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The Insecurity Dilemma: National Security of Third World States

Brian L. Job, editor
 
ISBN: 978-1-58826-359-9
$26.50
1992/257 pages/LC: 91-35764

"A particularly useful study of Third World security issues."—Small Wars and Insurgences

"An important addition to the growing body of work on security and international politics in the developing world. . . . Job has assembled a strong set of essays. . . . This volume should be read by scholars and students interested in security questions and the international politics of the developing world generally."—American Political Science Review

DESCRIPTION

Positing an "insecurity dilemma," in which national security, defined as regime security by state authorities, becomes pitted against the incompatible demands of ethnic, social, and religious forces, this book addresses the problems and prospects for security in the Third World in the 1990s.

The authors advance four lines of argument: First, there is a need to rethink the traditional realist notions of states, national security, territorial threat, and war. Second, the security dilemmas of Third World regimes are bound up in the process of statebuilding and in the practical implications of political development. Third, the repressive strategies that many Third World regimes have adopted reflect an underlying logic associated with the regime holders' interest in their short-term survival prospects. And finally, radically altered relationships and conditions in the international system mean that the security interests of Third World regimes and peoples will be viewed differently in the future by both superpowers and middle powers; and the consequence may well be that traditional regional powers will attempt to (re)assert their security priorities and claims to dominance.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brian Job is professor of political science at the University of British Columbia. He has published in The American Political Science Review, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, and the International Studies Quarterly.

CONTENTS

  • THE INSECURITY DILEMMA: THEORY AND PRACTICE.
  • The Insecurity Dilemma: National, Regime, and State Securities in the Third World—B.L. Job.
  • International Theory and War in the Third World—K.J. Holsti.
  • THE STATE, STATE-BUILDING, AND SECURITY.
  • The Security Predicament of the Third World State: Reflections on State Making in a Comparative Perspective—M. Ayoob.
  • The Security Dilemma in Africa—R.H. Jackson.
  • DOMESTIC AND EXTERNAL STRATEGIES TO ATTAIN SECURITY.
  • Systemic Sources of Dependent Militarization—M. Barnett and A. Wendt.
  • Arms Imports, Arms Production, and the Quest for Security in the Third World—K. Krause.
  • Regionalism and Regime Security in the Third World: Comparing the Origins of the ASEAN and the GCC—A. Acharya.
  • THIRD WORLD SECURITY IN A RESTRUCTURED INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM.
  • Third World Regional Security in Structural and Historical Perspective—B. Buzan.
  • A New Role for Middle Powers in Regional Conflict Resolution—F.O. Hampson.
  • Superpowers and Third World Security—N. MacFarlane.