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the-evolution-of-international-security-studies

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218 widening and deepening <strong>security</strong>PoststructuralismPoststructuralism was already, like Feminism, a distinct approach during<strong>the</strong> Cold War. As chapter 5 laid out, Poststructuralism was highlycritical <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> way in which Strategic Studies had adopted a state-centricmilitary conception <strong>of</strong> <strong>security</strong> without problematising <strong>the</strong> historical,normative and political implications that, Poststructuralists held, wereembedded in this concept. Yet Poststructuralists also constituted <strong>the</strong>mselvesas indebted to <strong>the</strong> Classical Realist tradition and, like Realism,argued that state sovereignty and <strong>security</strong> were not easily transformed.The parallels between Poststructuralism and Realism meant, fur<strong>the</strong>rmore,that while Constructivists had come to <strong>security</strong> mainly through generalIR debates, Poststructuralists had been engaged in debates on peace and<strong>security</strong> since <strong>the</strong> early 1980s. Although critical <strong>of</strong> Western <strong>security</strong> policies,Cold War Poststructuralism had always maintained <strong>the</strong> possibility<strong>of</strong> rethinking <strong>security</strong>, and hence was not faced by <strong>the</strong> crisis <strong>of</strong> traditionalapproaches when <strong>the</strong> Cold War ended. However, <strong>the</strong> ending <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> ColdWar was, if not a ‘meta-event’, <strong>the</strong>n at least a constitutive event that threwsome <strong>of</strong> its central analytical assumptions into question.The most important challenge that Poststructuralism confronted comingout <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Cold War was whe<strong>the</strong>r states needed enemies. The centraltext in this debate was Campbell’s study <strong>of</strong> American discourses <strong>of</strong> dangerfrom ‘its’ discovery to <strong>the</strong> end <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Cold War. Campbell’s Writing Security(1992) explicitly foregrounded <strong>the</strong> importance <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> O<strong>the</strong>r – thatis <strong>the</strong> construction <strong>of</strong> states, groups and o<strong>the</strong>r non-Selves – arguing thatwhile state identity could in principle be constituted through relations <strong>of</strong>difference, in reality <strong>the</strong> pressure to turn difference into radical, threateningO<strong>the</strong>rness was overwhelming (Connolly, 1991: 64–65, 209–210;Campbell, 1992: 55; Klein, 1994). ‘Security’ thus became an ontologicaldouble requirement: <strong>the</strong> state needed to be secure, but it also needed <strong>the</strong>threatening O<strong>the</strong>r to define its identity, <strong>the</strong>reby giving it ontological <strong>security</strong>.The problem with Campbell’s conception was, argued (sympa<strong>the</strong>tic)critics, that it reified state identity (‘<strong>the</strong> state needs enemies’) and that iteffectively adopted <strong>the</strong> same view <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> state as did Realism (‘<strong>the</strong> state issurrounded by potential enemies’). Both perspectives assumed an ontologicalinseparability between states and enemies, and a conception <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>O<strong>the</strong>r as monolithic and dangerous (Neumann, 1996a; Milliken, 1999:94; Rumelili, 2004; Hansen, 2006: 38–39). Methodologically, <strong>the</strong> problem<strong>of</strong> assuming state identity as radical O<strong>the</strong>rness was that, if this was takento be <strong>the</strong> only form <strong>of</strong> identity that states could adopt, this would be what

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