International Insecurity Research Articles

Nuclear Power in Times of International Insecurity and Environmental Crisis

Nuclear Power in Times of International Insecurity and Environmental Crisis

A Response to International Insecurity: The Origins of Colonial Aspirations in Italy

ABSTRACT In reaction to numerous international disputes, crises, and wars, trust in the strength of the written law in the relations amongst European countries began to weaken before the mid-nineteenth century. One reaction to this gradual loss of faith in international justice was the rise of the power-oriented nationalist movements in Germany and Italy advocating not only national unity but also the creation of strong national armed forces and defensible frontiers. This response to international insecurity also contained the seeds of imperialist and colonial aspirations during the 1840s in both disunited Germany and Italy. It was for this reason that the growth of Italian nationalism during that decade remained closely connected with colonial ambitions. A colonial policy would bring Italians additional material strength to enable them to achieve a sufficiently strong and therefore safer place in a world seen as increasingly predatory.

Power Contention and International Insecurity: A Thucydides Trap in China–US Financial Relations?

ABSTRACT The China–US financial contention or confrontation comes to the fore, given the pivotal role of finance in the international system and the current international order transition. Will there be destructive conflicts or a Thucydides Trap in China–US financial relations? By adopting a power analysis framework, the China–US financial contention is observed from four types of international financial power: structural, relational, institutional and ideational. The competition for these powers results in reform divergence of global financial governance and thus international financial insecurity. The contention and consequent insecurity, however, do not necessarily mean an inevitable ‘Thucydides Trap’ in China–US financial relations. Elaborated and issue-specific ways of management could alleviate the contention, including shunning RMB-USD strategic confrontation, refraining from a debt weapon and aggressive imbalance adjustment, enhancing the legitimacy of international financial institutions and avoiding a new Cold War.

By all necessary means? Emerging powers and the use of force in peacekeeping

ABSTRACT Emerging powers from the global south have generally opposed the use of force in international politics. However, taking a closer look at the area of peacekeeping, the international community’s most institutionalized response to international insecurity, it is clear that the global south has been actively engaged in what has been described as peacekeeping’s coercive turn: the increasingly greater use of force. Building on the cases of Brazil and Indonesia, we argue that the peacekeeping policies of these emerging powers have been inconsistent with their declared reticence to use force. We explain the inconsistency by reference to knowledge imbalances between civilian and military actors, a gap in peacekeeping expertise and involvement in policy-making that allowed the armed forces to push the two countries into increasingly coercive peacekeeping. Moreover, civil–military knowledge imbalances prevented the emergence of alternative ideas more in line with Brazil’s and Indonesia’s traditional stance on the use of force.

The Logic of the Survival of North Korea

Why has North Korea been able to survive up to now, while other rogue states such as Afghanistan and Iraq have suffered military intervention by the USA? To solve this puzzle, we present a simple two‐level game model that takes into account strategic interdependence between intrastate and interstate wars. Using the two‐level game framework, we show that the ethnic homogeneity of North Korea helps defend itself from US armed intervention, whereas a rogue state with a relatively heterogeneous society is expected to experience international insecurity by providing the USA with an opportunity to find domestic allies that help it win an interstate war against the rogue state. As a policy implication, we discuss the possibility that the recent development of a market economy in North Korea might destabilize the peace between the USA and North Korea.

Makarios cultural diplomacy legacy in the republic of Cyprus

ABSTRACTThe article explores the cultural diplomacy initiatives undertaken by the Republic of Cyprus (RoC) during Makarios presidency (1960–1977) in order to strengthen the state acknowledgement and visibility in the international scenery and promote a nation brand focused mainly on the Hellenocentric aspect of the Greek-Cypriots’ cultural identity. Cyprus, a recently independent state (1960), shaped its cultural diplomacy practices according to the political developments; on the escalation of bi-communal conflicts internally and the international insecurity provoked by the Cold War rhetoric. This paper aims to map certain state cultural initiatives in an attempt to make connections between the internal identity-building process and the external projection of cultural identity and gain a better understanding about how a small-sized state can pursue and project a nation brand abroad by practicing the diplomacy of culture.

Introduction to the Dossier: Shifting Frontiers of Citizenship in Latin America

In recent years, Latin American countries have been at the global forefront of remarkable confrontations, debates, and shifts in the understanding of citizenship. The region has undergone profound transformations in the conceptualization of citizenship and of migration and residency. The frontiers of citizenship have ebbed and flowed with crises of political representation and mounting protest; of multiculturalism and demands of recognition; of labor migration and transnationalism; of struggles around gender, ethnic, and racial issues; and new international articulations and public insecurity. This dossier addresses some of these shifting frontiers of citizenship.

Are we going to live in a post-NATO world? A critical perspective on trends, obstacles and possibilities

The main research question investigated in this paper is the following: will a post-NATO world emerge during the next decades? The relevance of such a question is a consequence of the political and economic changes that have seen the light as a result of the power shift of international relations after the end of the Cold War. In spite of this, some contradictory tendencies, such as the weakening of the European pole within the NATO block, the US-NATO enlargement and its military aggressiveness, are generating a number of significant obstacles to the emergence of a post-NATO world. We will argue that the existence of these obstacles could be interpreted as some steps toward the historical downsizing of the US-EU-NATO hegemony. A “post-NATO” world does not necessarily imply the end of NATO, but rather the end of its hegemonic military presence on the global stage. Firstly, we will put the question into context mentioning the debates around NATO’s future and underlining the path undertaken by the Alliance in the frame of the redefinition of the aims of its “strategic concepts”. In this perspective, we will underline the direct link which exists between US strategic needs and NATO’s evolution in the post-Cold war era. Secondly, we will argue that the recent process of military expansionism led by NATO is remarkably de-legitimizing its actions on the global stage. Such a process, along with the current world system shift toward the end of unipolarity, is likely to provoke dramatic consequences in terms of international insecurity and the spreading of war. Thirdly, we will briefly compare the US and Chinese foreign actions, arguing that the space of international legitimacy is radically changing. This fact represents another brick supporting the idea of the emergence of a post-NATO world system in the future of international relations.

(In-)security and the production of international relations: the politics of securitisation in Europe

This book provides a framework for analysing the interplay between securitisation and foreign affairs, reconnecting critical security studies with traditional IR concerns about interstate relations. What happens to foreign policymaking when actors, things or processes are presented as threats? This book explains state behaviour on the basis of a reflexive framework of insecurity politics, and argues that governments act on the knowledge of international danger available in their societies, but that such knowledge is organised by markedly varying ideas of who threatens whom and how. The book develops this argument and illustrates it by means of various European case studies. Moving across European history and space, these case studies show how securitisation has projected evolving and often contested local ideas of the organisation of international insecurity, and how such knowledges of world politics have then conditioned foreign policymaking on their own terms. With its focus on insecurity politics, the book provides new perspectives for the study of international security. Moving the discipline from systemic theorising to a theory of international systematisation, it shows how world politics is, in practice, often conceived in a different way than that assumed by IR theory. By the same token, by depicting national insecurity as a matter of political construction, the book also raises the challenging question of whether certain projections of insecurity may be considered more warranted than others. This book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, European politics, foreign policy and IR, in general.

Open economy politics and international security dynamics: Explaining international cooperation in financial crises

Why do states cooperate during international financial crises? A prominent account of such phenomena is provided by the Open Economy Politics approach, which advocates a methodological reductionism that focuses on domestic interests and institutions as explanatory drivers of foreign economic policy. I argue that the appropriateness and utility of this approach diminishes in two important contexts: when levels of economic interdependence and international institutionalization are both high; and when international insecurity is rising. Since the second condition has greater generality in international relations, I test it by focusing on a period when international economic institutionalization was much lower than today: the pre-1914 gold standard system. I show that as levels of interstate rivalry and insecurity rose in the years before 1914, so too did the role of strategic considerations in the international financial policies of the major European powers. The utility of the Open Economy Politics approach for explaining foreign financial policy is therefore contingent on an evolving international context. The argument is of considerable relevance to the contemporary era, when a rapidly evolving international political environment is again reshaping international financial policies.

Does State Failure Cause Terrorism? An Empirical Analysis (1999–2008)

A developed-world consensus ties state failure to new and serious international insecurity. But that conclusion rests upon an uncertain foundation; insights into the nature and intensity of failure-related threats remain tentative and unsystematic. This study begins to remedy the problem, examining the broad relationships between weakness, failure, and terrorism with panel data for 153 countries (1999–2008). I argue that the quantitative literature too often disregards the political context determining terrorism's use, that terrorism is endogenous to many measures of state failure, and that estimates of the failure-related threat of terrorism are overstated. Consistent with these expectations, I find that most failing and failed states are not predisposed to terrorism. However, among the “most failed” states, those at war or experiencing political collapse are significantly more likely to experience and produce terror. These results refine the relationship between failure and external threat and highlight the importance of terrorism's macro-level political context.

Shopping and Insecurity: Visualizing the Aid/Other Nexus

That the phenomenon of Brand Aid—that is, the “combined meaning of ‘aid to brands’ and ‘brands that provide aid'” (Richey and Ponte ⇓:10)—sits firmly at the intersection of international political economy, global health-care policies, and marketing, is powerfully brought out by Lisa Richey and Stefano Ponte in their important book, Brand Aid: Shopping Well to Save the World , as well as by the other contributions to this Forum. One idea that the book does not pursue, however, is how Brand Aid, as embodied by and enacted through Product Red (RED), speaks to political and academic debates over the securitization of HIV/AIDS (Elbe ⇓). Thus, this contribution is concerned with the way in which RED raises—but also evades—questions of international, human and gendered insecurity. Considering the extensive securitization of HIV/AIDS by politicians, international organizations, and the media, within the North as well as the South, the absence of RED branding is striking. As Richey and Ponte's work shows, RED is situated on a political and discursive terrain cognizant of HIV/AIDS's securitization, but it refrains from both “security speech acts” that authoritatively declare HIV/AIDS to be a threat to “Africa,” and the familiar stable of images depicting suffering, dying, AIDS-afflicted women and children (Bleiker and Kay ⇓). Yet, viewed through the lens of security, RED invokes a remarkable ambiguity. The gratification promised the shopper/savior hinges on a securitization logic, because if combating HIV/AIDS is not an urgent issue warranting our …

Power Shifts, Economic Change and the Decline of the West?

It has become the new truth of the early twenty-first century that the Western world we have known is fast losing its pre-eminence to be replaced by a new international system shaped either by the so-called BRICs comprising Brazil, Russia, India and China, the ‘rest’, or more popularly by that very broadly defined geographical entity known as Asia. This at least is how many economists, historians and students of world politics are now viewing the future of the larger international system. This essay does not dispute some self-evident economic facts. Nor does it assume that the world will look the same in 50 years time as it does now. It does, however, question the idea that there is an irresistible ‘power shift’ in the making and that the West and the United States are in steep decline. Specifically, it makes a number of critical arguments concerning the new narrative. First, it suggests that this story, by reasonably focusing on what is obviously changing in the world, unfortunately ignores what is not; as a result, it underestimates what might loosely be termed the continued structural advantages still enjoyed by the United States and its major Western allies. Second, while it is true that many new states are assuming a bigger role in the world economy, their rise needs to be looked at more carefully than it has been so far; indeed, when such an examination is undertaken, it becomes increasingly clear that the rise of others – including China – is still hemmed in by several obstacles, internal as well as external. Third, though the Asian region, and China as part of it, is assuming an ever more important role in the wider world economy, this development should not be seen as marking the beginning of a new Asian Century. This now popular idea is not only conceptually problematic, it inevitably leads to an underestimation of other key areas in the world including incidentally the Transatlantic region. Finally I suggest that if the dubious idea of a power shift is taken to be true, this could very easily lead to greater international insecurity and conflict. Understanding the modern world better than many seem to be doing right now is therefore not only intellectually important; it is strategically necessary too.

Trade, conflict, and political integration: Explaining the heterogeneity of regional trade agreements

Many historians argue that the main goal of European trade integration was the preservation of peace. This paper investigates whether this reasoning is relevant for the EU and other regional trade agreements (RTAs). I provide empirical evidence that customs unions and common markets (deep RTAs) do reduce the probability of war between members. Partial scope and free trade agreements (shallow RTAs) however have no effect on war probabilities. Accordingly, international insecurity has a differential impact on incentives to create RTAs. Deep RTAs are signed between countries that are involved in many interstate disputes and that have low trade costs with the rest of the world, whereas the opposite is true for shallow RTAs.

The Securitisation of the EU's Development Agenda in Africa: Insights from Guinea-Bissau

Sub-Saharan Africa, although not among Europe's closest neighbours, has, over the past decade, increasingly been perceived as a source of threats to Europe's security. This article will attempt to outline European perceptions of African security and justice issues and how these perceptions have in turn influenced the EU's policies in Africa. Specific attention will be given here to Guinea-Bissau, which is a particularly interesting and illustrative case study, as this small country in West Africa has attracted considerable European engagement in such fields as illegal immigration, counter-terrorism, drug-combating and security sector reform. This European engagement through different, at times uncoordinated and overlapping, channels does not always make for a consistent approach and underlines a profound gap between what has come to be a generally accepted diagnostic – that international insecurity is caused, or at least facilitated, by weak states – and the remedies applied by the EU. While Europe increasingly perceives Africa's weak governance as a security threat, it remains unwilling to engage politically and on a longer-term basis on the continent.

Oil, gas and international insecurity: tackling a self-fuelling fire

In the United States, European Union, and Asia fears about dependence on oil and gas imports from unstable regions have become a major theme of political debate. Daniel Litvin* argues that current policy responses to this challenge are focused on broad-brush measures such as reducing energy demand and strengthening military or diplomatic alliances with oil-producing regions. Comparatively little attention is devoted to the ‘self-fuelling fire’ that underlies the problem.

US Power after Sept 11th: Increasing International Insecurity

Since the attacks on the United States of America on September 11 th 2001 the US has chosen a strongly unilateral foreign policy underscored and effectively sustained by military power. In the immediate aftermath of the attack on the US it was speculated that American desire to build an international coalition against terrorism and to take military action in sensitive areas would lead it to engage in dialogue with its potential allies in both the developed and developing worlds. This did not prove to be the case as the US displayed a willingness to act in opposition to the international community and to back up its foreign policy decisions with force if necessary. This article analyses the current international role of the US and the impact US actions have on the emerging system of international governance. While the US is undoubtedly dominant, and their actions in the international arena have undermined the effectiveness of the United Nations, they have faced unprecedented opposition to their policy on Iraq, have not been able to prevent initiatives such as the International Criminal Court or to win widespread international support, in either the industrialised states or among the developing world for their actions. This indicates a reduction in US hegemony and also an increase in international insecurity as US foreign policy action aimed at securing a narrowing defined American national interest leads to growing polarisation in the international system.

Human Security and International Insecurity

Human Security and International Insecurity

Post-Fordism, beyond National Models: The Main Challenges for Regulation Theory

This paper discusses the challenges to Regulation Theory (RT) that are presented by post-national modes of accumulation. It begins by introducing to RT's core analytical foundations a mode of social regulation and its explanation of the regime of accumulation. The paper then examines how, despite clear asymmetries, the stability of the international system supported domestic accumulation. Because of this, RT only really addressed the international from the perspective of the nation state, and with only limited engagement with North–South issues. While some authors did address the international system, the greater instability of the 1970s combined domestic regime change with greater international insecurity. Up to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, new political ideologies and economic ideals challenged the nation-based Keynesian compromise while greater trade from the South and greater financial liberalisation fundamentally altered the international environment. Various approaches to the post-Fordist international regime are discussed, including that of a financial regime, and the conclusion identifies some of the areas for future research.

Trade, Conflicts, and Political Integration: The Regional Interplays

This paper investigates the determinants of the different forms taken by regional integration in different parts of the world. This raises the issue of the relationship between economic and political integration. The theoretical model shows that, in an insecure world, the interplays between security and economic forces shape the decision to form a regional trading agreement (RTA) and its institutional design. Empirical results confirm that regionalism should be understood as a regulation mechanism: countries experiencing more interstate disputes are more likely to create a deep RTA, such as custom union or common market, whereas international insecurity deters the formation of preferential and free trade agreements.