Military assistance is a perennial feature of international relations. Such programmes typically aim to improve the effectiveness of local partners, exporting the donor's way of war through the provision of training and equipment. By remaking indigenous armies in their own image, donors likewise hope to mitigate the profound agency costs associated with the transfer of military capability. But, while

What happens to dominant narratives and settled self-images of so-called peace nations when experiencing actual combat in out-of-area military missions? This question arises when studying the contemporary international engagement of small states that previously have mostly been engaged in peacekeeping with limited mandates and non-use of force restrictions. As today's international missions have altered

This article presents a study of the discursive politics of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States and Russia from its early onset to 30 April 2020. We examine how official securitisation discourses in the two countries draw on gendered constructions of national identity and discuss what linkages and potential implications they have for the state, its policy, and its society. Our analysis shows

Three decades after what is widely referred to as the transition from a First to a Second Nuclear Age, the world stands on the cusp of a possible Third Nuclear Age where the way that we conceptualise the central dynamics of the nuclear game will change again. This paradigm shift is being driven by the growth and spread of non-nuclear technologies with strategic applications and by a shift in thinking

Why did Britain withdraw from its military bases in the Arabian Peninsula and Southeast Asia midway through the Cold War? Existing accounts tend to focus on Britain's weak economic position, as well as the domestic political incentives of retrenchment for the ruling Labour Party. This article offers an alternative explanation: the strategic rationale for retaining a permanent presence East of Suez

While the current practice of the United Nations Security Council, the European Union, and the United States leans towards imposing only targeted sanctions in most of the cases, private actors often complain about inability to process financial transactions, ship goods, or deliver services in countries where sanctions targets are located. The impact of sanctions often ends up being widespread and indiscriminate

Twenty years after the passing of Resolution 1325, the participation of women as military personnel in peacekeeping operations remains limited. Women currently comprise just under five per cent of military personnel in UN peacekeeping missions, and the UN consistently calls for more. We contend the low numbers of female military personnel in peacekeeping reflects a lack of gender mainstreaming in national

Current debates about surveillance demonstrate the complexity of political controversies whose uncertainty and moral ambiguities render normative consensus difficult to achieve. The question of how to study political controversies remains a challenge for IR scholars. Critical security studies scholars have begun to examine political controversies around surveillance by exploring changing security practices

Risk has recently become a core aspect of the study and practice of security. This raises the question of how the governing of security issues has changed and how risk is situated vis-à-vis other approaches, particularly securitisation theory. One approach is to distinguish securitisation and risk within typologies of ideal-type logics of security, which suggest that while both are useful, securitisation

Realist and rationalist approaches to balance of power politics underplay the degree to which balances are socially constructed. We develop a constructivist approach that accounts for the elusive and contentious nature of the balances that states seek to balance. The approach foregrounds contests over balance interpretations between states that shape whose conceptions and assessments underpin the making

With wavering US support and Brexit unfolding, cooperation between Germany, the EU's economic powerhouse, and the United Kingdom, Western Europe's prime military power, becomes crucial for Europe's overall ability to deal with a resurgent Russia. Does institutional and normative disintegration between states, such as the Brexit process, weaken bilateral security cooperation? This article argues that

This article addresses a gap in the literature on military adaptation by focusing on the first step in the adaptive process: detecting failure. We argue that institutionalised feedback loops are a critical mechanism for facilitating detection. Feedback loops are most effective when they filter information and distribute lessons learned to senior tactical commanders. In turn, effective filtration depends

Differences between women and men in perceptions of security threats are firmly established in public opinion research, with the ‘male warrior’ and the ‘worried woman’ two well-documented stereotypes. Yet, we argue in this article, the differences are not as well understood as such labels, or the search for explanations, imply. One reason for this is the lack of dialogue between public opinion research

In this article, we show how Annemarie Mol's notion of ontological politics helps to open up the research agenda for cyber security in Critical Security Studies. The article hence seeks to further the debate about STS and Critical Security Studies. The article's main claim is that the concept of ontological politics enables an engagement with the complex and transformative dynamics of ICT and the new

This article discusses the grand strategy imperatives of 37 foreign policy experts in Washington, DC in response to President Donald Trump's nationalist challenge to the post-Second World War international order concept. Using an abductive reconstructivist methodology to analyse in-depth interviews, five grand strategy imperatives, or rules for action, shared by all actors were identified: safeguarding

At present, most scholarship on the potential for escalation in cyberspace couches analysis in terms of the technological dynamics of the domain for relative power maneuvering. The result has been a conceptualisation of the logic of operation in cyberspace as one of ‘tit-for-tat’ exchanges motivated by attribution problems and limited opportunity for strategic gain. This article argues that this dominant

The cyber realm is increasingly vital to national security, but much of cybersecurity is provided privately. Private firms provide a range of roles, from purely defensive operations to more controversial ones, such as active-cyber defense (ACD) and ‘hacking back’. As with the outsourcing of traditional military and security services to private military and security companies (PMSCs), the reliance on

For well over twenty years, we have witnessed an intriguing debate about the nature of cyberspace. Used for everything from communication to commerce, it has transformed the way individuals and societies live. But how has it impacted the sovereignty of states? An initial wave of scholars argued that it had dramatically diminished centralised control by states, helped by a tidal wave of globalisation

Since its inception in 2000, the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has conceptualised the conflict-Affected woman as a subject worthy of international attention, protection, and inclusion. In the wake of Europe's 'refugee crisis', this article examines how the remit of WPS has broadened from women in conflict zones to refugees in Europe's borderlands. A minority of European states now attend,

While there has been a long engagement with the impact of time on peacebuilding policies and practice, this engagement has to date focused predominately on issues of short- versus long-term initiatives, and of waning donor support for such initiatives. More recently, the critical peacebuilding turn has focused attention on the politics of the everyday as being essential to emancipatory endeavours enacted

Populists are on the rise across the globe and claim to speak on behalf of ‘the people’ that are set against the establishment in the name of popular sovereignty. This article examines how populist discourses represent ‘the people’ as a referent object that is threatened and the form and implications of this populist securitisation process. Drawing on securitisation theory and poststructuralism, the

Peacebuilding debates increasingly revolve around questions about knowledge and expertise. Of particular interest is what (and whose) knowledge(s) ends up authoritative in interventions. This artic ...

These days, when we hear the slogan ‘let's make our country great again’ we almost automatically assume the state concerned is the US, and the leader uttering the slogan is President Trump. This article invites readers to explore the discourse and practices through which another national leader is seeking to restore his country's ‘greatness’ and promote national and international security. The leader

In security studies and beyond, technological developments are associated with technocratic, rationalistic, transparent forms of security governed from a distance. In much of the advertising of tracking devices the associations made are very different not to say opposed to this. The advertising composes security anchored in sensemaking and resonance rather than calculus and reason, working from within

The purpose of this article is to introduce and explore the political potential of visual autoethnography. I do so through my experience of working as a Swiss Army officer in the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Drawing on my own photographs I examine how an appreciation of everyday aesthetic sensibilities can open up new ways of thinking about security dilemmas. I argue that visual autoethnography

Military applications of technologies for enhancing or producing vision play a key role in composing contemporary security, as such technologies are deployed to make security sense of everyday sociality, of battlefields, and of much in between these extremes. In this article, I set out to recompose militarised techno-vision through the public detritus left by its heterogenous development, use, and

This article sets out a framework for studying the power of secrecy in security discourses. To date, the interplay between secrecy and security has been explored within security studies most often through a framing of secrecy and security as a ‘balancing’ act, where secrecy and revelation are binary opposites, and excesses of either produce insecurity. Increasingly, however, the co-constitutive relationship

Making sense of digital security practice requires grasping how data are put to use to compose the governing of individuals. Data need to be understood in their becoming, and in their becoming something across diverse practices. To do this, we suggest embracing two conceptual tropes that jointly articulate the being together of, and in, data compositions: composting and computing . With composting

The emergence of new nuclear aspirants has posed a great threat to the post-Cold War global non-proliferation regime. These states have adopted a nuclear hedging strategy that has been deemed both strategically risky and politically difficult to maintain. Yet, hedging has not automatically resulted in nuclearisation. We analyse the conditions under which a nuclear hedger shifts its nuclear policy towards

The science of ammunition lethality is a field that seeks to define the point at which military ordnance takes life and produces death. By historicising lethality's epistemology, I reveal the intellectual fissures and scientific uncertainties that have been reified and embedded into contemporary conceptions of military power. This not only tells us something about the processes by which science is

Despite widespread public opposition to the Iraq War, numerous democracies joined the US-led multinational force. However, while some stayed until the end of coalition operations, and several increased their deployments over time, others left unilaterally. How to explain this variation? While some studies suggest that democratic defection from security commitments is primarily motivated by electoral

This article makes a case for incorporating the concept of ‘Critical Security History’ (CSH) into security studies. While history plays a powerful role in a cornucopia of security stories, we contend that it often goes unnoticed in scholarly research and teaching. Against this backdrop, we present a detailed guide to study how history is told and enacted in non-linear ways. To do this, the article

This article advances a new account of security as an intensely relational and ontologically entangled phenomenon that does not exist prior to, nor independently of, its intra-action with other phenomena and agencies. Security’s ‘entanglement’ is demonstrated through an analysis of the protracted security concerns engendered by ‘dangerous’ experiments that scientists performed with lethal H5N1 flu

Concerns over disinformation have intensified in recent years. Policymakers, pundits, and observers worry that countries like Russia are spreading false narratives and disseminating rumours in order to shape international opinion and, by extension, government policies to their liking. Despite the importance of this topic, mainstream theories in International Relations offer contradictory guidance on

Public opinion polls on national security issues are often seen as indicators of the strength of international human rights norms. By contrast, we hypothesise that the very act of answering poll questions can weaken citizens’ understandings of important international human rights laws and norms in the very moment they are being measured. We ground this discussion empirically by analysing a new dataset

Few issues are more important yet less understood than outside interventions in intra-state conflicts. Under what circumstances do intervening states further their interests and when, contrarily, do they plunge into quagmires? France is a critical case. It is, statistically, the world’s second intervenor and earned the sobriquet of Africa’s gendarme through frequent interventions in African wars. The

Is it joint democracy or state similarity that has a pacifying impact on interstate relations? This study explores the complementarity of the two propositions and demonstrates the potential of a particular kind of shared emancipative culture embracing values of autonomy, equality, choice, and voice to amplify the impact of joint democracy on interstate conflict. The data on cultural values, which comes

This article suggests studying special relationships in international politics from an ontological security perspective. It argues that conceptualising the partners to special relationships as ontological security-seekers provides a promising theoretical angle to address gaps in our understanding of three important dimensions of such relations: their emergence and stability; the processes and practices

This study introduces a new type of oversight in civil-military and executive-legislative relations: community policing . Building on principal-agent theory, this type of oversight emphasises trust rather than confrontation. To illustrate how community policing functions, the study examines how legislative oversight of military affairs operates in Belgium and New Zealand. Legislative defence committees

The positive effects of rule of law norms and institutions are often assumed in the peacebuilding literature, with empirical work focusing more on processes of compliance with international standards in war-torn countries. Yet, this article contends that purportedly ‘good’ rule of law norms do not always deliver benign benefits but rather often have negative consequences that harm the very local constituents

Sarah Bertrand’s article invites us to reflect – or reflect anew – upon the status of critical theorising in security studies and to engage seriously with the (post)colonial moment in critical security studies, and particularly in securitization theory. In reading the ‘colonial moment’ through the silence implied in securitization theory, Bertrand’s article advances two key criticisms of securitization

Drawing on postcolonial and feminist writings, this article re-examines securitization theory’s so-called ‘silence-problem’. Securitization theory sets up a definably colonial relationship whereby certain voices cannot be heard, while other voices try to speak for those who are silenced. The article shows that the subaltern cannot securitize, first, because they are structurally excluded from the concept

The individualization of punishment is a key element in liberal narratives about international law and international relations. By now, this narrative has become integral part of positive international law, especially the regimes governing the use of force and the prosecution of international crimes. Rather than punishing states or entire societies, liberals claim, punishment has become restricted

EJIS Junior-Senior Dialogue: Editors’ introduction The European Journal of International Security is pleased to introduce the Junior-Senior Dialogue, a feature designed to showcase the excellent work being produced by early career researchers in Security Studies. The Junior-Senior Dialogue seeks to recognise and highlight the many ways in which new scholars raise new questions, attack old questions

Our primary aim in this article is to explore vernacular constructions of Europe’s so-called ‘migration crisis’ from the grounded everyday perspectives of EU citizens. We do so as a critical counterpoint to dominant elite scripts of the crisis, which are often reliant upon securitised representations of public opinion as being overwhelmingly hostile to migrants and refugees and straightforwardly in

‘Third countries’ are frequently exploited by those involved in networks to transfer proliferation-sensitive technologies, allowing procurement agents to obscure the end user or vendor located in the proliferating state, and to deceive industry, export licensing officials, and intelligence services. While ‘third countries’ frequently feature in illicit transactions, the academic literature exploring

The clash between national security and civil rights comprises one of the most controversial aspects of counter-radicalisation strategy. Analysts present this as a conflict between the need for restrictive security measures (for example, surveillance) and the need to uphold civil liberties (for example, privacy and freedom of speech). In responding to this dilemma, the article examines how this binary

Created in 1972, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has a normative mandate to promote the protection of the environment at the international level. However, since 1999, the organisation has been conducting field assessments in postconflict situations and addressing the role of natural resources in conflict, framing the environment as a security issue. To do so, the programme insists on

This article develops an International Practice Theory (IPT) approach to United Nations peace operations through the study of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). MINUSTAH saw the introduction of new practices within the context of a UN peace operation, namely the use of joint military-police forces to conduct offensive action against armed groups that were labelled as ‘gangs’. While more

In this article we broaden the conventional understanding of prestige and show that prestige-seeking played a major role in the Danish and Norwegian decisions to provide military support to post-Cold War US-led wars. Both countries made costly military contributions in the hope of increasing their standing and prestige in Washington. Both governments regarded prestige as a form of soft power, which

Drawing on insights from International Relations and social movement theories, I explore anti-base protests on Jeju Island and the ensuing politics of peace. I find that the clash between activists and policymakers is fundamentally tied to different views regarding the legitimacy of state actions on security policy and whether actors see states or people as the primary object of security. These real-world

In this article, I aim to reorient debates, in International Relations and Law, about the relationship between law and war. In the last decade, writers have challenged common understandings of law as a limit on, or moderator of, warfare. They have instead claimed that law is often used as a ‘weapon of warfare’, describing such uses as ‘lawfare’. Below, rather than arguing that law is either a constraint

Combining the English School of International Relations and the study of grand strategy decision-making processes, this article investigates how dynamic density – growing volume, velocity, and diversity of interactions within international society – alters states’ strategy formation processes. By contrasting the perspectives of structural realism and the English School on the role of dynamic density

This article re-examines the history of NATO’s original post-Cold War enlargement to include the Visegrad states of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. It uses both published materials and the author’s new interviews with key US and Russian policymakers, and employs robust qualitative counterfactual methods to ask two questions: whether there were any realistic alternatives to NATO enlargement

As digital technologies and algorithmic rationalities have increasingly reconfigured security practices, critical scholars have drawn attention to their performative effects on the temporality of law, notions of rights, and understandings of subjectivity. This article proposes to explore how the ‘other’ is made knowable in massive amounts of data and how the boundary between self and other is drawn

Despite deeply conservative and gendered regulation, brutal violence, and widespread coverage of the group’s use of rape, more than 600 women have left Western countries to join Daesh. Researchers explain this recruitment primarily through women’s desire for romantic adventure, deception on social media, and anti-Western sentiment spurred by discrimination and violence in their home states. Using an

States generate the hardware of military power by either developing new technologies as first mover or adopting demonstrated technology as second mover. Given that military drones have arguably demonstrated effectiveness and thus proliferate, scholars have produced profound insights into today’s second mover dynamics. Yet, the preceding political process of developing this military technology remains

Starting in 2010, the Obama administration engaged in an effort to justify drone strikes relying on the concept of ‘imminence’. The aim of this article is to understand the reasons behind such insistence and to assess the administration’s efforts at conceptual change. Building on Skinner’s and Bentley’s work, the article argues that the administration has followed an ‘innovating ideologist’ strategy

Recent scholarship on militarisation suggests that Western democracies are threatened by military influence spreading into civilian domains. I contend that this research has identified problematic forms of militarisation, but that more careful attention should be given to different manifestations of this phenomenon. I borrow Herbert Marcuse’s distinction between necessary and surplus repression to

The use of numbers has been remarkably effective at pressing global claims. While research has documented the historical processes through which numbers gained such prominence, and has examined the political and ethical consequences of this omnipresence, very little is known regarding the specific ways in which numbers create the outcomes that sustain governance. This article proposes to close that