The purpose of this introduction is to concisely present The Morality of Security: A Theory of Just Securitization so that those unfamiliar with this work are better able to engage with the symposium. The book develops a Theory of Just Securitisation outlining when securitisation is morally permissible. Securitisation, here, refers to more than a securitising speech act coupled with a legitimising audience's tacit or actual acceptance of the threat and defence framing. Arguably the question of the morality of securitisation is most pertinent when the same encompasses the use of measures and conduct that most reasonable persons would ordinarily (that is, in times when there is no relevant threat) consider unacceptable, largely because of the harm and/or the violence risked or entailed.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were deployed extensively relative to other democracies’ militaries to combat the coronavirus during 2020–1. Ostensibly, the military's engagements are instrumental in addressing the pandemic due to its resources and hierarchical discipline, and especially in light of its centrality in Israel. However, problems remain concerning this deployment, the most prominent and relevant to the case of Israel being the high legitimacy that the Israeli public afforded this policy, especially given the alternative options available to the government. Motivated by this conundrum, I present a circular argument: securitisation legitimised the deployment of the military and in turn, this deployment, constitutive of the discourse of securitisation, further legitimised securitisation. Consequently, Israel could legitimately adopt an enemy-oriented approach to deal with the crisis, an approach that ‘enemises’ the population.

In recent years, Brazil and Poland have elected governments that are sceptical of both the liberal international order and gender. In both cases, contemporary administrations have bolstered the pre-existing anti-gender offensive of religious and secular conservative forces and converted this into legislation and public policy. Yet, at the same time, both have also created National Action Plans around the UN's Women, Peace and Security agenda. Why is this the case? Why do two governments that see gender as an ‘ideology’ continue to work on WPS? Using a feminist institutionalist framework, this article draws on content analysis of the NAPs and semi-structured in-depth interviews with stakeholders in Brazil and Poland to explore this puzzle. We argue that the WPS agenda has survived in these political contexts due the presence of key ‘femocrats’ within the state; the influence of international institutions; and the symbolic power that the WPS agenda gives to these countries on the world stage. As such, the article makes a key contribution to the literature on the WPS agenda and also bolsters the argument for a complication of the idea of gender ‘backlash’ – in domestic and international audiences, states are willing to adopt different attitudes to gender if it furthers their interests.

Looming decisions on arms control and strategic weapon procurements in a range of nuclear-armed states are set to shape the international security environment for decades to come. In this context, it is crucial to understand the concepts, theories, and debates that condition nuclear policymaking. This review essay dissects the four editions of The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, the authoritative intellectual history of its subject. Using this widely acclaimed work as a looking glass into the broader field of nuclear security studies, we interrogate the field's underlying assumptions and question the correspondence between theory and practice in the realm of nuclear policy. The study of nuclear strategy, we maintain, remains largely committed to an interpretive approach that invites analysts to search for universal axioms and to abstract strategic arguments from the precise circumstances of their occurrence. While this approach is useful for analysing the locutionary dimension of strategic debates, it risks obscuring the power structures, vested interests, and illocutionary forces shaping nuclear discourse. In the conclusion, we lay out avenues for future scholarship.

We are grateful to Kjølv Egeland, Thomas Fraise, and Hebatalla Taha for their commentary on the four editions of The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. In addition to their critique of the book, their review was intended to offer ‘a looking glass into the broader field of nuclear security studies’. Our reply to their review therefore touches both upon their critique, as well as the more general theme of writing about the history of nuclear strategy. Although we disagree with many of their criticisms, and in some instances believe our work was misrepresented, the reviewers have nevertheless made points that deserve serious consideration by ourselves as well as other scholars working in the field. In this reply, we not only defend our work, but also use this as an opportunity to discuss how to approach the past of nuclear strategy, which in turn can allow us to better appreciate the present and future. In the first half of our reply we discuss the reviewers’ more general criticisms of our approach. In the second half we deal with some specific criticisms.

Tensions between civil and military authorities over issues such as budgets and strategic posture are unavoidable in pluralistic societies. Scholars of Civil-Military Relations (CMR) have identified a range of practices through which civil-military contestation occurs, and examined their implications for issues such as military effectiveness. This literature, however, has yet to incorporate critical approaches to knowledge into its analysis. Seeking to fill this gap, this article explores how the British military's presentation of its professional knowledge has been increasingly shaped by the political context of British defence policy. More specifically, it argues that the British armed forces’ presentation of opaque imaginations of future war in military doctrine has sought to entrench the role of Defence in an environment of increasingly integrated governmental responses to security challenges. To do this, the article focuses specifically on two concepts that have become increasingly significant in the British defence establishment's articulation of its professional authority and strategic purpose – Multi-Domain Integration (MDI) and the Integrated Operating Concept (IOpC). The article therefore contributes to the literature a fresh perspective of the role of military doctrine and epistemic practices in civil-military contestation, as well as a critical account of the politics of knowledge in British defence.

How do combat missions, defined as an armed confrontation that causes casualties, shape civil-military relations and military’s role conception? This article argues that militaries that incur combat casualties gain a stronger hand in the civil-military equilibrium. This is because casualties affect domestic political opinion and give prominence to the views expressed by military officials. Civilians are then more deferential to professional military advice. In turn, the military obtains considerable operational freedom, and can pick and choose missions which they find desirable. Second, the military’s role conception – an important determinant of military missions, is shaped most prominently by its combat experience. Militaries sustaining casualties obtain leverage vis-à-vis civilians and based on their institutional preference, they either prioritise or avoid non-traditional missions. While making these arguments, this article examines combat casualties, role conception, and civilian control in India. These concepts as a whole and, the Indian case study especially are surprisingly understudied considering it is among the few non-Western democracies with firm civilian control, a record of overseas intervention operations and a military with varying roles and missions. Analysing India’s experience therefore adds to the literature and illuminates the mechanism through which casualties affect civil-military relations.