The “Renaissance of Security” Languished until the Owl of Minerva Flew after 9/11

2019 ◽  
pp. 205-239
Author(s):  
Michael C. Desch
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
National Security ◽  
Political Science ◽  
General Public ◽  
International Security ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Practical Relevance ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
Primary Focus

This chapter traces the development of political science after Vietnam, chronicling how the discipline continued to professionalize on the model of the natural sciences. The result was to privilege the refinement of method over practical relevance. It was disciplinary professionalism, as much as ideology, which widened the gap between the academic and policy worlds after Vietnam. Thus, a complete explanation for the decline of policy-relevant national security studies must also include the dynamics of academic normal social science combined with the changing international security environment. The chapter then suggests that political science is most useful to policymakers when it takes a problem-driven, rather than method-driven, approach to setting the scholarly agenda for academic security specialists. Important problems—defined in terms not just of internal disciplinary agendas but also the priorities of policymakers and the general public—ought to be the primary focus.

The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Kroenig
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
National Security ◽  
International Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theoretical Explanation ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
Empirical Record

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.”

The Scientific Strategists Follow the Economists to an Intellectual Dead End

2019 ◽  
pp. 145-175
Author(s):  
Michael C. Desch
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
National Security ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
Dead End ◽  
Road Maps ◽  
Policy Problems ◽  
Thomas Schelling ◽  
Academic Social Science

This chapter assesses whether academic social science had any influence on nuclear strategy. Social science did have important effects on strategy. At times this was direct. More often it was indirect, working not through the formulation of doctrine or the drafting of operational plans, but rather by providing the intellectual frameworks and mental road maps that shaped senior policymakers' and presidents' thinking about the utility of nuclear weapons during confrontations with other nuclear states. Academic strategists such as Thomas Schelling reputedly exercised such influence that the period between 1945 and 1961 is regarded as the “golden age” of academic national security studies. However, scientific strategists reached a dead end by privileging internal disciplinary concerns like logical rigor and the use of sophisticated methods over addressing concrete policy problems.

scholarly journals Ensuring the resilience of the national security of the Republic of Moldova in the context of increasing the geopolitical coordinate of covid-19 pandemic phenomenon

2021 ◽  
pp. 18-33
Author(s):  
Veaceslav Ungureanu ◽  
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
International Security ◽  
Fundamental Problem ◽  
Complex Structure ◽  
Main Idea ◽  
Regional Security ◽  
Republic Of Moldova ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Impact

The research of the fundamental problem for ensuring the institutional resilience of the national security of the Republic of Moldova during the COVID-19 pandemic consists of the analysis of the geopolitical coordinate of the international events that determines the process of transforming the regional and international security environment. COVID-19 pandemic phenomenon can be considered a multi-dimensional global crisis in which the foreign policy actions of the great powers and regional powers have intensified in order to influence the reconfiguration of the geopolitical architecture of the international security system and the security complex structure in different regions of the world. The main idea of the subject proposed for scientific examination consists of investigating the impact of the geopolitical context of the regional security environment during the global pandemic generated by the new type of COVID-19 Coronavirus on the process of ensuring national security of the Republic of Moldova. Profifi ling fifi rst the examination of the political-military cooperation relations between the Republic Moldova and the North Atlantic Alliance, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, contributed to the elucidation of the opportunities provided by the Alliance to increase the level of the institutional resilience of the national security and defense system of the Republic of Moldova, which needs further substantial support of the development partners, by ensuring the adjustment of the national security components to the Euro-Atlantic standards that will strengthen the capability and interoperability degree in the national security and defense field, thus discouraging possible menaces and counteracting current risks and threats.

scholarly journals Globality and Entangled Security: Rethinking the Post-1945 Order

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona B. Adamson ◽  
Kelly M. Greenhill
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
International Context ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
Global Nature ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Important Form

Abstract In this essay we argue for the utility of moving from a “national” to an “entangled global” perspective on security. Focusing on the post-1945 international context, we discuss how the concept of “globality” can inform and reframe our understanding of transnational security dynamics and help move us beyond traditional state-centric frameworks. Such a move enables a better understanding of historical events and contemporary security dynamics than classical “national security” frameworks alone. After outlining the rationale behind our call for expanding the aperture in the study of security, we theorize security entanglement as a particularly important form of globality with its own internal dynamics and show how the entanglement framework allows us to rethink the post-1945 security environment and events within it. We then focus on three illustrative forms of security entanglement that have been underexplored in security studies: the global nature of the Cold War; dynamics of decolonization and its legacies; and the relationship between migration and security. We conclude by discussing the implications of security entanglement for future visions of world security.

scholarly journals A feminist approach to security studies

2017 ◽  
pp. 179-190
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Gasztold
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
International Security ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Feminist Studies ◽  
Male Gaze ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Main Thesis ◽  
Starting Point

The main goal of this article is to present problems related to using a feminist approach in security studies. The starting point are some of the basic terms used in the internally diverse sphere of feminist theory and their application in the field of political science. An attempt is also made to define the objectives of selected feminist studies that can be used in the analysis of domestic and international security issues. The main thesis of the article is the assertion that security studies are dominated by assigned gender stereotypes and meanings embedded in the so-called male gaze.

Temporality of Authoritarian Regimes

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Libman
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
Authoritarian Elections ◽  
Science Disciplines

The chapter surveys the existing research in political science and other social science disciplines investigating the temporal dynamics of authoritarian regimes. The chapter’s primary focus is on the incremental changes occurring in autocracies between their emergence and collapse, which has received relatively little attention in the scholarly literature so far. The chapter looks, in particular, at the evolution of authoritarian regimes toward individual or collective rule; at the regime cycles, caused, for example, by authoritarian elections; and at succession crises associated with death or resignation of leaders. Furthermore, it addresses the question of whether authoritarian regimes are better able to implement long-term and future-oriented policies than democracies. The chapter identifies a number of gaps in the literature on authoritarian dynamics relevant to future research.

Technique Trumps Relevance: The Professionalization of Political Science and the Marginalization of Security Studies

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 377-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Desch
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Self Image ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Narrow Definition ◽  
Basic And Applied Research ◽  
Definition Of

I explain here the disconnect between our discipline's self-image as balancing rigor with relevance with the reality of how we actually conduct our scholarship most of the time. To do so, I account for variation in social scientists' willingness to engage in policy-relevant scholarship over time. My theory is that social science, at least as it has been practiced in the United States since the early twentieth century, has tried to balance two impulses: To be a rigorous science and a relevant social enterprise. The problem is that there are sometimes tensions between these two objectives. First, historically the most useful policy-relevant social science work in the area of national security affairs has been interdisciplinary in nature, and this cuts against the increasingly rigid disciplinary siloes in the modern academy. Second, as sociologist Thomas Gieryn puts it, there is “in science, an unyielding tension between basic and applied research, and between the empirical and theoretical aspects of inquiry.” During wartime, the tensions between these two impulses have been generally muted, especially among those disciplines of direct relevance to the war effort; in peacetime, they reemerge and there are a variety of powerful institutional incentives within academe to resolve them in favor of a narrow definition of rigor that excludes relevance. My objective is to document how these trends in political science are marginalizing the sub-field of security studies, which has historically sought both scholarly rigor and real-world relevance. — Michael Desch.This essay is followed by responses from Ido Oren, Laura Sjobreg, Helen Louise Turton, Erik Voeten, and Stephen M. Walt. Michael Desch then offers a response to commentators.

Statistics and International Security

2018 ◽  
pp. 132-151
Author(s):  
Adam M. Lauretig ◽  
Bear F. Braumoeller
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
International Security ◽  
Data Gathering ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Scant Attention

There is a rich legacy of quantitative work in Security Studies, with scholars using regression to make a variety of discoveries about questions of interest. Unfortunately, much of this work pays scant attention to the differences among description, causation, and prediction. This chapter draws on existing work in political science, economics, and statistics to illustrate the distinctions among these approaches and the models and assumptions appropriate for each. The chapter closes with the hope that better quantitative research will lead to improvements in the field of international security and bring everyday methods more in line with the traditions of strong theorizing and effective data-gathering. It also provides resources for the reader to further explore the ideas presented in the chapter.

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