The Cuban Missile Crisis: The Importance of Power and Knowledge
Theorists conceive of knowledge and its relations to reality differently. Knowledge of the world is ‘reality’, yet this ‘reality’ is socially constructed through discourse. Looking through the Realist lens, the Cuban Missile Crisis becomes an affair of two rationally acting Great Powers locked in a power struggle owing to the inducements of a bipolar anarchic international system.
EU counter-terrorism: security, justice, democracy and opportunity for all?
The European Union (EU) has been engaged in the fight against terrorism as far back as the 1970s, triggered by attacks at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. The EU’s counter-terrorism plans call for the vigorous promotion of security, justice, democracy and opportunity for all. But to what extent have such aims proved compatible and consistently pursued?
Algeria: The Obstacles to Democracy
The past is present in Algeria. Although the country is an authoritarian state, it technically exhibits a civilian-run government led by an independent politician. Is there a chance for democracy? Not if Algeria can return to an effective authoritarian state as it was in the 1960s and 1970s because it will then be able to appease its population with education, jobs, houses, and rising living standards.
The CNN Effect and Somalia
The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the influence of the media on the U.S. decision to withdraw from humanitarian operations in Somalia in 1994. The conclusion highlights the limits of the CNN effect as a theoretical framework for explaining media influence on foreign policy decisions. It instead emphasises the unique situational factors which influence policy.
India’s Nuclear Restraint and the Peaceful Nuclear Explosion
India’s nuclear trajectory does not match the realist logic that characterised many of the original nuclear powers. India has followed a uniquely Indian path towards nuclear development. By accepting the constructed-ness of foreign policy, it is possible to find explanations for India’s nuclear policy in the dominant understandings of Indian identity, science and modernity constructed primarily by Nehru.
The Manchurian and Abyssinian Crises and the Failure of Collective Security
Collective security in the interwar period was oxymoronic in that specific national security interests proved irreconcilable with the idea of security for all by all. Additionally, it was empty, as when perceived national security aims did not openly contradict the principle of collective security the two often did not coincide, a gap that translated into a powerful disincentive to embrace collective security as an ideal, and enforce it as a practice.
Contemporary global terrorism and the meaning and practice of ‘national security’
In light of the War on Terror, conceptions of security are evolving. Focus on national security is, and has been, waning as the sovereign state begins to lose some of its pre-eminence. Many security analysts claim the process of globalisation and it’s associated ‘risks’ are largely outside the control of nation states and that only the development of a global community can deal with this adequately.
Non-Traditional Security Issues: Should HIV/AIDS be Securitized?
Realism leaves little place in order to study broader fields such as health security that states may face, and therefore does not take into account HIV/AIDS as a threat to human, national or international security. However, scholars have recently emphasised the growing negative effects of HIV/AIDS on core pillars of states, receiving ever more attention by policy-makers as a potential threat to national security.
Mexico City’s Water Crisis and Community Activism
Mexico City’s urban water crisis is the result of a long history of poor resource management and negligible citizen activism on water governance. Viewing water as a human right, rather than an economic good, could form the basis for community involvement and improve access and affordability.
The Non Proliferation Treaty: Its Effect on US Foreign Relations towards Iran
During the Cold War the fear of nuclear disaster was a clear danger. The climax of the Cold War that brought the world the closest to nuclear fallout was during the Cuban missile crisis. The Non Proliferation Treaty was signed to keep the number of nuclear states to a minimum in order to try and limit the threats posed by possible nuclear nations.
