Assignment Help on International Security
What is theory for international security?
The traditional theory of IR which can be used for international security is Realism but we first need to understand the concepts of international security and realism separately. According to Britannica, realism is a theory of international relations that underlines the role of the nation, national interests and power of the military in global politics. A country is assumed to be safe if it can protect the citizens against or dissuade an aggressive attack and avert other nations from captivating it to regulate its behavior in important ways or to sacrifice fundamental political morals. This concept may be compared with other definitions of “security” that emphasize on either the people or the worldwide and do not honour the state, or those that contain peaceful threats to a person’s life (for example illness or environmental degradation), domestic misconduct, economic adversity, or coercions to cultural independence (Buzan,1983; Booth, 2007). The first version of International Security studies was published in 1976 that defined the term security as aspects with a ‘direct behavior on the foundation of the state system and the authority of its citizen, with particular importance on the use, risk and control of force’ (Carnesale and Nacht, 1976). In case of realists, ‘no nation will detriment its interests to help the greater community’ (Frankel, 1996). In 2012, it was reported by the US National Security and Policy Strategy that the danger of anarchism in the international system disturbs security tactics (Stolberg, 2012). Consequently, security is understood within the language of uncertainty and risk to the nation. The societies may deliver a law for preserving security, but they do not eliminate the cause of uncertainty; explicitly supposed intentions of state actors. Realism does not necessarily provoke violence by states, though it presumes that there is a sense of risk in the global system. States driven mainly by security should not as a universal law try to maximise their comparative power’ (Glaser, 1996).
If no nation is striving for power they are not pursuing to develop. Fear created by states is thus inappropriate, ‘if all states are moderately certain that none pursues development then the security predicament falls away’ (Schweller, 1996). This is a direct task to the realist concept of security being in the honest interest of the nations, and not on the bases of confusion of national behavior. Realist theory might comprise a flaw in relation with the ‘genuine’ incentives of states, the predominant example of an uncertain international environment remnants. The security problem becomes deceptive through a scrutiny of arms ethnicities such in South East Asia after the Cold War. The USA and the Soviet Union influenced the relations among the ASEAN members, but with removal of their sovereignty after the Cold War radical ambiguity reimbursed (Buzan and Segal, 1994). For example, Singapore is believed to have formed a security plan where ‘launching a pre-emptive attack’ on possible Malaysian violence may be essential (Collins, 2000). China was also seen as the ‘key menace to uncertainty’ in the 1990s (Buzan and Segal, 1994).
Observations of national behaviour as a factor for violent deed under a radical system shows how far realism has subjugated the understanding, by both dogmatic actors and academics, of the safety of the region. New security fears have been incorporated within the realist example by those who claim that issues such as economic and environmental pressures strengthen the state system, rather than undermine it (Mearsheimer, 1990; Rohde, 2004).
In the international system are order and justice in conflict or mutually supportive. Can there be security without order? Without justice?
The question can be answered through Hedley Bull (1997)’s book The Anarchical Society. In the first few chapters of the book, the author discusses the relationship between order and justice and makes numerous relevant observations. Bull (1997) reports that ‘justice, in any of its type, is probable only in a framework of order’, but knowingly he also admits that ‘that order is to be given preference to justice in any given case’.
Bull (1997) is strongly aware that what he calls the foundations of international society, ‘specially when they are working appositely’ that are often hostile to the accomplishment of what justice stresses according to our ‘everyday ideas of justice’. In an unusual exaggerated statement, he says that ‘the organizations and mechanisms which endure international order essentially disrupt ordinary philosophies of justice’, and he gives a number of examples about the institutions of the balance of power, war and international law. He states:
When the law is desecrated, and a new circumstance is brought about by the achievement not certainly because of justice but due to force, international law agrees to this new situation as a valid one. international law convicts violence, but once violence has been successful it ceases to be convicted. The conflict between international law and international justice is prevalent because the circumstances from which the law takes its point of withdrawal are a series of failed achievements brought about by force and the risk of force, authenticated by the opinion that treaties under pressure are effective. Nonetheless, the great powers, when they execute these duties to international order, do so at the worth of organized injustice to the rights of smaller states and countries, the unfairness which has been felt by the nations which fall within the Soviet domination in Eastern Europe. Though, it would seem apparent that, if an individual or a country were to be exposed to subjugation or influential control by an imperial or dominating power, authenticated by international law, the distinct position of the powerful nation similarly in the name of international order, not only could they, or their society, be said to tolerate ‘prejudices’ but many of them would be enforced to bear ‘disorder’ in terms of harming their lives.
Bull (1997) might possibly be thinking that, even under such situations, the target citizens or nation might still be said to relish ‘orderly’ social life as long as they were not completely deprived of ‘life, reality, and property’ and that what we can sensibly say in such situations is that they are treated unfairly in accordance to our everyday concepts of justice. But it would seem far more rational not to assert on the keen divide among ‘justice’ and ‘order’ here and admit that what the target population would bear, could come under the title not only of ‘injustice’ but also of ‘disorder’ in our ordinary concepts. Bull (1997) is completely aware of the degree to which the conservation of international order could be damaging to the quest of justice, nothing is said about the negative impact of the preservation of international order on the quest of order in discrete domestic societies. In order to deal with world order, in difference to justice, international order is thus made to look as a moderately benign force; it is likely to provide sustenance, and not likely to deter, the quest of order in distinct domestic nations, such that it will contribute certainly to creating what is attainable cumulatively as ‘order in world politics’.
