Search Results

This chapter analyses the security implications of nationalism, racism, and xenophobia. Nationalism can foreground common identity and social cohesion but also exclusion and rejection. Nationalism then constitutes and legitimizes hierarchies as racism and xenophobia do. While racism as personal prejudice is easy to identify and critique, racism as a bigger and more pervasive social system is more resilient and adaptive—it also has deep impacts on institutions that affect who is secure and who is not secure. Xenophobia is related to racism but centres more obviously on negative views of human differences, whether it is those with another citizenship, culture, or religion. The chapter then considers three themes: nationalism and its transnational facets in an era of resurgent populism; racism as a structure of global politics with impacts on insecurity at a range of levels; and finally citizenship and the risks posed to it—and rights more broadly—by xenophobia.

This chapter illustrates how ideas of design and security become more complex and diverse in light of different states, actors, technologies, and security objectives in the twenty-first century. It looks at how two different groups of security professionals are responding to this complexity. In particular, the chapter shows how two very different approaches to security and design are engaging with complex problems of global politics in a moment that some argue is a time of radical technological and geopolitical change. The first is the work of ‘critical design’, which focuses on our understanding of security in the broadest sense—encompassing all aspects of life, society, technology, ecology, and policy. The second is the ‘military design’ movement, focusing on questions of war in the twenty-first century.

This chapter outlines the nine different questions we can ask in relation to security: who can ‘speak’ security; security for whom; security where; security when; security from what; security how; security why; security for what purpose; and security at whose expense? Asking some of these questions help to determine the context within which security is being mobilized, while others enable us to precisely identify what security does within a given socio-political order. The chapter uses the global drug war as an illustrative case study. By asking the nine security questions about the global drug war, the chapter shows how illicit drugs have been used as a pretext to reproduce racism, violence, and structural inequalities. As such, the chapter concludes by restating the importance of not taking security thinking at face value.

This chapter looks into the evolution of terrorism. Changes in technology and other aspects of terrorism had produced a new form of terrorism. Globalization and the rise of information technology had allowed terrorist organizations to ‘flatten’ their hierarchies and operate across greater distances. Academic studies into new terrorism considers the following: the motives and actions of policymakers, validity of cause, and comparisons between ‘new’ and ‘old’ terrorisms. The chapter specifically considers Islam. The chapter also looks at considerations over the use of the term ‘new’ in relation to terrorism now. New terrorism has brought out a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the various trends and developments within the broader field of terrorism studies.

This chapter examines the limitations and problems of strategic studies with respect to security challenges in the global South. It first considers the ethnocentrism that bedevils strategic studies and international relations before discussing mainstream strategic studies during the cold war. It then looks at whether strategic studies has kept up with the changing pattern of conflict, where the main theatre is the non-Western world, with particular emphasis on the decline in armed conflicts after the end of the cold war, along with the problem of human security and how it has been impacted by technology. The chapter also explores the issue of whether to take into account non-military threats in strategic studies and the debates over strategic culture and grand strategy in China and India. It concludes by proposing Global International Relations as a new approach to strategic studies that seeks to adapt to the strategic challenges and responses of non-Western countries.

This chapter proposes that globalization is a neoliberal ideology for development, consolidated and promoted by key international financial institutions (the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund), which deepens inequality between and within nations on a global scale, resulting in increased global insecurity through a growing sense of injustice and grievance that may lead to rebellion and radicalization. It is argued that, ultimately, the globalization ideology for development services the interest of its advocates, the elites of the core capitalist economies that dominate the international financial institutions, at the expense and immiseration of the majority of people in developing economies and the weaker segments of their own societies. The chapter is set out in three stages: first, it presents the case for conceptualizing globalization as a neoliberal ideology for development; second, it provides evidence to demonstrate the harmful effects of the ideology on societies, particularly across the developing world; and third, it explores the connection between uneven globalization and global insecurity through two case studies: the uprising in Egypt in 2011, and the collapse of the Greek economy in 2010.

This chapter defines transnational crime and other key concepts. It first defines transnational crime and transnational criminal organizations (TCOs). It covers the rise of transnational crime with a focus on TCOs, their ‘new’ (networks) and ‘old’ (markets and hierarchies) organizational forms, and other useful concepts in the study of transnational crime. Second, it discusses the crime–terror debates, as criminal groups often utilize political violence for their profit-seeking ends, and terror groups use criminal activities for fundraising. It then moves on to explore the relationship between transnational organized crime (TOC) and the state, and the implications for global and national security of states. It provides a case study of TCOs in Mexico that illustrates many of the trends in organized crime since the end of the Cold War to the present. Finally, the chapter addresses how the international community has combatted transnational criminal actors as they become more powerful and increasingly diversify their revenue streams.

This chapter examines four major issues in International Political Economy (IPE). The first concerns power and the relationship between politics and economics, and more specifically whether politics is in charge of economics or whether it is the other way around. The second issue deals with development and underdevelopment in developing countries. The third is about the nature and extent of economic globalization, and currently takes places in a context of increasing inequality between and inside countries. The fourth and final issue concerns how to study the real world from an IPE perspective and it pits the hard science American School against the more qualitative and normative British School.