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Security Studies and the end of the Cold War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

David A. Baldwin
David A. Baldwin
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Abstract

The end of the cold war has generated numerous reflections on the nature of the world in its aftermath. The reduced military threat to American security has triggered proposals for expanding the concept of national security to include nonmilitary threats to national well-being. Some go further and call for a fundamental reexamination of the concepts, theories, and assumptions used to analyze security problems. In order to lay the groundwork for such a reexamination, the emergence and evolution of security studies as a subfield of international relations is surveyed, the adequacy of the field for coping with the post—cold war world is assessed, and proposals for the future of security studies are discussed. It is argued that a strong case can be made for reintegration of security studies with the study of international politics and foreign policy.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , October 1995 , pp. 117 - 141
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1995

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References

1 Kegley, Charles W. Jr., “The Neoidealist Moment in International Studies? Realist Myths and the New International Studies,” International Studies Quarterly 37 (June 1993), 141Google Scholar.

2 See especially the contributions by Ernest R. May, Raymond L. Garthoff, and Robert Jervis in Hogan; the essays by Peter G. Peterson, Gregory F. Treverton, and Barbara A. Bicksler in Allison and Treverton; and Gaddis, The United States and the End ofthe Cold War.

3 See especially the contributions by Ronald Steel and Robert Jervis in Hogan; Gaddis; and most of the essays in Allison and Treverton.

4 In order to make the subject manageable, this review article focuses on security studies in the United States. This should not be interpreted as implying that important work was not done in other parts of the world.

5 See, for example, Lyons, Gene M. and Morton, Louis, Schoolsfor Strategy: Education and Research National Security Affairs (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965Google Scholar); Bock, P. G. and Berkowitz, Morton, “The Emerging Field of National Security,” World Politics 19 (October 1966), 122CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nye, Joseph S. Jr., and Lynn-Jones, Sean M., “International Security Studies: A Report of a Conference on the State of the Field,” International Security 12 (Spring 1988), 8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Smoke, Richard, “National Security Affairs,” in Greenstein, Fred I. and Polsby, Nelson W., eds., Handbook of Political Science, vol. 8, International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1975Google Scholar). Smoke dates the emergence of the field from the mid-1950s, with its concern about limited war and the massive retaliation doctrine.

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11 Sprout and Sprout (fn. 10). One indicator of the impact of this book is that the second edition (1951) serves as the basic reference point for discussing the idea of “national power” in a textbook on national security prepared for West Point cadets-long after the Sprouts themselves had repudiated their earlier approach to analyzing power. See Jordan, Amos A., Taylor, William J. Jr., and Korb, Lawrence J., American National Security: Policy and Process, 4th ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 10Google Scholar; and Sprout, Harold and Sprout, Margaret, The Ecological Perspective on Human With Special Reference to International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 217nGoogle Scholar.

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19 Two recent reviews of the evolution of security studies ignore or make only passing reference to the contributions of such major figures as Wright, Wolfers, Fox, the Sprouts, Dunn, Lasswell, Earle, and Spykman. Walt, Stephen M., “The Renaissance of Security Studies,” International Studies Quarterly 35 (June 1991CrossRefGoogle Scholar); and Haftendorn, Helga, “The Security Puzzle: Theory-Building and Discipline-Building in International Security,” International Studies Quarterly 35 (March 1991CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

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23 See, for example, Smoke (fn. 5); and Walt (fn. 19). The most enduring contribution of the “golden age” was Schelling, Thomas C., The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960Google Scholar) Although concerned with nuclear strategy, Scheliing stressed the applicability of his analysis to a broader set of actors and problems, including foreign aid, tariff bargaining, child rearing, taxi driving, investing in the stock market, tax collecting, house buying and selling, voting, playing charades, striking, price wars, traffic jams, kidnapping, daylight savings, etiquette, Lot's wife, and selecting Miss Rheingold.

24 Kolodziej, “What Is Security and Security Studies? Lessons from the Cold War,” Arms Control 13 (April 1992),'2.

25 Walt (fn. 19), 215; Smoke (fn. 5), 303-4; Nye and Lynn-Jones (fn. 5), 9; and Trachtenberg (fn. 12), 332.

26 Gray (fn. 20), 90. See also Smoke (fn. 5), 304-5.

27 See Nobel, Jaap, ed., The Coming of Age of Peace Research: Studies in the Development of a Discipline (Groningen, The Netherlands: STYX Publications, 1991Google Scholar).

28 Smoke, Richard, National Security and the Nuclear Dilemma: An Introduction to the American rience in the Cold War, 3d ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993), 328Google Scholar.

29 Walt (fn. 19). Walt also portrays the “renaissance” as characterized by a commitment to more rigorous scholarly standards. Although he notes that much work on security topics fails to meet basic scholarly standards and “should be viewed as propaganda rather than serious scholarship,” he concen trates his review of the field on works that do “meet the standards of logic and evidence in the social sciences” (p. 213). He concludes, not surprisingly, that the field is doing quite well by social science standards. For a cogent critique of Walt's view of security studies, see Kolodziej, Edward A., “Renaissance in Security Studies? Caveat Lector!” International Studies Quarterly 36 (December 1992CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

30 Haftendorn (fn. 19).

31 On the militarization of American security policy, see the essays by Allison and Treverton, Peterson, and Treverton and Bicksler, in Allison and Treverton; the essay by May in Hogan; and Ullman, Richard H., “Redefining Security',” International Security 8 (Summer 1983CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

32 See Allison, and Treverton, ; and Romm, Joseph J., Defining National Security: The Nonmilitary As pects (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993Google Scholar).

33 Waltz, Kenneth, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979), 126Google Scholar.

34 Smoke (fh. 5), 248; emphasis in original.

35 This is not to suggest that the authors of these passages actually advocate unlimited defense spending. The relevant question is whether the logic of such passages provides any justification for a limit.

36 Even conceiving of security as a matter of degree seems to be difficult for some security specialists. See Buzan, Barry, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Coli War Era, 2d ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1991Google Scholar). Buzan asserts that the “word itself implies an absolute condition .. . and does not lend itself to the idea of a graded spectrum like that whichfillsthe space between hot and cold” (p. 18). And Klaus Knorr notes that his treatment of security threats as matters of degree “causes a lot of conceptual uneasiness” for other scholars. Knorr, “Economic Interdependence and National Security,” in Knorr, Klaus and Trager, Frank N., eds., Economic Issuestional Security (Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1977Google Scholar), 18n.

37 E.g., Dunn (fn. 18); Wolfers (fn. 18); Lasswell (fn. 18); and Brodie (fnn. 17, 18). Defense economists, of course, have usually shared this view. Their voices, however, were more salient in security studies during the “golden age” than during the 1980s. See Hitch, Charles J., “National Security Policy as a Field for Economics Research,” World Politics 12 (April 1960CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Hitch, Charles J. and McKean, Roland, The Economics of Defense in the Nuclear Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Schlesinger, James R., The Political Economy of National Security (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1960Google Scholar Walt's (fn. 19) recent review, for example, pays scant attention to the views of defense economists.

38 Walt (fn. 19), 212; emphasis in original. Walt's definition of the field is puzzling, since he had criticized the tendency to define security solely in military terms in an earlier publication. Walt, Stephen M., “The Search for a Science of Strategy,” International Security 12 (Summer 1987), 159CrossRefGoogle Scholar–64.

39 For other reviews of the field that emphasize military force as a means rather than security as an end, see Knorr, Klaus, “National Security Studies: Scope and Structure of the Field,” in Trager, Frank N. and Kronenberg, Philip S., eds., National Security and American Society: Theory Process, and Policy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1973Google Scholar); and Nye and Lynn-Jones (fn. 5).

40 See Brodie, Bernard, War and Politics (New York: Macmillan, 1973Google Scholar), chap. 8.

41 Smoke (fn. 28), 330. See also Smoke (fn. 5), 259.

42 See the interpretive essays by Bernard Brodie, Peter Paret, and Michael Howard, in von Clausewitz, Carl, On War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976Google Scholar).

43 Wolfers (fn. 18), 484, 502.

44 Lasswell (fn. 18), 75. Recent interest in “grand strategy” among security specialists has expanded the term to include diplomacy as well as military means, but economic statecraft and information remain neglected. On this point, see Walt (fn. 19); and Kolodziej (fn. 29), 434.

45 Nye and Lynn-Jones (fn. 5), 24; and Walt (fn. 19), 215, 224.

46 Dunn (fn. 18), 83.

47 Brodie (fn. 18).

48 Lasswell (fn. 18), 55, 75.

49 See the essays by Allison and Treverton, Peterson, May, Michael Borrus and John Zysman, and Schelling, in Allison and Treverton; see Shultz, Godson, and Greenwood; and see the essay by Jervis, in Hogan.

50 See Gaddis; and the essays by Gaddis and Ronald Steel, in Hogan. See also Gaddis, John Lewis, “International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War,” International Security 17Google Scholar (Winter 1992–93); and Kolodziej (fn. 29).

51 Haftendorn (fn. 19), 15.

52 Walt (fn. 19), 225–27.

53 Ullman (fn. 31); Buzan (fn. 36); Haftendorn (fn. 19); Kolodziej (fn. 29); and Kegley, “Discussion,” in Shultz, Godson, and Greenwood, 73–76.

54 On this point, see Buzan (fn. 36), 3–12. Recent reviews of the field by Nye and Lynn-Jones (fn. 5) and Walt (fn. 19),forexample, do not attempt to define the concept of security. Although many of the contributors to Security Studies in the 1990s allude to the debate about alternative conceptualiza tions of the field, none of the eleven course syllabi includes the famous article by Wolfers (fn. 18) on the concept of national security.

55 Sprout, Harold and Sprout, Margaret, Multiple Vulnerabilities: The Context of Environmental Repair and Resources, Research Monograph no. 40 (Princeton: Center of International Studies, Princeton University, 1974Google Scholar).

56 Knorr(fn.39),6.

57 Kolodziej (fn. 29) warns against consigning security studies to “a ghetto within the academy” and suggests that such studies be integrated into “as inclusive a spectrum of disciplinary units as possible” (pp. 436–37). On “reintegrating” strategic thought “into the mainstream of the theory of international politics,” see also Martin, Laurence, “The Future of Strategic Studies,” Journal of Strategic Studies 3 (December 1980), 91–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 E.g., Lyons and Morton (fn. 5); Bock and Berkowitz (fn. 5); Smoke (fn. 5); Knorr (fn. 39); and Haftendorn (fn. 19).

59 Yandell Elliott, William et al., United States Foreign Policy: Its Organization and Control (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952), 159Google Scholar. This view of foreign policy would be broad enough to include even tank tactics, which are specifically excluded from the purview of security studies by Nye and Lynn-Jones (fn. 5), 7; and Smoke (fn. 5), 251.

60 On the dominance of realism in courses, see Hayward R. Alker and Thomas J. Biersteker, “The Dialectics of World Order: Notes for a Future Archaeologist of International Savoir Faire,” International Studies Quarterly 28 (June 1984); and Alfredo C. Robles.Jr., “How International Are International Relations Syllabi?” PS 26 (September 1993), 526–28.

61 Waltz (fn. 33), 186.

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63 Schelling (fn. 23); and idem, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966Google ScholarPubMed).

64 Walt (fn. 19), 226.

65 For discussion of the logic of evaluating techniques of statecraft, see Baldwin, David A., Economic Statecraft (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985Google Scholar).

66 Bull, “Strategic Studies and Its Critics,” World Politics 20 (July 1968), 599–600. Bull's concept strategic studies is roughly equivalent to the conventional American view of security studies in terms of the threat, use, and control of military force.

67 In fairness to Bull, it should be noted that he was opposed to separating strategic studies from the wider study of international relations.

68 On this point, see Walt (fn. 19); Kolodziej (fn. 29); and Huntington, Samuel P., “Recent Writings in Military Politics: Foci and Corpora,” in Huntington, , ed., Changing Patterns of Military Politics (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1962), 240Google Scholar. As early as 1949, Dunn (fn. 18) noted this tendency and expressed concern about allowing “the consumers of research, and especially the governmental decision-makers, to determine the questions on which academic researchers shall work” (p. 84).

69 Wolfers (fn. 18), 481.

70 For other studies referring to national security as a symbol of importance, see Buzan (fn. 36), 19, 370; and Brodie (fn. 40).

71 Although it could be argued that American scholars were simply following standard governmental terminology, even this justification may disappear. President Clinton's National Security Strategy Engagement and Enlargement (Washington, D.C.: White House, July 1994) emphasizes economic prosperity, population growth, environmental degradation, mass migration of refugees, narcotics trafficking, and promoting democracy, as well as traditional military concerns.

72 Buzan (fn. 36), 372.

73 Lasswell (fn. 18), 55–56.

74 Strange, Susan, “International Economics and International Relations: A Case of Mutual Neglect,” International Affairs 46 (April 1970), 304CrossRefGoogle Scholar–15.