Political Economy of Security
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An issue much discussed among international relations scholars today is that of the political economy of security. Stiles and Akaha (1991) note that this issue was long ignored in spite of the primacy of security in foreign policies of contemporary nations. The authors believe that the failure to address these issues is rooted in the general dissatisfaction of many students of international relations during the 1960s as they focused almost exclusively on state-actors and their presumed preoccupation with national security. Scholars have since that time paid more attention to the growing phenomenon of international interdependence, and this blurred the distinction between domestic and foreign policy and placing non-security issues on the national and international political agendas alike. Because the state-centric paradigm was inadequate to this task, there was a resulting deemphasis on security affairs. Stiles and Akaha believe this is wrong and call for the appreciation of insights from economics and political science: "Especially in the context of both the ending of the Cold War and questions about how to spend the still hypothetical peace dividend of savings in defense spending, and the Iraqi oil grab of mid-1990, one is hard-pressed to separate economics and security" (p. 332). This debate has actually been given added impetus by the apparent end of the Cold War and the accompanying disintegration of the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc. Political economists today
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such a nation, and there is now a challenge developing as U.S. leaders ask how their government could have supported Iraq and helped arm that nation before the Gulf War.
The issue is more complex than it might seem at first glance, and political scientists approaching the issue of security must consider a variety of elements. Morgenthau and Thompson (1985) note that even disarmament is not a simple issue: "Four basic distinctions must be kept in mind: Between disarmament and arms control, between general and local disarmament, between qualitative and quantitative disarmament, and between conventional and nuclear disarmament" (p. 419). Security issues are involved in any of these distinctions or forms of disarmament. Even as the U.S. and Russia agree to reduce their nuclear arms, we are reminded that nuclear proliferation remains a concern. Smith (1988) notes the contending perspectives on nuclear weaponry and finds that the rationale for these weapons has always been their utility in preventing conflict, since the weapons themselves must not be used: "Many think this situation is a stable one; the awesome destruction that would inevitably accompany the use of nuclear weapons induces caution in those who control them. Others
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1320
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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