The military security agenda | Colin McInnes | Taylor & Francis Group
DOI link for The military security agenda
The military security agenda book
What is security? For the starving in Africa, security is food. For the homeless, security is shelter. For the stockmarket, security is stability and economic growth. Security is defined by the user, not just in terms of the amount of security required in order to be safe, but in terms of the very nature of security itself. For policy-makers and academic strategists in the west during the Cold War, the nature of security was unproblematic. Security was the absence of war with the Soviet Union. The key questions therefore concerned not the nature of security, but the amount of security required. But with the end of the Cold War, the first-order question of the nature of security is firmly on the political agenda. As a consequence, the role of military force-for so long central to perceptions of security-is uncertain. The question is no longer how much military power is required for security; rather it is the relationship between military power and security.