International Security 

About: International Security is an academic journal published by The MIT Press. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Nuclear weapon & International relations. It has an ISSN identifier of 0162-2889. Over the lifetime, 1332 publications have been published receiving 100563 citations.

Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War

Abstract: Scholars of security affairs can stop their dreary quarrels over military doctrine and balance assessments, and turn their attention to finding ways to prevent global warming and preserve the ozone layer. European leaders can contemplate how to spend peace dividends. This chapter assesses this optimistic view by exploring in detail the consequences for Europe of an end to the Cold War. It examines the effects of a scenario under which the Cold War comes to a complete end. The chapter argues that bipolarity, an equal military balance, and nuclear weapons have fostered peace in Europe. It offers an explanation for the peacefulness of the post-World War II order. The chapter examines the theories underlying claims that a multipolar Europe is likely to be as peaceful, if not more peaceful, than Cold War Europe. The peace-loving democracies theory holds that domestic political factors, not calculations about military power or the international economic system, are the principal determinant of peace.

The False Promise of International Institutions

Abstract: Since the Cold War ended, Western policymakers have sought to create security arrangements in Europe, as well as in other regions of the globe, that are based on international institutions In doing so, they explicitly reject balance-of-power politics as an organizing concept for the post-Cold War world During the 1992 presidential campaign, for example, President Clinton declared that, “in a world where freedom, not tyranny, is on the march, the cynical calculus of pure power politics simply does not compute It is ill-suited to a new era” Before taking office, Anthony Lake, the president’s national security adviser, criticized the Bush administration for viewing the world through a “classic balance of power prism,” whereas he and Mr Clinton took a “more ‘neo-Wilsonian’ view” 1

Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases

Abstract: Within the next fifty years, the planet's human population will probably pass nine billion, and global economic output may quintuple Largely as a result, scarcities of renewable resources will increase sharply The total area of high-quality agricultural land will drop, as will the extent of forests and the number of species they sustain Coming generations will also see the widespread depletion and degradation of aquifers, rivers, and other water resources; the decline of many fisheries; and perhaps significant climate change

The Promise of Constructivism in International Relations Theory

Abstract: A challenger to the continuing dominance of neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism in the study of international relations in the United States, constructivism is regarded with a great deal of skepticism by mainstream scholars.1 While the reasons for this reception are many, three central ones are the mainstream's miscasting of constructivism as necessarily postmodern and antipositivist; constructivism's own ambivalence about whether it can buy into mainstream social science methods without sacrificing its theoretical distinctiveness; and, related to this ambivalence, constructivism's failure to advance an alternative research program. In this article, I clarify constructivism's claims, outline the differences between "conventional" and "critical" constructivism, and suggest a research agenda that both provides alternative understandings of mainstream interna-

Structural Realism after the Cold War

Abstract: Some students of international politics believe that realism is obsolete.1 They argue that, although realism’s concepts of anarchy, self-help, and power balancing may have been appropriate to a bygone era, they have been displaced by changed conditions and eclipsed by better ideas. New times call for new thinking. Changing conditions require revised theories or entirely different ones. True, if the conditions that a theory contemplated have changed, the theory no longer applies. But what sorts of changes would alter the international political system so profoundly that old ways of thinking would no longer be relevant? Changes of the system would do it; changes in the system would not. Within-system changes take place all the time, some important, some not. Big changes in the means of transportation, communication, and war Žghting, for example, strongly affect how states and other agents interact. Such changes occur at the unit level. In modern history, or perhaps in all of history, the introduction of nuclear weaponry was the greatest of such changes. Yet in the nuclear era, international politics remains a self-help arena. Nuclear weapons decisively change how some states provide for their own and possibly for others’ security; but nuclear weapons have not altered the anarchic structure of the international political system. Changes in the structure of the system are distinct from changes at the unit level. Thus, changes in polarity also affect how states provide for their security. SigniŽcant changes take place when the number of great powers reduces to two or one. With more than two, states rely for their security both on their