Abstract
Physical security is at the heart of social life. Life is hard to endure if there is a constant fear of death, pain or destruction. Hence the preservation or creation of security is at the heart of what many social scientists in all branches study. Human beings invented tools from an early stage and tools have enabled us to live the life we do. Unfortunately the military tool is the weapon. Thus human beings find it comparatively easy to kill each other, and they have done so with gusto throughout recorded history. This does not seem to be diminishing, and violent conflict is widespread in the world today.
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Further Reading and Sources
Detailed material on military issues is contained in the Military Balance (mentioned also in Chapter 1). This is published annually by the Oxford University Press for the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, along with the annual The Strategic Survey. These and the regular Yearbook of the Swedish International Peace Research Institute (published by Oxford University Press) are invaluable sources of military-related data. The IISS publishes a regular series of short monographs called the Adelphi Papers.
For the general issues in nuclear deterrence and security in general see Barry Buzan, An Introduction to Strategic Studies (London: Macmillan, 1987) For his more profound attempt to develop the notion of ‘security’, which is a part of a continuing debate, see his People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era (London: Pinter, 1990, 2nd edn). On attempts to rethink the notion of security in the post-Cold War world from a variety of perspectives, see Michael Clarke, New Perspectives on Security (London: Brassey’s, 1993).
The view that proliferation may not be bad is put clearly by Kenneth Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May be Better Adelphi Papers, no.185 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1981).
An optimistic view of the future (and long-run lack of a future) of war is in John Mueller, Quiet Cataclysm: Reflections on the Recent Transformation in World Politics (New York: HarperCollins, 1995).
The sources used for the ‘democratic peace’ come from Bruce M. Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
I also cite Stuart Bremer, ‘Dangerous Dyads: Interstate War 1916–65’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 36, no. 2 (1992) pp. 309–41.
The statistics for internal violence are taken from, R.J. Rummell ‘Democracy, Power, Genocide and Mass Murder’, Journal of Conflict Resolution vol. 39, no. 1 (1995) pp. 3–36.
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© 1998 Michael Nicholson
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Nicholson, M. (1998). Security, Violence and the Military. In: International Relations. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26481-0_8
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