his book from 1943, “US foreign policy: Shield of the Republic” is largely absent, a situation which hinders the turning into a research topic of the connections between these definitions. However, there are authors who cite both the definition of security advanced by Wolfers and the definition of it put forward by Lippmann, but they either do not mention the existence of connections between these definitions or take notice of them but do not investigate them, with the consequence that a thoughtful consideration of this problem is lacking. In order to fill this gap in the study of the early stages of the development of security studies, this article provides an in-depth investigation of the links between the two definitions of security which reveals that Wolfers’ reflection on security was meant to explain implicit aspects of Lippmann’s definition of this concept but that eventually and somehow unintentional Wolfers advanced a different perspective on security.