Security Policy Choices Research Articles

Essence of Indecision: Understanding Indian Security Policy Choices

Essence of Indecision: Understanding Indian Security Policy Choices

From variation to convergence in turbulent times – foreign and security policy choices among the Nordics 2014–2023

ABSTRACT The Nordic states have long made distinct choices regarding foreign and security policy principles. However, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we are witnessing a convergence of the Nordic countries’ general patterns of cooperation within their security policies. We argue that the challenging international context has led to heightened threat perceptions, triggering a reformulation of their foreign policy roles. Based on this assumption the article aims to analyse the convergence of the Nordic countries’ foreign and security policies by tracing changes in their foreign policy roles following Russia’s increasing aggressiveness. We trace the changes in the Nordic countries’ foreign policy roles through three dimensions: the changes to the international order, threat perceptions and perceptions of reduced manoeuvrability in international affairs. Our empirical analysis sheds light on how all Nordic countries perceive an increasing threat to the multilateral rule-based order, which has consequences for the roles of these states, how the threat perceptions of the Nordic states have been on high alert since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and finally how this has significantly impacted the Nordic foreign policy elites’ perception of their countries’ ability to manoeuvre and conduct autonomous foreign policy, motivating radical changes in the roles.

South Korea’s Strategic Culture and China’s National AI STRATEGY: A Neoclassical Realist View

Purpose: South Korea s foreign policy executives need to make security policy choices about China s AI as a security threat with normative nature. The purpose of this article is to identify the ideas of the South Korean security policy executives and to analyze the role of the policy elites’ perception in foreign policymaking about China s artificial intelligence as a newly emerging security challenge. Together with this, it is approached to evaluate the strategic perception of Moon Jae-in s foreign policy executive in connection with China’s artificial intelligence. Method: The article examines the document and speech of the foreign policymakers of Korea and China as well as the media coverage of the two countries by utilizing Kitchen’s neoclassical realism with a focus on the elites’ perception as an intervening variable, international systemic pressure as an independent variable, and foreign policy outcome as a dependent variable. Chapter 2 reviews the strategic culture of a middle power. Chapter 3 finds China’s AI strategy as a systemic threat. Chapter 4 explores the former Korean governments’ strategic ideas for China. Chapter 5 finds Moon Jae-in government’s idea of the China AI strategy. Results: The article reveals the nature of China’s AI, the role of Korea’s strategic culture, and the capacity of policy elites to emerging security. First, China s AI has the nature of systemic pressure. Sec-ond, the foreign policy executives of Korea differently respond to China’s systemic pressure. Third, the Moon Jae-in government’s policy elites have autonomous power against the international systemic pressure and consider the economic interest as important. Conclusion: This article concluded that the foreign policy elites’ perception intervenes between the international systemic pressure and state foreign policy-making. The elites induce the discussion of AI from the view of middle power multilateralism rather than that of AI from the view of ethical and geopolitical context. The article also says that Korea s foreign policy elites can operationalize the ideas in considering the balance of interest with China.

Food security policy choices: A review of the usefulness of public policy taxonomies

This paper addresses the "dependent variable"problem in food security policies, namely the difficulty in classifying food security policies that limits comparative policy studies. Policy comparisons require criteria that are general enough for broad application but sensitive to the context. A rigorous and objective basis for comparisons would allow for studying how policies, and food security policies in particular, emerge. This is important in Africa as, in the past, food security and nutrition crises have been attributed to the failure of government policies. This paper reviews the main key available public policy classifications based on their predictability, mutual-exclusivity and relevance. These include Lowi's and Wilson's typologies, the agricultural policies' classification by Norton and the FAO-FAPDA classification. The review found that available typologies do not accommodate multi-sectoral actions and are not entirely applicable to food security public policy classification. The domain shift from food policy to food security,and more recently to food systems demands that all elements in the food system to be taken into consideration in the policy process. This limits the use of policies as "dependent variables"and hence the study of how they emerge, particularly in Africa. A critique of available policy classes shows that these cannot be treated as "dependent variables". It is argued that a potential solution to the "dependent variable" problem of food security policies lies in the development of a taxonomy, simplifying their complexity with analytical shortcuts. Having reviewed Candel and Daugbjergs’ recent taxonomy, refinements are proposed to be applied in the African context. The proposed taxonomy represents an alternative to classify food security policies in Africa along four core dimensions. This classification offers prospects for researchers to study what factors drives policy-classes in one direction or the other, along the four dimensions. Although the scales and calibration of the four dimensions will need to be developed and tested, the proposed typology offers a way to treat the dimensions as “dependent variables”.

Buck-passing, Chain-ganging and Alliances in the Multipolar Indo-Asia-Pacific

ABSTRACT Christensen’s and Snyder’s neorealist-based theory of buck-passing and chain-ganging uses offence-defence balance to predict state security policy choices under multipolarity. This approach is applicable to the US-led alliance system in the multipolar Indo-Asia-Pacific. Given regional Sino-US rivalry, hedging opportunities for US ‘hub-and-spoke’ allies will dissipate, increasing the likelihood of allies choosing to buck-pass or chain-gang in the face of conflict. With defence superior in the region, it is more likely that US allies will buck-pass rather than chain-gang. Beyond Indo-Asia-Pacific states, this has implications for global actors – such as the EU – seeking to raise their security profile in the region, as buck-passing behaviour gives greater time to adjust to potential conflict scenarios than chain-ganging.

Do Fences Make Good Neighbours? An Analysis of Israel's Security Policy Choices

Is Israeli security best assured by strategic contraction or expansion? Does Israel's decision to build a security fence and the nation's security policies of contracting, rather than expanding, mark a major strategic shift in policy to make Israel more secure in the long run? Or should more attention be focused on the 2006 invasion of Lebanon as signalling a return to the older security policies based on expansion of the country's security sphere, placing Israel more in context with the American-led war on terrorism, with an emphasis on pre-emption to eliminate short-run terrorist threats? This article analyses Israel's recent security policy choices, especially the decision to erect the wall separating Israelis from Palestinians, combined with the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in August 2005, followed by the decision to return to Gaza and invade Lebanon in July 2006. Did these events represent the failure of Israeli security initiatives of the early 2000s and a return to old security dynamics of expansion vs. contraction?

Security Ethics and the Modern Military: The Case of the Israel Defense Forces

The rise to the fore of realist ontologies in international relations has meant that ethical issues have been associated more with evaluation than explanation. Yet ignoring the constitutive role of morality and ethics in structuring security policy choices leaves us without a complete understanding of the causes and consequences of international behavior. Accordingly, this article seeks to transplant the role of ethics from the realm of evaluative to empirical theory by introducing the idea of a security ethic, referring to the state’s—and by extension the military’s—normative attitudes toward the use of organized violence, including under what circumstances it is ethically permissible to use force at all, and the manner in which force can be justly employed in a given military operation. The article develops this framework by reference to the historical security outlook of the Israel Defense Forces.

Food Security In Developing Countries

Food security and hunger are age-old problems that endure today. More than 820 million people are chronically undernourished because they are unable to obtain sufficient food by any means. Chronic malnutrition results from a continuously inadequate diet, reducing physical capacity, lowering productivity, stunting growth, and inhibiting learning. Over time, chronic malnutrition kills, blinds, and debilitates. Yet, enough food is produced worldwide to provide adequate food for all. The current global population of some 6 billion people have 15 percent more food available per capita than had the world's 3 billion people some four decades ago. After fifty years of substantial economic growth, steady progress in agricultural productivity, remarkable increases in per capita food availability, and numerous international and national efforts to address hunger, food security remains a formidable global problem. Food security implies an individual has access at all times to enough food for an active and healthy life. Food security has numerous interrelated dimensions. Availability of food and access to food are the two most common defining characteristics of food security. Availability and access to food are affected by population growth, demographic trends, economic development, government policies, income levels, health, nutrition, gender, environmental degradation, natural disasters, refugees, migration disease, and concentrated resource ownership. Nations increasingly understand that many of these problems cannot be resolved by one country or group; they transcend national borders, spreading starvation, instability and environmental degradation throughout the region and around the world. During the early 1990s, food security issues pushed their way back onto a crowded international agenda. Not since the "world food crisis" of the early 1970s had the international community focused so much attention on the seemingly never ending race between food production and population growth. Record-low levels of global food reserves in the mid 1990s, weather-related crop failures, financial and economic crisis, policy-induced declines in food production, and doubts about the long-term sustainability of the Earth's resource base to meet future global demands focused increasing attention on food security. In addition, many of yesterday's issues are back on today's agenda because of renewed concerns over declining growth rates for cereal yields, falling investment levels in agricultural research, and the persistence of large numbers of malnourished people throughout the developing world. Moreover, economic liberalisation, privatisation efforts, government spending reductions and the globilisation of investment and manufacturing began raising new concerns about agriculture's ability to compete for resources. Stabilisation policies, structural adjustment programmes and transitions from socialist to market-oriented economies influence sectoral and regional growth patterns, modify incentive structures, shift relative factor prices and reshape economic and social institutions. These far reaching national-level reforms in economic, financial and political systems alter agriculture's capacity to attract or retain land, water, labour and investment. Regional and multilateral trade agreements as well as international conventions on biological diversity, forestry, wetlands, fisheries and climate change have important implications for food production, consumption and trade, further complicating food security policy choices. Because food security is fundamental to national security and economic growth, agriculture gradually began to play a more dominant role in the policy debates about how to restructure domestic economies, reorganise public sector activities, and expand regional and global trade and environmental agreements. This chapter reviews food security issues in developing countries. The following section explores the evolving nature, characteristics and conceptual issues associated with food security, focusing on the various policy approaches used to address hunger and how those policies have changed over time. Section III discusses how food security is measured, providing and overview of regional experiences. Section IV examines the relationship between food security, economic development and poverty. Section V assesses the topical issue of environmental sustainability. Section VI attempts to explain why the too often ignored relationship between gender and food security is so crucial to a successful reduction in food insecurity. The final section provides some concluding remarks.

Ideology, Programme and Organizational Factors in Public Assistance: The Case of Israel

ABSTRACTWhile ideology may not explain differences in welfare policy on an international comparative basis, it can help account for the process of policy development in a particular country. In Israel, ideology was very significant in the historical development of public assistance by its influence on social security policy choices concerning the removal of certain groups from the residual programme of public assistance. Indirectly, ideology also shaped the extent and type of convergence of public assistance and social insurance, as well as the relative size and scope of these two benefit systems. It had, however, relatively little influence on the subsequent operating character of the public assistance programme, which seems to have an inner logic, independent of ideology, inhering in its operating principles. The latter — local responsibility, relative liability, less eligibility and means-testing – were reinforced by the organizational character of the sponsoring agency. Because they serve as a residual programme for groups whose claim for support is not yet legitimized, public assistance programmes in most Western countries will confront the same dilemmas and acquire a similar operating character.