scholarly journals Homeland as a multi-scalar community: (Dis)continuities in the US security/safety discourse and practice

2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110038
Author(s):  
Simone Tulumello ◽  
Roberto Falanga
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Public Safety ◽  
Local Scale ◽  
Global Security ◽  
Local Practice ◽  
Security Discourse ◽  
The Us ◽  
Discourse Practice ◽  
Good And Evil

This article takes steps from the birth and consolidation of “homeland” as the central discursive engine of the US national security enterprise; and takes issue with the dominant scholarly interpretation of the geographical and spatial implications of its emergence in terms of the dissolution of space and spatialization in security policy ( Bialasiewicz et al., 2007 : 416). We adopt a multi-scalar approach to exploring security discourse/practice, comparing the performativity of national and global security with the local practice/discourse of public safety—with empirical focus on the case of Memphis (TN). Our main arguments are that the homeland builds on the same performative elements of the emergence and consolidation of a certain conception of “community”, as it has become dominant in public safety policymaking at the local scale; and that the homeland/community performativity is the expression of a never-ending movement of production of multi-scalar geographies of the “good” and “evil”, made of the coexistence of centrifugal (pushing problems away) and centripetal (incorporating any given outside) dimensions.

scholarly journals Geopolitical rivalry of global powers and its implications in Nepal

Unity Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 57-65
Author(s):  
Geja Sharma Wagle
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
National Unity ◽  
National Interests ◽  
The Us ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
Military Security ◽  
Strategic Defense ◽  
Strategic Balance ◽  
Global Powers

National unity and independence, territorial integrity, people's sovereignty and national security are the supreme priority for any sovereign and independent country across the world. The essence of national unity and security is the most important and highly sensitive issue for Nepal in account of its geopolitical sensitivities and geostrategic balance as Nepal is located between two giant nuclear countries and rising global powers – India and China. Analyzing the national interests and national security policy of all three countries – India, China and the US, it is open secret that they have direct strategic, defense and security interests in Nepal. They, therefore, have strategic rivalry to extend their political, diplomatic, economic, strategic, defense and security and cultural influence in Nepal because of its geopolitical importance and geostrategic sensitivity. The emerging triangular strategic rivalry may undermine Nepal’s national interests and national security in the future as their rivalry gets intensified. It is a grave situation for Nepal which will have significant immediate as well as long-term implications. Nepal, therefore, should thoughtfully study to analyze the emerging global powers’ defense, military, security and foreign policies and strategies and should protect and preserve Nepal’s national interests and national security maintaining diplomatic and strategic balance among them.

scholarly journals The paths not (yet) taken: Ulrich Beck, the ‘cosmopolitized world’ and security studies

2016 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 369-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine Selchow
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Risk Society ◽  
Security Strategy ◽  
National Security Strategy ◽  
Security Discourse ◽  
The Us ◽  
National Perspective ◽  
Future Work ◽  
Radical Shift

While it is Ulrich Beck’s concept of ‘risk society’ that has mostly attracted attention in the field of security studies, in this article I argue that if we want to take Beck seriously, we need to go beyond his ‘risk society’ thesis and acknowledge that his main thesis was that we live in a social reality that is qualitatively new and, consequently, calls for a radical shift in how we look at and talk about it. To bring Beck into security studies, then, means to study ‘security’ from within Beck’s ‘new world’. For that, I argue, a sharper conception of what characterizes that world is needed. At the heart of my article I provide such a conception – the ‘cosmopolitized world’ – which I identify as being shaped by non-linearity and the interplay of two moments: the ‘cosmopolitized reality’ and the ‘tradition of the national perspective’. Building on this concept and experimenting with it, I turn to reading the ‘US national security’ discourse as this is constructed in the text of the 2015 National Security Strategy from within this ‘cosmopolitized world’. Reflecting on this experiment, I conclude by highlighting the potential that bringing Beck in this way into security studies holds, as well as pointing to the need for future work on the vocabulary of the ‘cosmopolitized world’.

scholarly journals The first hundred days of the Biden administration and the us foreign and security policy

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-213
Author(s):  
Dragan Simic ◽  
Dragan Zivojinovic
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
National Security ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Us ◽  
Foreign And Security Policy ◽  
The Face ◽  
Good Reading ◽  
Franklin Delano Roosevelt ◽  
Presidential Performance

The paper deals with the foreign and security policy of the United States of America during the first hundred days of the Biden administration. Ever since Franklin Delano Roosevelt?s first term, the presidential performance at the beginning of the administration has been measured by the first hundred days of a president?s term. The most important intentions about what is to be achieved, the selection of the team, key appointments, and the establishment of the National Security Council System, the most important speeches, and concrete moves towards regional and functional issues, say a lot about what the foreign and security policy of an administration will look like. President Joe Biden is no exception. Moreover, his insistence that the circumstances in which the United States finds itself are a truly ?Rooseveltian moment? contributed to the first hundred days of his administration being monitored with special attention. The authors start from the hypothesis that Biden, owing to his experience in government and a good reading of the circumstances in which America and the world find themselves, established a good and functional national security system as well as a clear list of foreign policy priorities. He, like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, found the appropriate balance between values and interests, means and goals, pragmatism and principle. The authors conclude that, although the first steps are promising, it remains to be seen whether Biden will reach the highest standards set by his famous predecessor, especially in the face of some unforeseen and unexpected events.

scholarly journals Deploying Ecological Countermeasures as a Biosecurity Imperative

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie Reaser ◽  
Gary M. Tabor ◽  
Rohit A. Chitale ◽  
Peter Hudson ◽  
Raina Plowright
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
National Security ◽  
Department Of Defense ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Ecological Resilience ◽  
Security Threat ◽  
Health Security ◽  
The Us

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought biosecurity to the forefront of national security policy. Land use change is a fundamental driver of zoonotic disease outbreaks, yet substantial study is yet required to unravel the mechanisms by which land use-induced spillover operates. Ecological degradation may be the 21st Century’s most overlooked security threat. Within the biosecurity context, we introduce ecological countermeasures as highly targeted, landscape-based interventions aimed at arresting one or more of the components of land use-induced spillover, the chain of biological events that facilitate large-scale outbreaks of diseases transmitted between wildlife and people. We provide case studies of ecological countermeasures of particular interest to the US Department of Defense, broadly discuss countermeasures in the defense and health sectors, and provide an overview of recent US policy decisions related to health security in order to underscore the need for greater attention to ecological resilience as our best defense against future pandemics.

scholarly journals Citizenship, community, and counter-terrorism

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm N. MacDonald ◽  
Duncan Hunter ◽  
John P. O'Regan
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Counter Terrorism ◽  
Security Discourse ◽  
Violent Extremism ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Semantic Prosody

This paper analyses a corpus of UK policy documents which sets out national security policy as an exemplar of the contemporary discourse of counter-terrorism in Europe, the USA and worldwide. A corpus of 148 documents (c. 2.8 million words) was assembled to reflect the security discourse produced by the UK government before and after the 7/7 attacks on the London Transport system. To enable a chronological comparison, the two sub-corpora were defined: one relating to a discourse of citizenship and community cohesion (2001–2006); and one relating to the ‘Preventing Violent Extremism’ discourse (2007–2011). Wordsmith Tools (Scott 2008) was used to investigate keywords and patterns of collocation. The results present themes emerging from a comparative analysis of the 100 strongest keywords in each sub-corpus; as well as a qualitative analysis of related patterns of the collocation, focusing in particular on features of connotation and semantic prosody.

Security Paradigms and Social Movements

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (6) ◽  
pp. 725-747
Author(s):  
Akihiro Ogawa
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
National Security ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Japanese Society ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Security Discourse ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
Peace Activism ◽  
Post War ◽  
Self Defence

Abstract In 2014, Japan’s cabinet approved a significant change to national security policy. Previously barred from using military force, except in cases of self-defence, a constitutional reinterpretation by the cabinet allowed “collective self-defence”—using force to defend itself and its allies. The decision was controversial, considering post-war pacifism is firmly entrenched in Japanese national identity. I analyse how national security has been portrayed in the policymaking process for reinterpreting the Constitution. Meanwhile, since the early 2010s, Japanese society has been rocked by demonstrations opposing this. I explore the rise of a new youth activist movement in response to the proposed legislation. In particular, I argue that new ideologies and strategies appealed to young people in the organising of various protests, focusing on how they interpret the national security discourse and locating these social movements in Japanese post-war peace activism.

A snake who eats the devil’s tail: The recursivity of good and evil in the security state

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 468-486
Author(s):  
Natalie D Baker ◽  
Nathan Jones
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Western World ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
State And Society ◽  
The Us ◽  
Drug Cartels ◽  
Mexican Drug Cartels ◽  
Simultaneous Representation ◽  
Good And Evil

The Islamic State and Mexican drug ‘cartels’ have been positioned as extreme menaces to the Western world by media and state actors despite their inability to pose existential threats to the US. These groups deftly facilitate such representations through barbaric violence which security and information sharing apparatuses uptake and amplify. The ‘good’ neoliberal security state combats and inflates these ‘evil’ threats which, in turn, empowers purveyors of security in a deregulated environment. The authors interrogate this problem through the lens of negative utopias presented in speculative fiction to understand the implications for state and society. Projected representations of evil as an existential threat present a conflicted vision of the future manipulated by political and media actors with dire consequences for democratic ideals. National security relies on a never-ending cast of foreign threats that legitimize counter-terror actions in the name of moral good. Security institutions persist primarily through the simultaneous representation of a never-ending battle of good and evil. They stand to gain from the existence of extremely violent groups, without legitimate progress towards their eradication. They also bring fantasy into reality through the recursive enactment of good versus evil.

scholarly journals A call to arms: Hero–villain narratives in US security discourse

2021 ◽  
pp. 096701062110058
Author(s):  
Alexandra Homolar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
International Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Security Discourse ◽  
National Archives ◽  
Policy Agendas ◽  
Political Agents ◽  
Plot Structure ◽  
Good And Evil

The rhetoric leaders use to speak to domestic audiences about security is not simply bluster. Political agents rely upon stories of enmity and threat to represent what is happening in the international arena, to whom and why, in order to push national and international security policy agendas. They do so for the simple reason that a good story is a powerful political device. This article examines historical ‘calls to arms’ in the United States, based on insights from archival research at US presidential libraries and the United States National Archives. Drawing on narrative theory and political psychology, the article develops a new analytic framework to explain the political currency and staying power of hero–villain security narratives, which divide the world into opposing spheres of ‘good’ and ‘evil’. Shifting the conceptual focus away from speakers and settings towards audience and affect, it argues that the resonance of hero–villain security narratives lies in the way their plot structure keeps the audience in suspense. Because they are consequential rhetorical tools that shape security policy practices, the stories political agents tell about security demand greater attention in the broader field of international security studies.

Part II Predominant Security Challenges and International Law, Technological Security, Ch.35 Biosecurity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Revill James ◽  
Roessing Anna
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
International Law ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
First Century ◽  
Considerable Progress ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Global Security ◽  
Security Discourse ◽  
Security Challenges ◽  
Conceptual Difficulties

This chapter discusses the term ‘biosecurity’, which is a relatively new addition to the global security lexicon. It looks at the origins and evolution of the concept of biosecurity, drawing attention to drivers of interest in biosecurity and the linguistic, cultural, and political challenges to cohesively defining this concept. Notwithstanding such conceptual difficulties, biosecurity has become an important topic in twenty-first-century security discourse as multilateral and national security-policymaking organs have recognized the potential security-related risks associated with contemporary biotechnology and have sought to mitigate such risks. The chapter then elaborates on what has been achieved in terms of building a biosecurity architecture. It also considers the current status of the biosecurity debate, drawing on examples from the patchwork of biosecurity measures undertaken across the globe to illustrate how this is an area that has made considerable progress over the course of the last two decades. Ultimately, biosecurity is a work in progress that will become increasingly salient in the global security discourse as life sciences and biotechnology continue to advance in a changing geostrategic context.

scholarly journals ‘GRAND STRATEGIES’, MILITARY AND POLITICAL DOCTRINES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: TRENDS OF EVOLUTION AFTER THE END OF THE COLD WAR. LESSONS FOR UKRAINE

2016 ◽  
pp. 40-50
Author(s):  
Valentyn Petrov
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
National Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Grand Strategies ◽  
Defense Planning

The conceptual and practical aspects of security policy of the USA in terms of their reflection in the ‘Grand Strategy’, military and political-military doctrines are analyzed. The hierarchy of strategic documents that determine US security and defense policy, together with the approaches towards their development in the context of the domestic policy, global trends and forecasts, are examined. The mechanism of working out various national level strategies and doctrines in the USA can be studied as an example. This world superpower has a definitely clear set of relevant documents. First of all, we are talking about the so-called Grand strategies & High strategies that can be determined as a specific component of the political and defense planning in the US. At the current moment, any other country can hardly challenge the US Power. That is why the American ‘Grand Strategy’ is not only a strategy of the national security, but also a leverage partly influencing the international, global, Euro-Atlantic, Asia-Pacific, etc. security. Taking into account above-mentioned possible implementation of the US experience in Ukraine’s defense planning in respect to actual threats and challenges to national security is studied.

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