Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-5wvtr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-19T18:15:18.745Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - The Cold War challenge to national security

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Barry Buzan
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
Lene Hansen
Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen
Get access

Summary

This chapter is devoted to those approaches which in various ways challenged Strategic Studies. These approaches had one thing in common – namely their criticism of Strategic Studies – but they also differed so much in their choices of key analytical and political concepts that it would be difficult to present them as one approach and to take this approach through one driving force after another. A significant challenge to Strategic Studies (although in part operating from within it and in part rooted in Peace Research) was Arms Control, which emphasised the collective risk to survival arising from the intersection of superpower rivalry and nuclear weapons. The Peace Research branch of Arms Control offered a very different, more normatively and politically driven, view of nuclear deterrence than Strategic Studies. But it was still, when viewed through the lens of the four questions that structure ISS laid out in chapter 1, an approach to security that focused on security's military dimensions and on external threats. The extent to which most Arms Control Peace Researchers envisaged bipolarity as a structure that could be eased but not eradicated, was striking. Détente – the political alternative to containment and deterrence – was seen as ‘rivalry with lower risks of war, not an end to rivalry’ itself (Buzan et al., 1990: 9; see also Pastusiak, 1977; Schlotter, 1983).

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×