100% satisfaction guarantee Immediately available after payment Both online and in PDF No strings attached
logo-home
Course Summary - Main Themes (2024) International Security and Strategic Studies ISSS R190,76   Add to cart

Summary

Course Summary - Main Themes (2024) International Security and Strategic Studies ISSS

 20 views  1 purchase
  • Course
  • Institution

Extensive summary compiling all lecture notes, slides, and readings and organised thematically. Clear connections between topics are made within the document. Emphasised points bolded, and a few pieces of commentary or thought-exercises added in grey. I received a 19/20 on our last oral exam, and h...

[Show more]

Preview 4 out of 61  pages

  • June 11, 2024
  • 61
  • 2023/2024
  • Summary
avatar-seller
ISSS Notes: Main Themes

Security

Modern view of security: (re: Omand 2010)

o Broadened view of disruptive events
 Natural hazards, pandemics, public/human security
o Increased emphasis on anticipation
 Readiness in peacetime
 To avoid/reduce likely impact
 Acting in advance to avert problem
 Requires intelligence capability and community confidence in state actions
o Increased value on national resilience
 Pragmatic preparedness for inevitable threats that will occur in complex,
interconnected society
 Preparation is in itself a form of dissuasion as well as defence
 Includes private sector and decentralised strategy

Security achieved through strategy

 Security, as the foremost concern of the sovereign state, must define a strategy to
adequately manage civil and military relations and secure itself
o State of trust between governments and civilians
 Clausewitz’ Trinity [see below]
 Continuing trust in peacetime is essential for capacity-maintenance needed
for the more modern anticipatory approach to security
 Latent power and ongoing effort towards peace, deterrence success
being measured by nothing happening
o Confidence in normal life
o Peace and security are twin concepts
 Peace rests on strong defences (Siena fresco)
 Balancing of justice and civil harmony is an eternal challenge
 An exercise in risk management
o Government judged by its ability to use pre-emptive info to anticipate and
mitigate trouble whilst maintaining good public support
 Wielding of state power to reach objectives
o Defines application of use of force
o Defined in public policy
 Since they are not always the same, the type of war at hand needs strategy that reflects
the specifics of what is on the ground happening
o Strategy: making choices over ends, ways, and means

, o Defines limitations on use of force and conditions for employment
o Must consider:
 End goal
 Defeat: mental process, in battlefield or in non-battle aspects. Mass
destruction.
 Destroy: absolute death. Politically and socially untenable, and
needs to destroy the enemy’s will.
 Approach
 Direct: face-to-face
 Indirect: attack away from main target e.g. draw forces away, cut
communication
 Stepping stones
 Strategy: High political level, ends ways and means
 Tactics: On the ground soldiers, abilities, assets that are used
 Operational: In between, a link between strategic objective and
tactical activities
o How you synchronise and interact between activities to
multiple total effect of each individual activity
o A difficult art of coordination
 Rules of Engagement
 Codes of Conduct
 Especially in combined operations, nations impose their own
caveats and red lines on the level of use of force
 Caveat-matrix defines red lines for each member in regard to
collective action
 (If allied operation), Interoperability
 Cross-national military connections
o Radios, planning, equipment, ammunition and maintenance
 Strategic studies: academic study of strategy
o “If warfare is a continuation of political intercourse, then studying warfare is a
means of studying the politics of conflict – and navigating the long road to
peace.”
 Re: diplomacy and seeing diplomacy and military as two tools of the state
in tandem

Civil-Military Relations:
 Security, to a large extent, is about the management of civil-military relations
o How does a government representing the citizenry interact with this instrument of
violence that armed forces are, that the government has created for itself?
 Huntington’s “The Soldier and the State” (mostly Cohen’s nuanced analysis)

, o Core assumptions of standard model of civil-military relations:
 Officership as a profession, in the management of violence
 Ideal officer is a patriotic member of a brothership of arms
 Group is prioritised over the individual
 Built around notion of being the “specialists” in managing
violence to achieve desires in political outcomes
 Military force is an instrument of policy, wielded in the service of the state
 Re: Clausewitz’ trinity [see below]
 Society and international relations, at heart, need civil-military relations to
provide order in society and in the international system itself
 If not, those with guns are only intimidating and in need of being
controlled
o Asserts need to build military around notion of obedience
 Chain of command facilitates functionality
o Asserts that a sharp distinction between civil and military competences produces
the ideal military performance
 “Objective civilian control”
 Strategy begins where politics ends
 Military professionalism is best equipped to determine strategy
 E.g. US military in WWII
 Opposed to “subjective civilian control,” where this is not separated
o Criticised:
 Unrealistically pristine theory
 Ambiguous and politically defined goals produce non-static
purpose
 Does not confront real and messy problems of war
 Unclear distinction between competences, and military or non-military
organisation
 Professionalism has limits
 Technical expertise is necessary but not absolute; it is job-specific
 “Management of violence” excludes large areas of military activity
 War is too varied an activity
 Wartime pressures cause civilians to be mostly unable to control the
military realm, or confine it to politics
 Military officers do not always follow his chivalric ideal-type of who
these specialists are
 Assumption of rationality under question, but strategic nihilism reminds us
that we cannot assume constant or permanent rationality
 In practice, the law codifying civil-military relations differs in the degree of civilian
control over the military

, o In Belgium, military forces are subordinated to executive as per the constitution.
This is in turn controlled by parliament, through statutes, personnel law, and
budget
o French executive control is a lot more, with less say by the parliament
o Germany has more parliamentary control and less discretionary power by
executive
 Degree of democratisation of society reduces risk of military overthrowing government
States:

 National security: main concern
o Insecurity is the foundation of government
 Basic organisation of states
 Providing security as a public good to citizens
 Centrality of states in architecture of security governance
 Complimentary roles of international organisations
o Within a secure state, abundance, wealth, harvest, etc. has the opportunity to
flourish (harmony, security, prosperity)
 Re: the Allegory of Good and Bad Government, Siena by Ambrogio
Lorenzetti video (1338/9)
 Constant visual reminder to the obligations of the ruling council
 Wise government represents common good, with subordinated
private interest
 Peace rests on strong defences, and must be continually fought for
o National security is reliant on governments correctly employing its instruments of
the state
 To create solutions for allowing the state to live with inherent security
threats
 National Security Councils
 Synchronises inventory of tools used to manage international
relations
 (Armed forces, diplomacy, IOs, internal security, nurtured by
Intelligence Agencies)
 Statecraft: managing the ship of the state
o External
 To ensure positive relations with foreign states
 Concerned with international system and threats from abroad
 MFA
 Armed forces
 MoD
 Intelligence Agencies

The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:

Guaranteed quality through customer reviews

Guaranteed quality through customer reviews

Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.

Quick and easy check-out

Quick and easy check-out

You can quickly pay through EFT, credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.

Focus on what matters

Focus on what matters

Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!

Frequently asked questions

What do I get when I buy this document?

You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.

Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?

Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.

Who am I buying this summary from?

Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller writneynotes. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.

Will I be stuck with a subscription?

No, you only buy this summary for R190,76. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.

Can Stuvia be trusted?

4.6 stars on Google & Trustpilot (+1000 reviews)

85443 documents were sold in the last 30 days

Founded in 2010, the go-to place to buy summaries for 14 years now

Start selling
R190,76  1x  sold
  • (0)
  Buy now