the-evolution-of-international-security-studies

widening perspectives and the global war on terrorism 243reversal was noteworthy (Bowen, 2006; Bahgat, 2008). But the main interestwas in tracking Iran’s nuclear developments, their implications forother states in the region, and the possibilities and consequences of a preemptivestrike against Iran’s nuclear facilities by the US and/or Israel. 22For East Asia, North Korea’s missile and nuclear tests ensured that it gotthe lion’s share of attention. 23 The implications of North Korea’s goingnuclear also generated a flutter of interest in Japan’s position on nuclearweapons (W. Walker, 2006; Hughes, 2007).Widening perspectives and the Global War on TerrorismAs mentioned in the introduction, widening and deepening perspectivesresponded to the GWoT in two ways. Some claimed it as a major politicalevent that revolutionised international politics and hence that it shouldhave a similar impact on ISS (Der Derian, 2004). Others either downplayedits significance, or, as discussed in chapter 7, simply went on withtheir theoretical and empirical research without devoting the GWoT muchattention. In this section we examine those widening perspectives mostdirectly engaged with the consequences of 9/11, the war in Afghanistanand the war against/in Iraq. Here the most active perspectives were Poststructuralism,Feminism and Post-colonialism, and their analyses oftenoverlapped. Since the GWoT was to a large extent a question of how theUS (and the coalition supporting the war in Iraq) conducted its foreignpolicy, these analyses were, of course, also driven by great power politics.Discourses and terrorist subjectsDiscursive conceptions of security have, as laid out in chapter 5 and 7, beena central part of widening approaches since the 1980s. Poststructuralists,Feminists, Post-colonialists, Critical Constructivists and the CopenhagenSchool have all – although in slightly different ways – argued in favourof seeing security as a discourse through which identities and threats areconstituted rather than as an objective, material condition. Building on22 Einhord and Samore, 2002; Takeyh, 2003, 2004/5; Bowen and Kidd, 2004; Taremi, 2005;Fitzpatrick, 2006a, 2006b, 2007; Huntley, 2006; Tarock, 2006; Dueck and Takeyh, 2007;Guldimann, 2007; Kaye and Wehrey, 2007; Pedatzur, 2007; Raas and Long, 2007; Shoham,2007; Litwak, 2008.23 Lee, 2001; Cha, 2002; Martin, 2002; Lee and Moon, 2003; Samore, 2003; Cotton, 2005;Fitzpatrick, 2006a; Huntley, 2006; Reiss, 2006; Bi, 2007; Rozman, 2007; Litwak, 2008;Moore, 2008