what is security

Question 1

To be secure is to be untroubled by danger or fear.

Answer 1

Allen. etc. al 1990

Question 2

Security in international politics is more than savety. There is two types of safety. Who said that and what are the types?

Answer 2

Bull 1995 p18
objective security =security which actually exists
subjective security =security which is felt or experienced

Question 3

What is an referent object?

Answer 3

reveres to what is being threatened and therefore needs to be protected

Question 4

Security is most commonly associated with the alleviation of threats to cherished values, especially those which, left unchecked, threaten the survival of a particular referent object in the future.

Answer 4

Williams and McDonald 2018 p6.

Question 5

What is the power or the problem that comes with defining security?

Answer 5

1. Security can be seen as a powerful political tool in claiming attention for priority items in competition for government attention (Buzan 1991 p370)
2. It matters a great deal who gets to decide what security means and what issues make it ob the agendas, how these issues should be dealt with and what happens if different versions of security collide (Williams and McDonald 2018 p2)

Question 6

According to the World Economic Forum Global Risk Perseption Survey 2023-24, what are the greatest security challenges/risks today?

Answer 6

Short term: Miss information, Extreme Weather, Polarisation, Cyber insecurity;
Long term: Extreme Weather, Critical changes to world systems, Biodiversity loss, Natural resources shortage

Question 7

What are the 4 underlying questions forming the intellectual core of security studies, according to Williams and McDonald 2018?

Answer 7

What is security?
Whose security are we talking about?
What counts as security issue?
How can security be achieved?

Question 8

What are the 6 clusters of threats that UN Secretary Generals High Panel of Threats identified in 2004?

Answer 8

economic and social threats
interstate conflict
internal state conflict
terrorism
transnational crime
nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological weapons

Question 9

The Book : People, States and Fear form Barry Buzan questions the assumption that security is just about states. He argues that the security of human collectives is affected by 5 factors. Which are they?

Answer 9

1. Military security: concerned with the interplay armed forces capabilitys and states perception of each others intentions (he calls it strategic study to avoid confusion)
2. Political Security: focused on the organisational stability of states, systems of government and ideologies give them legitimacy.
3. Economic Security: Revolved around the access of resources, finances and markets necessary to sustain acceptable levels of welfare and state power
4. Social Security: centred on the sustainability and evolution of traditional patterns of language, culture,religious and national identities and costumes
5. Environmental Security: focused with the maintenance of the local and the planetary biosphere as the essential support system on which all other human enterprises depend on

Question 10

what are drawbacks from expanding the domain of security to more fields

Answer 10

. Potential loss of focus
. Lack of prioritisation on the greatest issues
. Securitication

Question 11

Williams and McDonald (2018) nel8ve that many of today’s security problems are so complex that ir cannot provide solutions anymore. What is the solution?

Answer 11

students should look into a variety of discipline to connect to ir. Examples for that are terrorism should be study from a psychological point of view, transnational crime with a criminology lense and so on.