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Understanding emerging security challenges: threats and opportunities

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Page 1: Understanding emerging security challenges: threats and opportunities

This article was downloaded by: [The Aga Khan University]On: 09 December 2014, At: 01:13Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Journal of Policing, Intelligence andCounter TerrorismPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpic20

Understanding emerging securitychallenges: threats and opportunitiesIsaac Kfira

a Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism (INSCT),College of Law, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USAPublished online: 30 Aug 2014.

To cite this article: Isaac Kfir (2014) Understanding emerging security challenges: threatsand opportunities, Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism, 9:2, 191-192, DOI:10.1080/18335330.2014.940821

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/18335330.2014.940821

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Page 2: Understanding emerging security challenges: threats and opportunities

BOOK REVIEWS

Understanding emerging security challenges: threats and opportunities, Ashok Swain,London, Routledge, 2013, 172 pp., US$44.95 (paperback), US$140 (hardback),ISBN 978-0-415-52330

Historically, security studies was about war, placing it distinctly within the realm ofstrategic studies, as states wanted to know how to prepare for, engage in or preventwar, with little attention being given to non-military consideration. With the end ofthe cold war, a debate about what is security emerged, leading to a host ofneologisms and approaches as how to approach threats, by focusing on people asopposed to states. The consequence of this was that the environment, ecology,economics and rights became security issues.

Swain’s argument, outlined in Chapter 1, is located within the non-traditionalsecurity studies field. Accordingly, the quest for economic growth and developmentcomes with uncontrolled, unregulated and dangerous exploitation of the environ-ment that creates insecurity. Simply, resource competition carries enormous securitythreats to the world and its people. Swain therefore calls for a better understandingof the iniquitous international system, which is predominately economic inorientation, and which is eschewed in favour of the wealthy North at the expenseof the South. Concomitantly, the South views demands for conservation andenvironmental protection as attempts to maintain a system, keeping it in a weakenedposition.

In Chapter 2, Swain provides an overview of the various environmental problemsthat transcend borders, leading to an analysis of what is environmental security,referring to a unit of analysis that focuses on environmental changes that impactnational, societal and global relations. The two succeeding chapters focus on waterand how shared water resources fuel tensions between states and groups. Notably,Swain points out that water issues create new conflicting groups within a state,becoming more complex when they concern international waterways. Chapter 4shifts the attention to forests and deforestation, an issue insufficiently explored insecurity studies, underlining that it is about overexploitation. The purpose of thesetwo chapters is to highlight the role that each plays in fostering insecurity, in relationto more thematic security issues: food (Chapter 5), understood as a growingchallenge; health, specifically disease (Chapter 6); and migration, noting the linkbetween population movements and conflict (Chapter 7).

Understanding Emerging Security Challenges serves as a useful introduction tocontemporary security studies, underlining key thematic security challenges in thetwenty-first century. Nevertheless, it has some theoretical and methodologicalshortcomings. First, it remains unclear what exactly Swain means by emergingsecurity challenges. In other words, competition over resources, the need for borderprotections, consolidation of sovereignty, etc. have always been the fuel for conflict

Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism, 2014Vol. 9, No. 2, 191–194

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Page 3: Understanding emerging security challenges: threats and opportunities

and war. Therefore, it remains unclear why is it that, in the twenty-first century,resources scarcity—specifically, water, deforestation, food, disease—are emergingsecurity threats. To assume, as Swain does, that this is only due to development,understood through the rubric of globalisation, which in itself is a euphemism forindustrialisation, is insufficient and requires more research. Second, Swain makes anumber of sweeping non-representational statements, when specificity is the order ofthe day. These statements are dominant when Swain looks at solutions to theemerging threats, arguing in favour of local ownership, civil society and goodgovernance, even though there is no concrete evidence indicating that such anapproach addresses emerging security threats. Accordingly, the analysis does nottake into consideration the role of local actors, local practices and local customs infostering insecurity, as it is not only the North or the international system that isresponsible.

In sum, Ashok Swain contributes to the burgeoning security debate byhighlighting how globalisation—specifically, energy scarcity, impacts of climatechange, water supply, food and health security and population migration—hasinfluenced security issues. Once the key security challenges are identified, Swainshifts attention to argue that they also carry the seeds for better cooperation, takingan optimistic approach to security studies, which is greatly welcomed in the field ofsecurity studies.

Isaac KfirInstitute for National Security and Counterterrorism (INSCT)

College of Law, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, [email protected]

© 2014, Isaac Kfirhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/18335330.2014.940821

International relations theory and philosophy: interpretive dialogues, edited by C.Moore and C. Farrands, London, Routledge, 2010, 240 pp., $49.95 (USD)(Paperback), ISBN 978-0-415-66241-3

International relations (IR) and security studies have paid little attention tophilosophy (Kant’s Perpetual peace a rule-enforcing exception). And when analyticalphilosophy, such as that of John Rawls, has been applied in the discipline, the resulthas often been argument which privileges consistency over accuracy, validity oversoundness and objective knowledge over embedded wisdom. The Cerwyn Moore andChris Farrands edited volume, International relations theory and philosophy:Interpretive dialogues, offers to enrich the thought of IR and security studies withoutthese sacrifices. The contributors draw on the big names of Continental philosophy(Heidegger, Gadamer, Levinas, Derrida, Habermas and Marx to name a few), whileMoore herself introduces the lesser-known Jan Potačka. Roland Bleiker and MarkChou’s essay on Nietzsche is well-positioned up front as it complements and furthersthe discussion of language and style in Moore and Farrands’s introduction. Ofparticular interest is Bleiker and Chou’s discussion of 9/11 and how language plays arole in constituting an event regardless of agreement on the facts.

192 Book reviews

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