Contemporary Security in International Relations: Providers and Challenges (PO)

Learning Outcomes

Learning Outcomes

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Critically analyse the major challenges to security providers.
• Critically assess the competences, capabilities and credibility of security providers.
• Engage with discourses on contemporary security issues.
• Engage in critical debate about the changing meaning of security.

1Strategic and Security Studies from classical approaches to contemporary concepts of human, political, economic and environmental security. The changing referents of security post 9/11, a return to statism?

2The state as a security provider: external security dilemmas, domestic resources and constituencies. Democratic states contrasted to autocratic regimes in the management of security.

3The media and security: from Vietnam to the invasion of Iraq, war reporting, society and leadership. Governments, agenda setting and information control, Al Jazerra and Middle East conflicts.

4The state as a security provider, strategies of deterrence, alliance and pre-emption. Israel and its neighbours. The United States, unilateralism and security after 9/11.

5Institutions as security providers, capacity, credibility and the post Cold War security agenda.

6NATO in the New Europe: relations with Russia, regional strategy in the Black Sea as a case study.

7The European Union as a new security actor: from soft to hard power?

8The United Nations and human security, development, democratisation and security.

9Intervention and peace enforcement, regional case studies: Legitimacy, alliance cohesion and military intervention. Ethnicity, identity and conflict management.

10Jihad and International Security: Jihadist ideology from Taymiyya to Bin Laden, the organisation of Jihad from 9/11 to London 7/7, popular support for Jihad. The war on terror and the reconceptualisation of security, counter terrorism strategies and military force, pre-emption and intervention, human rights and the new security agendas.

Teaching and learning methods

1LectureLectures12

2WorkshopSeminar/Workshop12

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.