Ronnie D.

Lipschutz, On Security, Columbia University Press, New York, 1995

This book addresses the fundamental questions about the security giving special
attention to post-cold war period. The chapters are organized in way that to answer
three questions. The first question is what is being secured. Second is what constitutes
the condition of security and third is how do ideas about security develop, enter the
realm of public policy debate and discourse and eventually, become institutionalized in
the hardware, organizations, roles and practices. The chapters participate in the
ongoing debate between neorealist, neoliberals, neo-institutionalist, constructivists and
postmodernists about the nature of political reality and it is expression in international
relations, as well. Many of the chapters address the ontological question of state too.
What’s the state? What is the nature of relations between the states?

The nature of the state, its development and previous understanding of the security is
discussed in the first chapter by Der Derian from early realists to cold war scholars,
which indeed gives us the basic understanding of the concept of security.

In the following chapters, the emphasis is given to the change in the structural features
of international politics post-Cold War, the emergence of the new security issues as
conflicts in Iraq, Somalia, Rwanda and as new identities, states, cultures, ethnies.
Accordingly, the necessity to rethink of concept of Security is emphasized in the
chapters of this book.

The editor and author of this book, R.D. Lipschutz reminds us that most of the new
threats are related with human health, welfare, social problems, internal sources of
instability and costs imposed on societies by disruption of customary ways of doing
things. Of course, these threats do not constitute ‘security threat’ in line of cold war or
neorealist line of reasoning. Yet, he reminds us that security has multiple and
contested meanings, as Buzan puts security is ‘’essentially contested concept’.

Indeed, according to Buzan, the referent of security derives from all the three
components of the state. These components are the idea of the state
(nationalism); the physical base of the state (resources, population, technology),
and the institutional expression of the state (administrative and political
systems).

The following chapter by Waewer put emphasis on the discourses of the security which
conceptualize the security itself. The discourses need threat and other. Without ‘the
other’, the threat would not be specified enough. In the chapters of Der Derian,
illusionary reality, and in the Waever definition of security as ‘a speech act’ emphasized
the importance of the discourses of security. In effect, Waewer defines security as a
socially constructed concept. Yet, according to the author, that security is socially
constructed does not mean that there are no real material conditions that help to
create particular interpretations of threats.

Waewer also warns that the problem of the redefining security might lead to rise of the
security issues but also the application of military measures to nonmilitary problems.

In the subsequent chapters, Deudray examines the security dilemma over cold war,
particularly in the end of that period, saying that the ‘deterrence’ would not work if there
is no material interest of the individual citizens to those of states. In this sense,
Deudray counts the citizens’ involvement in the formation of the security threat. Further,
the next chapter by Pearl-Alice March shows how the Regean Administration to define
security threat (S.U) and capture the citizenry in the politics for relationship apartheid
regime in South Africa failed. It failed because of the opposition in the civil society
organizations in the USA.

Concerning the questions, what’s being secured, what’s the referent object of the
security wanted to be addressed in the study, Crawford has a chapter where she
Crawford discusses international economic interdependence post-cold war. In this
chapter, ‘economic interdependence’ is discussed as referent object, and rising threats
to sum. Yet, ‘state’ remained as a center in the discussion. The author argues economic
interdependence reduces the possibility of open military fight between states (like dows
argument- cost, regimes and economic priorities keep states from military engagement).
Yet, it increases the vulnerabilities of state who cannot cope with the technological
innovations in the market (Hawks, failed access to military tech, problems in territorial
integrity and social well-being) as well. That’s what Crawford calls as ‘economic security
dilemma’. The author designs possible responds to this dilemma in the preceding
sections of the chapter.

By broadening explicitly security agenda, the next chapter, Buzan argues that by
definition of the state, different than other stateless societies’, lies on socio political
constructions, hence states will face different security problems.

Buzan argues particularly internal differences between states can have radical
effects on the construction of security, affecting both the breadth of the security
agenda (what kinds of actions- military, political, economic, societal, and
environmental- are perceived as threat) and the definition of priorities for security
policy. If the external attack is concern, the conceptions of the security will tend to be
similar in all cases.

Some insight of the security problem, Buzan claims, can be analyzed by examination of
the historical sociology of state. The expansion of the state system with a much better
integrated society and accountable state structures led the states to worry not just about
their military strength but also the competitiveness of their economies, the reproduction
of their cultures, the welfare, health and education of their citizens, the stability of their
ecologies, and their command of knowledge and technology. Hence, it seems quite
reasonable to ask how the state as the core referent object for security has changed.

Buzan explains the reasons behind the change in the international environment.
Industrial revolution has changed system and international society. Interaction capacity
means, the technological and organizational factor that determine what volume and
what quality and type of goods and information can be moved between states, and at
what range and speed.

The bottom line of international society is that states accord each other mutual
recognition as legal equals. In doing so, they lay the foundation for international law,
diplomacy regimes and organizations. They also create a society of states in terms of
shared identity. Both interaction capacity and international society have been increasing
in scale and scope and so have greatly expanded the menu of threats and opportunities
that states face in their international environment. In the second half of the chapter
Buzan gives a brief on New World Order concept. Its use reflects a desire to capture big
changes in international arena. Collapse of the SU is the one easiest one to observe.
There are also other economic, political and societal forces in this change in structure.
Yet, Buzan notes that the deep political structure of the system has not changed.
Anarchy remains the organizing principle and the state remains to be primary unit.
Buzan see now as union of the center and periphery network. According to Buzan, in
the end of Cold War, the center has become multipolar. At the center, there are states
as well as the international organizations. The periphery is considered as Africa and the
Middle east. Each states in this category according Buzan is threatened more by
internal than external security problems. All threatened by their inability either to
disengage from or to deal with an international system designed and driven by the
leading-edge states. He also discusses Asia under different category, after cold war and
retreat of US and SU , he argues there is a real possibility that something like a
classical balance of power appear in the region. He takes the concept of open and
close states and he examines the security agenda of states according to that concepts.
In the close state for instance the security agenda is broad comparison to open one.
Closed states are usually trying to protect or promote culture or an ideology that is seen
as vulnerable to corruption by contact with other ideas and practices. Buzan claims that
security agenda in the now will be very much set by how states respond to the cost-
benefits of openness and closure.

He defines today’s international arena as mature anarchy which includes both strong
and weak states. He defines mature anarchy as a system of a strong states embedded
in a well-developed international society. It keeps the states as the unit but contains the
security dilemma within liberal inspired ‘nonviolent conflict culture’. The EU is the
closest example of what a mature anarchy looks like in practice.

In the last chapter, the editor of this book Lipschutz gives a brief on the context of the
book and his position towards the issues that has been addressed by the different
authors who has different perspective and approaches in the security studies. In this
book briefly the questions of what’s security? How do we define it? Who defines it? Who
(or what) constitutes a threat? Why are they (it) threatening? Where do threats begin?
Where do they end? What’s being secured? Lipschutz tells us his position is in the
middle between the debates objective and inter-subjective perspectives to the security.
In this final chapter, he explores the ways in which security is constituted, he examines
the ‘speech act’ or discourse, concept of enemy and it’s disappearance after demise of
SU, and he analyses the implications of these ideas and point out the difficulty in
redefining security.

First of all, he says it’s hard to construct security when we do not have the definition of
state. He argues that the intersubjectivity in international relations derives from both
actors and the international system. He emphasizes ‘security the speech act’ does draw
on material conditions. However, he says that must recognize the imagination of us, and
the other; and imaginations of the others’ behaviors, and our intentions.

He emphasized that the speech act will be playing much bigger role in open societies,
where the referent of security is less clear. On the other hand, in closed societies they
had already clearly drawn boundaries which make the threats are clearer to the state in
concern.

He explains also losing of the enemy in the international area, by referring collapse of
the SU and the postwar conditions. He argues that Other that counts leaves no other
Others that can credibly fill its place. Yet the subsequent sections explain there is a
possibility for creating an enemy even in the world of economic capitalism, as Crawford
suggests. Lipschuts follows the logic of division of zone of worlds, saying that zone of
chaos is still bound to create a threat to the international state system.

In conclusion, Lipschutz emphasizes that post-cold war brought disappearance