International Security: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #369

by Christopher S. Browning

International security is never out of the headlines. War and peace, military strategy, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and revisionist states remain central to the discussion, but concerns such as climate change, migration, poverty, health, and international terrorism have complicated the field. So what really the traditional prioritization of state security or the security needs of individuals, humanity, and the biosphere?

Using a broad range of international examples, Christopher Browning outlines the nature of the key debates about contemporary international security challenges, and discusses the inherent difficulties that exist in tackling them. He also asks to what extent such debates are infused with questions of power, politics, justice, morality, and responsibility.

About the
Oxford's Very Short Introductions series offers concise and original introductions to a wide range of subjects--from Islam to Sociology, Politics to Classics, Literary Theory to History, and Archaeology to the Bible. Not simply a textbook of definitions, each volume in this series provides trenchant and provocative--yet always balanced and complete--discussions of the central issues in a given discipline or field. Every Very Short Introduction gives a readable evolution of the subject in question, demonstrating how the subject has developed and how it has influenced society. Eventually, the series will encompass every major academic discipline, offering all students an accessible and abundant reference library. Whatever the area of study that one deems important or appealing, whatever the topic that fascinates the general reader, the Very Short Introductions series has a handy and affordable guide that will likely prove indispensable.

Genres: Politics, International Relations, Nonfiction, Audiobook

160 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2013

About the author

Christopher Browning has been a member of the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick since 2007. He has also spent several years as a research fellow at Copenhagen Peace Research Institute, the Danish Institute for International Studies, as well as being a visiting scholar at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs and the University of Lapland. He holds a PhD from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

His main research interests are in critical approaches to security, identity politics and geopolitics. Geographically his interests are focused on the Nordic region, Europe, and transatlantic relations.

Reviews

[Bojan Tunguz · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book started off well enough, covering topics in what is normally assumed under the topic of international relations and international security. The first part of the book was a fairly straightforward, albeit unremarkable, rehash of topics such as war and peace, changing nature of armed conflict, and United Nations. In the second half, however, things started to seriously go off track. Most of that part of the book covered topics that, albeit important and interesting, are at best tangential to the whole issue of security proper: human development, proper natural resource management, environmental degradation, etc. The worst, however, was reserved for the last chapter which was essentially, and I am not exaggerating, a full-scale apologia for terrorism and the attacks of 9/11 in particular. I really couldn’t believe what I was reading, and parts of this chapter were stomach churning. I pretty much had to force myself to finish reading that rubbish. The author is apparently an acolyte of Noam Chomsky school of international relations, whom he directly invokes in this chapter. This kind of total intellectual dross I would expect to read on the pages of some third-rate college newspaper, but not from the pages of a serious scholarly book published by an eminent university press.

I’ve read several of these Very Short Introduction (VSI) books on themes of international relations, foreign affairs, and similar topics. Out of all of themes that VSI covers this one seems to be, by far, the most one sided and lacking any rigorous scholarly reflection. Whoever is the editor at OUP specializing in this topic should really lose his job, and sooner the better.

[Daniel Wright · Rating 1 out of 5]

'International security' and 'international relations' are distinguished from other academic disciplines in that everyone thinks him or her self to be an expert - without reading a single book, we all know a good deal just by reading and watching the news. It's perhaps not surprising, then, that this book comes across as being more like tedious journalism than tedious scholarship. It presents a number of different aspects of 'security' in a reasonably well-explained fashion, although he tends to assume an uncritically 'dove-ish' stance on issues.

But that doesn't really get to the heart of what I don't like about this book. It is not a history book. That's fine. It's not meant to be a history book, it's about the current state of global affairs - although I can't help but point out that this means that, only two years after publication, at the time of writing, it is already out of date (the Russia/Ukraine problem had barely entered the world's consciousness back then). But you can't understand the present without understanding the past, and the author of this book seems to think that 'the past' started with the Treaty of Versailles. Did people before that not have security issues? Did they not have standing armies, and diplomatic crises, and sovereign states? Were there not many thinkers who wrote deeply and wisely on these subjects? Have not an enormous range of historical opinions been proffered on just war, on right authority, on liberty and the rights of man? There is one brief engagement with Hobbes on page 14, and a mention of Malthus on page 80, but that is it as far as I can find. Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Machiavelli, Locke, Smith, Burke, and innumerable others might as well not have bothered. To me, a lover of old books, this is not just an oversight, but a deeply offensive one. The author would do well to consider the difference between those who know history, and those who repeat it.

Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: A contested nature [i.e. what is international security]
Chapter 3: The problem of war
Chapter 4: The United Nations
Chapter 5: The changing nature of armed conflict
Chapter 6: Human security and development
Chapter 7: Resources, climate change, and capitalism
Chapter 8: Saviours or sinners?
Chapter 9: The politics of fear and control

[Dennis Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't really a book on International Security for people interested in a short intro for the contemporary state of the art of the discipline. Indeed, it is almost jarring just how much of what makes up international security is left by the wayside. Terms are mentioned, but they are never contextualized into the broader theoretical canons. Instead, we get what sounds like a well intentioned, and mostly solid Atlantic-style expose. Where expertise seeps in, it is from people who are not scholars. Noam Chomsky and Judith Butler both received a prominent shout out, which comes across as bizarre when you realize how few of the main figures of international security, or even international relations, receive mention. Moreover, they are invoked not to engage with international security, but to make a broader critique, mostly normative, entirely divorced from the main thrust of the discipline. What we're left with is almost half a critique of international security from the critical scholars side of the discipline.

[Luke W · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rating: 2.0

Browning states in his introduction that, "For some people, the expansion of international security [as a discipline] is an unwanted distraction from what should be the core concerns of war, peace, and state security. In contrast, this book argues that expanding understandings of the nature of international security acknowledges the complex dynamics and multiple factors that frequently underlie narrower concerns with war and peace."

I realized that I am, in fact, one of the people who thinks that the international security discipline should not be expanded beyond the core concerns of state-centric security, and I fundamentally disagree with the weight that Browning gives to secondary concerns such as human security, resource management, and climate change. It's not that these issues are entirely unimportant - it's that they shouldn't occupy the majority of a short introductory book on international security. He spends 80% of the book on secondary issues while only 20% is spent on core principles (approaches/definitions to security, sectors of security, history of the discipline, theoretical assumptions, etc.). This 80-20 split should be flipped, and to call this an introduction to international security is a bit disingenuous.

[Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somehow it said too much and not enough simultaneously. It covered too much territory, yoking in topics that belong traditionally in the category of security, things like war and defense, with other things that are not usually categorized as security, like climate change and “human security” (which includes things like human and gender rights). In a Very Short Introduction on this kind of topic, it was a strange move to include these other things. Not to say that they are not worth discussing, but they don’t belong in this book. In spending so much time discussing things that aren’t really part of “international security,” he covered traditional security so thinly that I felt like I learned next to nothing. In saying so much about so many things, he ended up saying almost nothing about anything.

[Carl · Rating 1 out of 5]

First two chapters give a decent outline of the main categories of international security. After that it is just socialist propaganda. Using the short introduction title enabled the author a surreptitious way of propelling anti capitalist left wing politics through the guise of objectivity.

Very dishonest!

[Minh Nguyen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book touched on very difficult topic as the meaning of international security is very vague. I think Browning has done a good job to cover from traditional security concerns of war, peace, and international order to a broader international security agenda, such as poverty, climate change, capitalism etc.

[Joshua · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too many political positions without exploring the controversy for issues or well defining the concepts underline international security. reading Wikipedia articles would better serve interested parties

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good overview of International Security. Always tend to be with this OUP series.

[Mihai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brief, interesting, but a little stuck in the old realism-idealism dichotomy.

[Rees Fleming · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yet another book was bought on discount and never read it.


Have flicked through it about 6 times but never really studied it.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very short indeed. But a good overview with different sides of the presented issues

[Vikas Datta · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very lucid introduction indeed

[Darius Daruvalla-riccio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boring and difficult to get through at first but an okay short introduction to the topic. Learned a couple of things.