ULUSLARARASI POLİTİKA

Advocates of security failed during the interwar period between 1919 and 1939, similar to that of previous centuries for their own time. World War II (WWII) from 1939 to 1945 and subsequent Cold War system brought new political and military measures, and ideas about the question of how to overcome insecurity of sovereign states. Destructive impact of the WWII and following Cold War international system, largely based on bipolar division of militarily powerful states, limited security practices and discussions among state officials and academics to having produced policies and ideas about protecting state sovereignty.

Barry Buzan recognises nature of security as the main factor in the failure to provide a specific and common definition for it. In order to display this challenge, Buzan cites thirteen different definitions of security threats emanating from external and internal military and non-military sources. At the end, Buzan makes an attempt to define a kind of security with its multiple and complex face and characteristics. In his work, People, State & Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the post- Cold War Era, published just at the end of the Cold War, Buzan tries to capture causes of old and new security challenges by broadening and deepening the scope of security.

Mohammed Ayoob identifies international security complexities by concentrating on a specific region, the Third World. In his work, titled "The Third World Security Predicament: State Making, Regional Conflict, and the International System", Ayoob focuses on the Third World security impasses composed of interactions produced by the domestic failures of developing states, regional impacts, and the responses and interests of the developed states.

According to realist approach in security literature, power is the defining notion of state behaviors in the anarchic international environment. States always seek power in order to feel safe against the power increase efforts of other states. Thirst for power of states is a never-ending situation because power increase of one state is read by other state or states, especially in a neighbouring state, as a threat against itself. Counter action naturally produces a never-ending state of power maximisation among states.

Common characteristic of the Critical perspectives regarding security is that they challenge given social and political relations, and identify “ways in which they might be radically changed”. The Critical Theory seeks to explain both how security is constructed and how existing theories on security can be transformed. The Critical theorists use views of Antonio Gramsci and Michael Foucault in understanding the ideological context of conventional political discourses. By doing so, they describe the conventional approaches as being unjust power exercise and oppression. Having explained constructed position of existing traditional theories, the Critical approaches engage approaches engage in the effort of deconstruction of conventional discourses and propose a new opening for freedom, ‘emancipation’.

Securitisation is a framework for security analysis developed by the Copenhagen School at the Conflict and Peace Research Institute in Copenhagen in the 1990s. The concept of the Securitisation, formulated in the works of Ole Waever, Barry Buzan and Jaap de Wilde, broadens content of security by including military and non-military fields into the security studies. Most importantly, it introduces the view that a specific matter or security problem is actually engendered and constructed through multiple and complex internal processes as being an existential security threat. In other words, the concept of the Securitisation identifies how, why, and by whom a particular issue becomes securitised (securitisation) and de-securitized (de-securitisation). The concept of the Securitisation can, thus, be classified as a Constructivist approach since it deals with subjective matters.

Economic interdependence is one of the basic arguments of the Liberal school of thought. States having adopted free trade and worked for economic integration, are in a position of win-win with the states they interact in an interdependent manner. Economic interdependence is believed to produce not only financial benefits but also
bilateral/multilateral political gains. The EU is a classic example of economic interdependence that is thought to have changed old militaristic habits with new peaceful ones. There are, however, counter arguments.

Having seen the strategic values of nuclear weapons as an ultimate instrument of military defence, the UK, France, China, Israel, Pakistan, India, and North Korea have all developed their own nuclear military capacity in varying degree of destructive capacity, number and delivery systems. All of these states in their endeavour of obtaining nuclear weapons have adopted the examples of the Cold War nuclear deterrence between the US and the USSR. For instance, Pakistan sought to balance India as the latter has had an army which is far more powerful than that of Pakistan regarding conventional weapons. Rest of the nuclear weapon states of China, France, Israel and North Korea have all done so by bearing in mind and the fact that they could repel any large scale military attacks to be initiated by their military rivals.

Migrant workers and refugees are not new phenomena for the developed North and the developing South. Most of the cases of the flow of people as migrant workers and refugees towards the developed Northern countries have been occurring not from people experiencing absolute poverty but from relatively well-off groups in the neighbourhood of the developed world. Such cases of the flux of people are not mostly from poor communities of sub-Saharan African, but mainly from natural resource rich countries in the Middle East, Latin America, and Central Central Asia to Europe, the US, and Russia, respectively.

The famous work that is frequently cited in various research in the field of international relations and known as "the Clash of Civilisation" is written by Samual Huntington.

It was the carnage of World War I (WWI), between 1914 and 1918, that urged political leaders on the side of winners to provide security by preventing the occurrence of a new Great War.

Cold War ended with the fall of Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in December 1991. This meant the plethora of views, actions, and debates on security in international politics from the stance points of both intellectuals and officials in the post-Cold War era.

According to Buzan, a security complex refers to “a group of states whose primary security concerns link together sufficiently closely that their national securities cannot realistically be considered apart from one another.” The method of security complex provides a clear understanding to analyse regional security relations among states existing in the forms of well-established and stable in the developed North and of problematic and unstable in the developing South.

In the United Nations (UN) report titled "Report of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change" in 2004, six clusters of global security threats that the world has now faced and will face in years ahead are listed as economic and social threats, inter-state conflicts, internal conflicts, weapons of mass destructions, terrorism, and transnational organized crimes (The United Nations, 2004, 23). "Biological weapons" are not listed as a threat in this report.

Realism provides a wide range of theoretical tools on security including its both Classical and Neorealist versions. Despite some differences, Classical Realism and Neo-realism as a whole body of Realist paradigm share some common assumptions that are key in understanding security in international politics.

Classical Realism and Neo-realism as a whole body of Realist paradigm share some common assumptions that are key in understanding security in international politics. These common assumptions are: 1) International system is anarchic; 2) Power is the defining notion of state behaviors in the anarchic international environment; 3) States are the most important units/actors in international politics; and 4) States are unitary and rational actors. Choice A "International corporations are the most important units/actors in international politics." is not a common assumption of Classical Realism and Neo-realism. So the correct answer is A.

As war is always a possibility among states, the anarchic international system, as Realists cite from Thomas Hobbes, implies a “war of all against all”. Mistrust is the common attitude of states towards each other in an anarchic international system and states cannot rely on any promises of other states or international institutions, but only on themselves, self-help (Terriff et al., 1999: 31-32).

Classical Realist Hans J. Morgenthau defined politics among states (nations) as “struggle for power and peace” (Morgenthau, 1948).

According to Terriff, Positivism shows four connected characteristics in social sciences. First, “there is an objective truth that can be discovered.” Second, “the means of discovering that truth is reason and there is only one correct form of reasoning”. Third, “the tool of reasoning is empiricism, which enables the analyst to test propositions”. Fourth, “there can be a distinction between observer and observed”. The post-positivists argue that there is no distinction between observer and observed.

Ole Weaver suggests that security must be considered with a holistic sense.