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Since the end of World War II, security and defence have played a major role in European politics. This compelling volume provides an interdisciplinary look at the development and current status of the European security system as well as selected key issues on today's security agenda

Outlines developments in the study of war, strategic studies, and security studies since World War II; policy options for the US and its allies.

SIPRI Yearbook 2012 includes contributions from 39 experts from 17 countries who chronicle and analyse important trends and developments in international security, armaments and disarmament. Their analysis points to three persistent contemporary trends that underpin a more dynamic and complex global security order: constraints on established powers; the continuing emergence of new powers and non-state actors; and struggling norms and institutions. Constraints on established powers In 2011 established powers in the world system -- especially the United States and its major transatlantic allies -- continued to face constraints on their economic, political and military capacities to address global and regional security challenges. These constraints were primarily imposed by budget austerity measures in the wake of the crisis in public finances experienced throughout most of the developed world. At the same time, uprisings and regime changes in the Arab world drew international attention and responses, including the United Nations-mandated and NATO-led intervention in Libya. The widespread support for and expansion of traditional peace operations over the past decade are also facing constraints in the years ahead. Moreover, the world's major donors to peace operations are largely looking to cut support to multilateral institutions and to focus on smaller and quicker missions. Continuing emergence of new powers and non-state actors States around the world outside the traditional US alliance system are building greater economic, diplomatic and military capacity to affect regional and, in some cases, global security developments. In-depth tracking of armed violence around the world also reveals the destabilizing role of non-state actors in prosecuting conflicts and engaging in violence against civilians. Unfortunately, the global community has yet to fully grapple with the ongoing structural changes that define today's security landscape -- changes that often outpace the ability of established institutions and mechanisms to cope with them. It will certainly take time for established and newly emergent powers to reach an effective consensus on the most important requirements for international order, stability and peace, and on how to realize and defend them. Struggling norms and institutions Multilateral organizations tasked with promoting and enforcing norms for stability and security continue to face difficulties in generating the political will and financial resources needed to meet their mandates, and gaps remain which require new or more effective mechanisms. A far greater focus will need to be placed on less militarized solutions to the security challenges ahead. Perhaps most crucially, many of the most important security challenges in the years ahead will not readily lend themselves to traditional military solutions. Instead, what will be needed is an innovative integration of preventive diplomacy, pre-emptive and early-warning technologies, and cooperative transnational partnerships. Adapted from the source document.

Taboos and regional security regimes / Janice Gross Stein -- Domestic politics of regional security : theoretical perspectives and Middle Eastern patterns / Zeev Maoz -- NATO and European security : the creative use of an international organization / Patrick M. Morgan -- Regional security and the levels of analysis problem / Steven L. Spiegel -- State-making and region-building : the interplay of domestic and regional security in the Middle East / Keith Krause -- Prospects for creating a regional security structure in the Middle East / Mark A. Heller -- Negotiating regional security and arms control in the Middle East : the ACRS experience and beyond / Peter Jones -- Assessing regional security dialogue through the agent/structure lens : reflections on ACRS / Emily B. Landau and Tamar Malz

From the earliest human records, warfare has been both an organizing focus and a prime source of political motivation. Countless battles have been fought in the course of colonizing the planet, and the experience has created a legacy of military confrontation that many people consider immutable. Since preparations for war and the occasional conduct of it have been central preoccupations for virtually all the major states throughout time, it is widely assumed that the pattern is rooted in human nature and will endure indefinitely. But contemporary civilization is undergoing a monumental transformation affecting its most basic features. The combined effects of information technology, population dynamics, and the globalization of economic activity are altering some of the critical operating conditions of human societies and appear to be inducing a new pattern of interaction. Correspondingly, fundamental changes in the practice of war-or what is now more politely called international security-can be expected to follow. Principles of Global Security anticipates the major implications of this massive transformation for security policy. John D. Steinbruner, one of the nation's leading specialists on defense issues, identifies formative problems and organizing principles relating to the predictable issues of security. He examines in sequence how the configuration of nuclear and conventional forces might be affected, how the problems of communal violence and dangers of technical proliferation might be managed, and how security relationships among the major states might be altered. One of the fundamental implications of globalization in a post-cold war environment is a shift in security policy from deterrence to reassurance, from active confrontation to cooperative engagement. Without an opponent to justify preparation for large-scale traditional missions,

"This book provides a framework for analysing the interplay between securitisation and foreign affairs, reconnecting critical security studies with traditional IR concerns about interstate relations. What happens to foreign policymaking when actors, things or processes are presented as threats? This book explains state behaviour on the basis of a reflexive framework of insecurity politics, and argues that governments act on the knowledge of international danger available in their societies, but that such knowledge is organised by markedly varying ideas of who threatens whom and how. The book develops this argument and illustrates it by means of various European case studies. Moving across European history and space, these case studies show how securitisation has projected evolving and often contested local ideas of the organisation of international insecurity, and how such knowledges of world politics have then conditioned foreign policymaking on their own terms. With its focus on insecurity politics, the book provides new perspectives for the study of international security. Moving the discipline from systemic theorising to a theory of international systematisation, it shows how world politics is, in practice, often conceived in a different way than that assumed by IR theory. By the same token, by depicting national insecurity as a matter of political construction, the book also raises the challenging question of whether certain projections of insecurity may be considered more warranted than others. This book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, European politics, foreign policy and IR, in general"--