Blog post archive

Thursday, 16 Dec 2021
Book review: Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army

by Maria Rashid, Stanford University Press, 2020. 288pp. ISBN: 9781503610415 Plenty of social scientists and humanities scholars are preoccupied with the technics of warfare, such as lawfare, drones, “low intensity warfare” and the shifting spaces of war. Yet, attention to a traditional means of war, that is, the institution of ...

Monday, 13 Aug 2018
Liquid Warfare: AFRICOM and its pop-up militarization

In recent years, an expanding conglomerate of armed actors is engaged in training operations, targeted killings and manhunts, often outside conventional war zones across the Middle East and Africa. These Western state-led operations mark a shift away from ‘boots-on-the-ground’ deployments towards light-footprint military interventions, and involve a combination of drone ...

Thursday, 14 Jun 2018
Doing security or doing military in Israel- why does it matter?

When you visit Israel for the first time you see uniforms everywhere and you might mistake the many soldiers on the streets for police officers or private security guards.  If you can tell them apart, you might even ask: “hey, aren’t they all doing the same thing?” Security actors in ...

Thursday, 19 Apr 2018
In the Sahel, militarism doesn’t give us a full picture

By Philippe M Frowd and Adam J Sandor International security interventions in Sahel are multiplying. Military actions such as France’s Operation Barkhane, a Chapter 7 United Nations stabilization mission – MINUSMA, and increasing American military involvement in the region give these actions in the Sahel a ‘hard’, militarised image. Yet ...

Tuesday, 27 Mar 2018
On Militarism and Security: a Special Issue Introduction

This blog post briefly introduces the Security DialogueSpecial IssueonMilitarism and Security: Dialogue, Possibilities and Limits, guest edited by Anna Stavrianakis and Maria Stern (Volume 49, Issue 1-2, February-April 2018). Here they talk about their own article for the special issue, which also serves as its introduction. By Anna Stavrianakis and ...

Thursday, 22 Feb 2018
Valuing Critical Feminist Insights on Militarism and Security

By Annick Wibben Many Security Studies scholars still query the usefulness of feminist approaches to security. Or rather, they quite simply ignore the significant contributions made by Feminist Security Studies scholars [see e.g. Stern & Wibben 2015]. Sometimes this means that they miss, or are puzzled by, observations such as ...

Monday, 12 Feb 2018
Postcolonial states and ‘excessive militarism’: The Indian story

By Swati Parashar Do all states embrace militarism as a natural condition of their existence? Can militarism in different states be differentiated in content and form? How do states engender security through militarism? How is civilian consent built around militarism, especially in postcolonial states? In an era when populist regimes ...

Monday, 5 Feb 2018
Taking "Militarism" Seriously in Critical Security Studies- Renaissance of a Concept?

By Bryan Mabee and Srdjan Vucitec The word “militarism” has seen better days. Judging by Google Books’ Ngram Viewer, it first entered into the vernacular in the nineteenth century, first in Spanish, then in French, Italian and Russian, then in English and German. The word reached its zenith in these ...

Thursday, 18 Jan 2018
Debunking the Security Myth of Military Might

By Vitoria Basham Using and maintaining military force as a means of achieving security:  a flawed idea? In my recent article published in Security Dialogue I critique the longstanding idea that military force and the maintenance of strong armed forces provides security. This idea forms part of the social contract ...