INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
The article, at the very core criticizes the flawed and under researched conventional security studies. According to authors, these studies failed miserably in understanding and gauging actions in contemporary security environments. These studies have failed to understand the essence of the security situation that has prevailed in world for long and the reason behind this failure has been their entire emphasis and over concentration on the European experience.
The study aims to understand the security situation that has been prevailing since World War two from an entirely different and non-conventional perspective. As the study observes, ‘In the contemporary era, Western powers face an ‘existential threat’ from a transnational network enterprise rather than from states organized along similar lines as in the past’.1 The articles critiques the Eurocentric character of security studies and their inadequacy in looking at the bigger picture and draconian threats. The article aims at exposing the Eurocentrism of security studies by highlighting the difficulties associated it generates for correct analysis of security relations. Making sense of contemporary developments by drawing attention to the implication of the War On Terror in histories of warfare between Northern World and Southern World. The study points at the changing dynamics of security concerns and reasons of war in Southern world, which were earlier restricted to national liberation and wars within entities in Southern world but now have extended to resistances from upper and rather neglected part of the World (in conventional security studies).
Security studies have in right sense become vibrant and diverse and have extended their scopes extensively and though not completely, but have started shedding their stern approach towards considering just western powers. The papers talks about, discusses and analyzes some key moments in the evolution of security studies during the course of history to prove how Eurocentrism overshadowed the bigger picture and resulted in almost one sided studies. To establish the point, four most important and significant events concerning geographical history of the world. The four events are conventional account of genealogy of war and strategy, the Cuban missile crisis, World War II and the Holocaust.
It talks about how some of the most renowned works on Security studies, like Makers of Modern Strategy have been totally dominated by Eurocentric histories and geographic Shapes. It tells us how, in standard accounts, even the Cuban missile crisis during the Cold War is considered a crisis an affair of the superpowers only with United States and Soviet Union taking the center stage and Cuba almost sidelined. The paper also very effectively and succinctly puts forward the way in which World War II has often been discussed. It puts forward how World War II is misconstrued and misunderstood as a struggle between democracy and totalitarianism and despite the important contribution of Soviet Union to the victory, US and Western Allies are often attributed the ‘Hero’ tag. The biggest evidence of the Eurocentrism is presented by quoting and discussing Holocaust, in which Liberals not only locate agency and history with great powers, characteristically Eurocentric, but also brand the actions by West as ethical and progressive.
The authors effectively prove that realism is no longer sufficient to understand and develop complete security studies. The study rightly reflects at the need of considering ‘weak’ in these studies for they cannot be neglected anymore and so that their scope is widened to see beyond Western powers. The study rightly ends by pointing that for rational and effective studies, weaker powers have necessarily to be included and should be weighed equally and with utmost importance.
References
Barkawi, Tarak and Lafey, Mark. The postcolonial moment in security studies. Review of International Studies, (2006): 329352
