Security Calculus Research Articles

Domestic politics of regional security: theoretical perspectives and Middle East patterns

Three general perspectives on national security have dominated the literature. The realist perspective focuses on the effects of the power-related aspects of an anarchic system on the security calculus of states and on the conflict and alliance diplomacy outputs of national security policies. On the regional level, this perspective emphasizes the practices of balancing and counterbalancing as the key aspects of regional and global security management. The liberal perspective emphasizes the impact of domestic structures and processes, including the concern for economic well-being, on the formation of security policies. On the regional level, this perspective emphasizes the formation of security regimes and regional organizations that condition and limit short-term conflict. The revisionist perspective focuses on the regime-preserving function of most security organizations in Third World states. It argues that the pursuit of certain security-related objectives – such as increases in defense expenditures and the design and deployment of armed forces – is guided by domestic considerations. This study examines the relative relevance of the three approaches to the evolution of the Middle East. It argues that the revisionist perspective was the most relevant one in the 1950s and 1960s, the realist perspective was the most relevant one in the 1970s and 1980s, and the liberal approach became increasingly important in the 1990s. Despite the relative decline of the latter approach, it has left traces in the policies of the region that offer some degree of optimism regarding the evolution of regional structures and institutions once the key conflict in the region are resolved.

The emerging international security system: Threats, challenges and opportunities for India

This paper examines the nature of the emerging international security system and its positive and negative implications for India's security calculus. The key features of the international security system are confrontation,’ and cooperation and accommodation, and these open up several possibilities of threats, challenges and opportunities for India. To India's credit, despite the worsening of its geo‐strategic environment, the country's policy‐making structures have displayed the capacity to remain flexible and responsive to changes for furthering its security and national interests. The paper calls for having well‐articulated policies and strategies that can meet not only the present‐day concerns and uncertainties, but also have the capacity to meet India's future needs.

Border Permeability and the State in Southeast Asia: Contraband and Regional Security

In Southeast Asia, governments have increasingly tried to regulate international flows of commodities for financial, territorial, and security reasons. This article examines the relationship between borders and contraband in this arena, arguing that their interrelationship has become an important -- and understudied -- part of the regional security mosaic. The article analyses some of the connecting mechanisms between A SEAN frontier regions, and then explores how these mechanisms are being undermined by a range of countervailing forces. Here, the focus is on two contraband lines in particular: the transit of wildlife, and the passage of a diverse spectrum of consumer goods. The widening transit of such commodities presents special challenges to regional security, which are likely to plague local regimes in the foreseeable future. Introduction The security agenda in Southeast Asia has undergone significant broadening in recent decades. Arms races, the desired role of Japan, and conflict in the South China Sea have been joined of Late by cyber warfare, theatre missile defence, and dialogues on Myanmar, among other pressing issues. Scholars have looked at ASEAN's particular dynamics as a security grouping, and have even begun asking whether its characteristics and mechanics might be emulated in other parts of the world. [1] Some of these reappraisals have been part and parcel of a larger shift in the cadence of security studies, not just in Southeast Asia, but on the international stage as well. [2] Yet, there is a growing sense in the literature that Southeast Asia's security equation is especially complex, as states in this region evince highly-complicated interrelationships, governed by a broad spectrum of thorny issues. This has been true at least since the 1960s, but the swirling of these forces seems only to have gathered momentum in the last t wo decades. This article suggests that two concepts -- border permeability and illegal trade -- should have a higher profile within this widening security agenda. The examination of international frontiers in the global political economy has become a fertile field of study in recent years. Ironically, this has happened at the same time that borders are becoming less important, in terms of their restrictive capabilities. [3] Scholars have approached frontiers as part of a regional security context in various ways. Some of the best work have been done in a comparative vein, while the observations and methodologies of anthropologists on the ground have also been very instructive. [4] The transit of illegal trade through borders has also received increasing attention of late, as theorists and planners alike seek to explain how porous boundaries affect the relationships between neighbouring states. [5] Southeast Asia, with its ten sovereign nations, differing systems of government, and myriad border populations, presents an interesting case-study for these dynamics. More than most global arenas, frontiers and illicit commerce here play a fundamental part in the region's security calculus. This article examines these boundaries and flows on a systemic, pan-regional basis. An initial attempt is made to situate Southeast Asia's frontiers in a regional context, as border agreements, surveillance, and organized crime are related to government security concerns. The remainder of the article then delves into two particular contraband lines as windows into these dynamics: the trade in natural resources or biota (including flora and fauna), and the illicit commerce in consumer goods. Both are shown to be enterprises on a huge scale, which have interpenetrated the normal economic flows of the region in a wide variety of ways. The importance of these shadow circuits on commodities cannot be overstated. Money to national treasuries is lost, and ends up in the pockets of actors whose aims are often inimical to the state. Alternative power sources are built, and are then padded with this income for the future. …

South Asia in China's Foreign Relations

This article examines the key characteristics underlying China's policy and perceptions about South Asia and surveys China's relations with South Asian countries in the 1990s and beyond. Beijing's South Asia policy is tied to China's military security concerns vis-à-vis that of India and territorial disputes. Chinese leaders regularly visit Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to demonstrate a continuing determination to remain involved in South Asia and to reassure China's friends that improvement in Sino-Indian relations would not be at their cost. Beijing insists on the resolution of bilateral problems and disputes in accordance with the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and remains critical of India's coercive diplomacy to guard its security interests. Beijing's entente cordiale with Pakistan continues to flourish, underpinned by nuclear and missile co-operation. New Delhi continues to keep a close eye on the political and strategic relations between China and India's neighbours. Current strategic and economic trends indicate that South Asia's importance in China's national security calculus is likely to increase in the 21st century. A Sino-Indian rivalry in southern Asia and the northern Indian Ocean may well be a dominant feature of future Asian geopolitics.

South Asia and the Politics of Non-Proliferation

National power is inherent in the system of independent states, and military force is inherent in national power. In influencing the rise, fall, and hierarchy of states, force is the decisive element in the structure of any given international system. Thus, military power will remain a prominent feature of international relations. There is a very real risk, however, that the pursuit of national security through a strategy of self-help will produce regional and international insecurity as a result of a process of competitive rivalry and the build-up of arms. Thus we have a paradox: international realities compel us to look to our own forces or risk becoming the victims of others'; but the unchecked proliferation of arms and weapons systems will degrade everyone's security.Arms control refers to efforts to constrain reciprocal threats from unchecked build-up of arms through formally negotiated agreements or tacit understandings on restraints on numbers, types, and deployments of weapon systems. Proliferation refers to the dispersion of weapons, capabilities, and technologies. Weapons can be sought for one or more of six reasons: deterring enemy attack, defending against attack, compelling the enemy to one's preferred course of action, leveraging adversary and great-power behaviour, status, and emulation. Specific causes of proliferation are many, diverse, and usually rooted in a local security complex. On the supply side, a major emerging proliferation challenge is the globalization of the arms industry, the flooding of the global arms market, and a resulting loosening of supplier constraints.The nuclear arms control agenda has three inter-linked components: non-proliferation, arms control (for example de-alerting and de-mating), and disarmament (the partial, limited, or total abolition of nuclear weapons). Some states focus solely on disarmament as the most urgent task in order to camouflage their own proliferation agendas. Others focus on non-proliferation as the immediate and most urgent priority in order to evade their responsibility for disarmament within a foreseeable time frame. Both invoke arms control as a refuge from calls for non-proliferation and disarmament and to obfuscate rather than clarify, let alone advance, the agenda. Both also seek to appropriate the mantle of the 'international community' to their respective though competing points of view. In fact, the closest and most substantial articulation of the point of view of the international community can be found in the 'Principles and Objectives for Non-Proliferation and Disarmament' adopted by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review and Extension Conference in 1995.The barriers against the acquisition, spread, and use of nuclear weapons include legal conventions, norms, and the fact that they have not been used in over fifty years. Safeguards and export restraints do not amount to non-proliferation, which is essentially a political goal requiring political judgment on the part of a given government that, on balance, nuclear weapons do not serve its interests. Before the key problem states can be persuaded to move to a non-nuclear weapons status they have to be convinced that the balance of advantage lies with forswearing the nuclear option. This necessarily includes not just the national security calculus, but also the internal political constellation. In this article, I hold in abeyance strategic arguments in favour of or against the overt nuclear weapons status of India and Pakistan(f.1) and focus instead on the politics of the debate. For in the decision to weaponize, politics was always in command.OF NORMS AND REGIMESNorms, not deterrence, have anathematized the use of nuclear weapons as unacceptable, immoral, and possibly illegal under any circumstance - even for states that have assimilated them into military arsenals and integrated them into military commands and doctrines. There have been many occasions since 1945 when nuclear weapons could have been used without fear of retaliation but were not, even at the price of defeat on the battlefield (the United States in Vietnam, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, for example). …

The U.S.-Soviet Strategic Relationship

The U.S.-Soviet strategic relationship is being transformed by the revolutionary events in Europe—culminating in the end of the Cold War—and by dynamics internal to the Soviet Union. The relationship is, at present, asymmetrical: with the United States at the apex of its global influence and the USSR at its nadir, the superpowers remain equal only in their enduring capability to destroy each other. The future, however, holds more peril than promise. First, the USSR seeks to fundamentally redefine what its armed forces will look like and how they will be prepared to fight. This potential for a long-term surge in Soviet combat effectiveness must be factored into the U.S. national security calculus; now is not too soon to identify and pursue the emerging technologies upon which the U.S. trans-century agenda should be anchored. Second, the breakdown of central authority in the Soviet Union threatens to sweep away the stability and predictability that have, hitherto, defined the superpower relationship. Insofar as empires do not fade away peacefully, the disintegration of a nuclear-armed Soviet Union might emerge as the most dangerous threat to U.S. security.

The Soviet military's transcentury agenda

Abstract The Soviet military is in the midst of the most comprehensive transformation in its history. At stake is not only the future shape and makeup of the Armed Forces, but the USSR's future as a competitive superpower. This metamorphosis, rooted in analyses conducted by the General Staff well before Gorbachev's ascendancy, seeks to fundamentally redefine what the Soviet Armed Forces will look like and how they will be prepared to fight through the end of this century and into the next. Insofar as this transcentury agenda impacts the entire gamut of East‐West relations, it must be factored into the Western national security calculus. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. government, or any of its agencies.

Norwegian Security Policy for the 1980s

The key strategic position of Norway in Northern Europe is elaborated in the first part of this article. Norwegian alignment in NATO is based on the proposition that Norwegian (or Scandinavian) means are inadequate to defend the country from attack from a major power. It has become an objective of Norwegian defence policy to block as effectively as possible any option of limited war against North Norway by raising the force requirements for the adversary to a level at which the risks of escalation would appear forbidding. The Norwegian security calculus is predicated on the notion that South Norway has forward defence in the Baltic, Northern Germany and Denmark. Therefore, the defence effort has been concentrated in the north. Public support for Norway's policy of alignment has been rather stable over the last decade. The issue of reinforcement is dealt with in detail, as are the re-emerging nuclear weapons issues. Finally, the evolution of the Norwegian defence effort is analysed. It is concluded that those aspects of alliance policy which relate to nuclear weapons are likely to cause discussion and dissension in the years ahead. The Norwegian Government is likely to support changes in the posture and doctrine of NATO which reduce reliance on nuclear weapons and, particularly, the pressures for early use. The unilateral constraints with respect to the stationing of foreign troops will be maintained.

Norwegian Security Policy for the 1980s

The key strategic position of Norway in Northern Europe is elaborated in the first part of this article. Norwegian alignment in NATO is based on the proposition that Norwegian (or Scandinavian) means are inadequate to defend the country from attack from a major power. It has become an objective of Norwegian defence policy to block as effectively as possible any option of limited war against North Norway by raising the force requirements for the adversary to a level at which the risks of escalation would appear forbidding. The Norwegian security calculus is predicated on the notion that South Norway has forward defence in the Baltic, Northern Germany and Den mark. Therefore, the defence effort has been concentrated in the north. Public support for Norway's policy of alignment has been rather stable over the last decade. The issue of reinforcement is dealt with in detail, as are the re-emerging nuclear weapons issues. Finally, the evolution of the Norwegian defence effort is analysed. It is concluded that those aspects of alliance policy which relate to nuclear weapons are likely to cause discussion and dissension in the years ahead. The Norwegian Govern ment is likely to support changes in the posture and doctrine of NATO which reduce reliance on nuclear weapons and, particularly, the pressures for early use. The unilateral constraints with respect to the stationing of foreign troops will be maintained.

Considering Soviet Threats to the Persian Gulf

l hile the United States has been aware of its vital stakes in the oil-rich Persian Gulf for some time, American concern about the vulnerability of the U.S. position in that region is more recent. Historically, the internal stability of the region was of little concern because the area was controlled by conservative monarchies with small and relatively docile populations. Also, the general security of the region seemed assured by the British, who acted as the arbiters of local disputes and the guardians against external threats. When the British withdrew from East of Suez in 1971, the United States sought a new formula for regional security and settled on a twin pillar approach, depending on the Iranians and to a lesser extent the Saudis to guarantee regional stability and security. With the collapse of one of these pillars and the shakiness exhibited in the other (which was in any case never a military power), Americans became aware of the need to find a new basis for regional security. Adding urgency to this search was the growing shadow Soviet power cast over the area. Improved Soviet ability to project power, the erosion of Northern Tier barriers to Soviet access to the region, the Soviet foothold along the periphery of the area, and the growing Soviet naval presence in the south, all fundamentally affected the security calculus of the local states and made Americans far more concerned about the Soviet threat in an already shaky, yet critical region. Not surprisingly, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan served to crystallize American concerns about, and commitment to, countering Soviet threats in the Persian Gulf. Though there are threats to U.S. interests in the region that are internally generated and may be independent of the Soviets-the current war between Iran and Iraq being a case in point-the purpose of this essay is to discuss the somewhat more narrow theme of Soviet threats to the Persian Gulf.