Contemporary Security and Strategy

The study of security has been transformed by the ending of the Cold War. This has forced a major rethink about the basic assumptions underlying security studies. At stake are some of the key concepts in security studies in particular and international relations in general: security, power, conflict and the nation state. For 50 years academic theorising about international conflict was dominated by the Cold War and bipolarity. Academics and policy makers alike sought to explain and predict conflict within the international ‘system’. However they were not necessarily interested in conflict per se, but focused upon conflict between the superpowers. This was partly a result of the fact that most of these Cold War security theorists saw the world in terms of the realist paradigm. Realists argue that the international system is anarchic in nature and that states act to maximise their power or security. As such the actions of the strongest states are of most concern to students of the international system.

The origins of modern strategic thought can be traced back to the classical strategists. An examination of their works shows that the basic questions with which they have grappled over the past two centuries have been remarkably constant. There are strategic principles that hold good for all times and for all arms — irrespective of changes in technology and strategies. Not only that, the historical background can help us to clarify and understand contemporary issues. To understand the present and the future we need to understand the past because events do not take place in a vacuum, they have their roots in history. We cannot understand what is happening in Russia or China today if we do not know their past. History matters. This is especially true of the principles of war and military strategy. But history is not the only guide to the future. The present provides the patterns that can help identify the directions of change. These days one hears so much about ‘change’ and ‘revolution’ in almost every field — changes in world politics, the economy, the revolution in communications technology, and of course the revolution in military affairs (RMA) — that the risk of losing sight of the continuities in human life is ever-present. Much has changed in our world, yet much remains the same.

Realism occupies a paradoxical place in the study of international politics. It is commonly regarded as the dominant paradigm in the field, particularly in the subfield of international security studies. At the same time realism is frequently criticised. Almost all issues of the leading journals of international politics contain articles that claim to have refuted realist theory. Many articles and books pronounce that realism is dead, inadequate or irrelevant.2 Others argue that realism does a poor job of explaining a particular event or type of event and that other theories — particularly those that include domestic politics — offer better explanations.3

One day I found myself in a meeting with a group of students from Lebanon. We talked mostly about Lebanon in the aftermath of its extended wars. One of the women in the group lived in southern Lebanon, in an area still occupied by Israel and called ‘the Security Zone’.1 Seeing an opportunity, I asked her what she meant when she called the place in which she lived the Security Zone. Patiently she explained that it provided security for Israel by maintaining a space between the Israeli border and areas Israel did not control and could thus be used as staging areas for Hamas attacks on Israel — although she also pointed out that Hamas continued to operate in the security zone and there was nothing Israel could do about it. What about her security, I asked. Did she feel secure in the ‘security zone’. She smiled and shook her head.

Throughout the twentieth century, states have looked to their immediate neighbours as potential sources of threat or protection. By focusing on these neighbours, states have sought to devise rules and norms for how states in a particular regional grouping should act. Rather than the global or local level, the regional level is where most of the successful post-1945 security arrangements have been achieved. It is also the level where the mechanisms and precedents for solutions may already exist. Barry Buzan argues that the relational nature of security makes it impossible to understand the national security patterns of a state without a firm understanding of the pattern of regional security interdependence in which it exists.1 As such, the region is the most appropriate level of analysis to examine issues pertaining to the international order.

Deterrence theory has been held up by some scholars as one of the most important and profound intellectual innovations of twentieth-century international relations. As Christopher Achen and Duncan Snidal argue, ‘rational deterrence is a highly influential social science theory … [that] has dominated postwar academic thinking on strategic affairs … [and] provided the intellectual framework of Western military policy’.1 Others have argued that the ‘long peace’ between the superpowers was the product of nuclear deterrence. These are neither small nor uncontroversial claims, and their truth cannot easily be assessed. They presume that deterrence theory presents a coherent and valid description of conflictual relationships between states (under certain circumstances), and that the theory has in some way been the foundation for national security policies.

This chapter outlines the factors that are likely to influence the future role and shape of nuclear strategy. The analysis is divided into two parts: a relatively extensive look at US strategy; and a broader overview of the issues impacting on the nuclear strategies of the other nuclear-weapon states. The reason for this asymmetry is twofold. First, the United States looks set to retain its leading role in international relations for at least the next decade. Second, the debate on the US nuclear strategy has traditionally been more informed and wide-ranging than the debate on the other actors; this is connected to the fact that policy development is far more transparent in the United States than anywhere else. This last point needs extending: in some other states any public disclosure of nuclear status and planning is considered as treason. This has important implications for academic reflection; in particular it means one has to acknowledge the extent of unknown territory in this field and be circumspect about coming to firm conclusions.

The issue of the proliferation of nuclear weapons has been pushed to the forefront of the post-Cold War security agenda. While the spread of nuclear weapons has of course been, a perennial concern since the detonation of the first such weapon in July 1945, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ending of the Cold War the problem has assumed new proportions and is consequently being addressed with increasing urgency. This current interest is partly the result of a reordering of the ‘list’ of priorities in international security.1 That is, it is hardly surprising that with the disappearance of the issue that overwhelmingly occupied the attentions of policy makers and scholars alike — the confrontation between the superpowers — new priorities should be assigned. However the issue of nuclear proliferation has itself undergone change because of the end of the Cold War. It is primarily these new dimensions to the issue that are fuelling the heightened concern and flurry of activity to address these problems.

With the end of the Cold War and considering the ease with which the United States-led coalition defeated the Iraqi military in the 1990–91 Gulf War, many saw the emergence of a new period of peaceful international relations that would be governed by the rule of law backed by overwhelming US military power. The myth of the ‘new world order’ was quickly shattered, however, when a series of violent clashes erupted between various substate entities in the Middle East, Yugoslavia, Africa and countries of the former Soviet Union. In total there were 95 armed conflicts in the world between January 1990 and the end of 1995.1 Many of these conflicts had been previously suppressed by the two superpowers, either as a result of Soviet hegemony over the region (the Balkans and Caucasus) or direct superpower rivalry overriding local patterns of enmity (the Middle East and, to a lesser extent, Africa). Without the Cold War dynamics overriding local relations, political crises over ethnic animosities, socioeconomic imbalances and internal and regional political competition came to the fore for ethnic, communal, state and regional leaders.2 In addition the United States, far from happy with the role of ‘world enforcer’, was reluctant or incapable of responding to acts of aggression. Moreover most of these conflicts did not begin as interstate wars with a clear violation of international rules and norms but rather as substate conflicts between rival ethnic or communal groups.

In recent years it has become fashionable to argue that the United States is in the midst of a ‘revolution in military affairs’ (RMA). Indeed both the academic and professional military literatures are now replete with analyses of topics such as ‘information warfare’, ‘cyberwar’ and ‘third wave warfare’, and such terms have come to figure prominently in both popular and professional military discourse.1 But while interest in the revolution in military affairs has been growing in recent years, this growth has been parallelled by a deepening confusion about the exact nature of this revolution, and indeed about ‘military revolutions’ in general. There is little agreement, for example, on the periodisation of military history, the causes of revolutions in military affairs and the nature and dynamics of the current revolution. The literature is also characterised by a dearth of comparative analyses of historical transformations in the nature of warfare, despite the fact that such comparisons have the potential to increase significantly the ‘visibility’ of the currently emerging mode of warfare by contrasting it with others. This chapter will attempt to address some of these issues, first by sketching a richer framework for studying revolutions in military affairs, and second by providing a focused comparison of the evolving mode of warfare and its predecessor, industrialised total warfare.