scholarly journals Ecopolitics and global security

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 154-170
Author(s):  
Cláudia Ramos

Ecopolitics entered political discourse firstly as an alternative debate to mainstream politics and ideological refutation of the established political order, and that way gained public expression in social movements of contestation. Subsequently, it emerged intertwined in the discourse of party politics and finally came to reach the core of contemporary political systems and their political agendas. The construction and the spreading of the ecopolitical discourse are addressed in the first part of the article. The way it entered the field of public policies is the core concern of the second part, with a focus on international and global security policies. Ecopolitical thinking has contributed to a shift in international security paradigms, from the conventional, realist and state-centred national security paradigm to approaches that privilege human security and global sustainability. To the end, the article reviews extant policy areas connecting environment with security.

Author(s):  
Tzanakopoulos Antonios

This chapter assesses sanctions as a (global) security governance tool. Law is an obvious tool for ‘security governance’, and ‘sanctions’ are an inextricable element of law. The chapter begins by discussing the meaning of sanctions and (global) security. It then traces the historical trajectory in the use of collective and unilateral sanctions in the service of security. It argues that global security is nothing but national security projected onto the international plane. When a hegemonic concept of security—that is to say, of the existential threats ‘we’ need to protect against—is imposed and accepted, and for as long as it is accepted, collective sanctions rule supreme and can be particularly effective. When there is fragmentation and antagonism as to what the threats are, when there is no hegemonic national security accepted as synonymous to international security, there is a return to unilateral sanctions and a concomitant sidelining of collective security mechanisms.


Author(s):  
Matthew Kroenig

What kind of nuclear strategy and posture does the United States need to defend itself and its allies? According to conventional wisdom, the answer to this question is straightforward: the United States needs the ability to absorb an enemy nuclear attack and respond with a devastating nuclear counterattack. These arguments are logical and persuasive, but, when compared to the empirical record, they raise an important puzzle. Empirically, we see that the United States has consistently maintained a nuclear posture that is much more robust than a mere second-strike capability. How do we make sense of this contradiction? Scholarly deterrence theory, including Robert Jervis’s seminal book, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy, argues that the explanation is simple—policymakers are wrong. This book takes a different approach. Rather than dismiss it as illogical, it explains the logic of American nuclear strategy. It argues that military nuclear advantages above and beyond a secure, second-strike capability can contribute to a state’s national security goals. This is primarily because nuclear advantages reduce a state’s expected cost of nuclear war, increasing its resolve, providing it with coercive bargaining leverage, and enhancing nuclear deterrence. This book provides the first theoretical explanation for why military nuclear advantages translate into geopolitical advantages. In so doing, it resolves one of the most intractable puzzles in international security studies. The book also explains why, in a world of growing dangers, the United States must possess, as President Donald J. Trump declared, a nuclear arsenal “at the top of the pack.”


Societies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Zeynep Correia

Airports are located at the core of the production process, but can they also be where the “revolutionary subject” is hidden? We know what airports stand for nowadays, but have we pushed for what they could possibly stand for? Can airports, as a form of urban technology, be reimagined beyond their current roles of a “space technology nexus” driving capital movement? Can we imagine, idealize, and locate them somewhere else in a period dominated by the economy of time, where speed and accessibility matter the most? In this framework, this provocative essay aims to frame airports as a protest and public expression venue. Drawing inspiration from recent examples, such as the Stansted Airport protests in the UK, the Occupy Airports protests that occurred all around the United States, and touching upon the divergent example of Turkey’s 15th of July night protests in 2016, I provide a glimpse of an alternative prospect for this key urban infrastructure.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Craig Albert ◽  
Amado Baez ◽  
Joshua Rutland

Abstract Research within security studies has struggled to determine whether infectious disease (ID) represents an existential threat to national and international security. With the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), it is imperative to reexamine the relationship between ID and global security. This article addresses the specific threat to security from COVID-19, asking, “Is COVID-19 a threat to national and international security?” To investigate this question, this article uses two theoretical approaches: human security and biosecurity. It argues that COVID-19 is a threat to global security by the ontological crisis posed to individuals through human security theory and through high politics, as evidenced by biosecurity. By viewing security threats through the lens of the individual and the state, it becomes clear that ID should be considered an international security threat. This article examines the relevant literature and applies the theoretical framework to a case study analysis focused on the United States.


2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 494-515 ◽  
Author(s):  
Björn Jerdén

AbstractMany states partially relinquish sovereignty in return for physical protection from a more powerful state. Mainstream theory on international hierarchies holds that such decisions are based on rational assessments of the relative qualities of the political order being offered. Such assessments, however, are bound to be contingent, and as such a reflection of the power to shape understandings of reality. Through a study of the remarkably persistent US-led security hierarchy in East Asia, this article puts forward the concept of the ‘epistemic community’ as a general explanation of how such understandings are shaped and, hence, why states accept subordinate positions in international hierarchies. The article conceptualises a transnational and multidisciplinary network of experts on international security – ‘The Asia-Pacific Epistemic Community’ – and demonstrates how it operates to convince East Asian policymakers that the current US-led social order is the best choice for maintaining regional ‘stability’.


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (02) ◽  
pp. 408-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Sjoberg

InGender and International Security: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security, J. Ann Tickner (1992) identified three main dimensions to “achieving global security”—national security, economic security, and ecological security: conflict, economics, and the environment. Much of the work in feminist peace studies that inspired early feminist International Relations (IR) work (e.g., Brock-Utne 1989; Reardon 1985) and many of Tickner's contemporaries (e.g., Enloe 1989; Peterson and Runyan 1991; Pettman 1996) also saw political economy and a feminist conception of security as intrinsically interlinked. Yet, as feminist IR research evolved in the early 21st century, more scholars were thinking either about political economy or about war and political violence, but not both.


2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 497
Author(s):  
Pedro Trigo

RESUMEN: Ponemos el núcleo de la modernidad en el descubrimiento de la individualidad, entendido como un proceso emancipatorio respecto de las co­lectividades que pautaban su vida. Sus dos modos básicos, en pugna constante, serían desarrollar su individualidad autárquicamente o entenderse como un ser humano, autónomo y único, pero referido a la única humanidad. Parecería que se ha impuesto el individualista, objetivando su dominio en los sistemas económico y político, pretendidamente autoconstruidos y autorregulados. Siempre hubo cristianos modernos, pero debieron soportar la contradicción de la institución eclesiástica. El Vaticano II discernió que el ser humano es histórico y que al hacer la historia se hace a sí mismo; reconoció que los bienes civilizatorios propician la vida humana, pero no equivalen al desarrollo propiamente humano. Sólo éste es escatológico. La responsabilidad ante los hermanos y la historia, que se ejerce en la encarnación solidaria, es el nuevo humanismo. La superación de la modernidad se da en el paso del individuo solo o en relación, al ser humano constitutivamente relacional, que se hace persona al actuar como hijo y hermano desde su insobor­nable individualidad.ABSTRACT: We put the core of Modernity in the emerging phenomena of indi­viduality, understood as a process of emancipation from the ruling groups. Its two ways, always in tension, would be to develop an individuality autocratically or to understand the individual as a unique and autonomous human being, but only in reference to humankind. It looks like that the individualist model has imposed itself dominating the economical and political systems, supposedly self-made and self-regulated. Modern christians have always existed, but they had always to deal with the contradiction of the Church as institution. The Vatican II discerned that the human being is historical and while making history we form themselves; rec­ognized that the civilizing benefits propitiate human life, but they do not equate to true human development. This is only eschatological. The responsibility towards brothers and history, that we perform in our caring incarnation, is the new hu­manism. We go beyond modernity when we pass from the individual alone or in relation to humankind intrinsically relational, that becomes a person by acting as a son and brother while anchored in indelible individuality. 


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