Oxford University Press | Online Resource Centre

Choose your answers from a-d by clicking the radio button next to each choice and then press 'Submit' to get your score.

Question 1

What can we understand by military security and the military security agenda?

a) Military threats are existential threats to the physical integrity of the nation. It is not possible to perceive a military threat where there is none or less of a threat. Such perceptions are always resolved for a threat cannot be said to exist unless an attack is launched.

b) Using military threats, avoiding being perceived as a military threat, and interpreting the nature of military threats are not significant to military security analysis, belonging instead to the sphere of political diplomacy. The accepted definition of military security is freedom from organized violence.

c) The military security agenda includes non-military means for non-military goals wherein physical insecurities and structural violence are equated with military means used for military goals.

d) The most frequently used conception of military security is perceived or actual freedom from, the threat or the use of organized violence for political purposes. However there is controversy regarding the omission of physical insecurity. The definition privileges concern of armed threats from other states

Question 2

In what ways has it been argued that there is a need to conventionalize in traditional security thinking in response to nuclear vulnerability?

a) In the post-Cold War world conventionalized thinking about nuclear weapons, particularly in Europe and in relation to the conduct of war and the maximization of nuclear weapons, increased in the hope that it could stabilize the use of WMD through crisis stability.

b) Much effort went into increasing the explosive power of nuclear weapons in order to enhance nuclear superiority. The destructive capabilities of nuclear weapons and the technology and resource gap between the conduct of a conventional war and the "going nuclear" meant that the nuclear option was the favored strategy.

c) Throughout the Cold War there was a profusion of nuclear weapons, however much effort went into reducing the explosive power of nuclear weapon to make them more usable and to bridge the gap between conventional weapons. This logic was also argued by planners to add credibility to a potential threat of nuclear war in a conventional crisis.

d) During the Cold War nuclear weapons were deployed into all branches of US and Soviet armed forces and integrated into war planning. Total nuclear warfare remained a critical and omnipresent threat, not limited to coercive diplomacy. Operationalized nuclear weapons in the event of war was based on the rationale that massive firepower would inflict greater infrastructural damage to the capacity of the military adversary before they could retaliate with a second strike option.

Question 3

Why have nuclear weapons not been used since 1945?

a) There is a strategic rationale behind the use, or the potential use, of nuclear weapons which involves conscious deliberation to calculate the costs of use against a possible second strike: political costs must be commensurate with military means and gains.

b) Nuclear deterrence is a relatively difficult state to achieve in anarchical international society. The guaranteed ability to retaliate massively without wholly destroying the opponent produces escalatory dynamics which makes stability difficult to attain, Policy-makers find it extremely difficult to determine what actions or rhetoric constitutes an actual threat to respond with the nuclear option

c) There is a mutually endorsing cultural prohibition against the use of nuclear weapons which involves the assumption that they should not be used rather than the conscious cost-benefit calculation of the consequences of use.

d) Competition is a permanent fixture and nuclear arms proliferation is an inevitable by-product of the anarchical condition of the international system of states. However, nuclear intent and the risk of spiraling escalation resulting form diplomatic failures means that a decision to launch is predicated on policy not on the environment in which the decision is made.

Question 4

What challenges does the democratic peace theory pose for military security and the use of force?

a) Liberal democratic states are less likely to go to war because they are consecrated in integrative politico-economic systems of relations in which practice presides.

b) The underlying assumption of the democratic peace theory is that liberal democracies are conceived as separate sates, with their own territories , populations, and sovereignty, that is to say they have final political authority . In this view the use of force against non-liberal states would be essentially reactive.

c) Liberal democracies in the international system have a shared understanding of norms guiding a states behavior, the norm of tolerance, democratic procedure and public accountability which makes it more difficult for leaders to begin wars. The use of force is therefore always defensive when employed by a liberal democracy.

d) The use of force is within the international system an embedded feature which negates the positive association between democracy and peace and makes integrated state processes and cooperation difficult to sustain. Geo-strategic relations are engendered between liberal states to buttress the defense capacity of the military.

Question 5

In what ways does constructivism inform an understanding of military security?

a) The securitization framework takes the content of social reality as an objective unit of analysis through the examination of the characterization of a military security issue rather than how the characterization is produced thereby avoiding the problem of attaching subjective meanings. The framework produces an analysis of military security constructed as social reality.

b) Patterns are best understood as inter-subjective. The construction of the national interest at stake on any specific issue is very heavily conditioned by this prior inter-subjective process: there is more to the creation of meaning than the accumulation of force.

c) Constructivism offers an approach to military security that discerns national interest for what it really is - the accumulation of force in the international system. Working within the framework provides cohesive and uniform analytic tools for identifying the national interest: military capability and capacity to deter dangerous escalation.

d) Patterns in the understanding of the national interest among decision-makers are relatively static whilst the ways in which those interested are presented requires an understanding of the cultural and linguistic presentation of those natural meanings within the policy community.

Question 6

In what ways might the constructivist method of military security be applied to the case issue of Iran's nuclear program?

a) The dominant narrative assumes that the assessment of security risk posed by Iran's nuclear program can be made and acted open militarily and unilaterally based on the fact that the nature of Iran's civil nuclear program is a security risk.

b) Iran is hedging its power generating needs against the decline of oil and is not actively pursuing an indigenous nuclear program for geo-strategic threats.

c) Iran's nuclear program was initiated to provide deterrence against attack and to provide a symbolic sign of strength against US and Israeli nuclear power. Rhetorical threats are not an evidential basis of aggressive intent but of security needs.

d) All of the above and/or none of the above. It remains contentious as to whether it is possible to choose between competing explanations of nuclear acquisition or whether it is possible to move beyond the interpretations given.

Question 7

What insight might post-structuralism have on military security?

a) For post-structuralism identity is separated into separate categories that can be differentiated between its essential elements. Identity is therefore never 'transgressive' or 'transversal' and appearance cannot be constructed by discursive practices.

b) Settled appearances, depoliticized and natural constructions can only be appear so through major and crucially, ongoing discursive practices

c) The political ethic of post-structuralism seeks to secure the separated essential elements (the mutually exclusive intrinsic identities). Security of politicized and natural characteristics is a fixed concern of the coinciding nation.

d) The post-structuralism military debate has posed the question of whether military intervention should be made for the protection of pure identity. The debate has wider implications on the essentially ethnic, cultural, national, religious, or communal goodness of one group, and the essential negative and aggressiveness of another

Question 8

In what ways does the Crandall-Stokes debate on the case issue of Columbia show the relationship between military security and the nature and meaning of facts?

a) The Crandall-Stokes debate establishes a common frame of reference within the traditions of realism and liberalism. The normative implications have bearing on the interpretation of events in Columbia : the US were seen to have had the right of intervention both in terms of protecting and of promoting national security interests and with deference to the universal applicability of liberalism to be deeply involved in the military security affairs of Columbia.

b) The Crandall-Stokes debate establishes major policy consequences from their analysis of the assessment of Columbia form the position of commitment to historical materialism. The US does not have the right to involvement because it was seen to have promoted the illegitimate interests of US and Columbian elites against the interest of Columbian civilians

c) The Crandall-Stokes debate was premised on the assumption that one can prove or disprove arguments with reference to the facts indicating a broad shared commitment to objectivism. However testing in relation to those facts is difficult without a common frame of reference. Important normative differences are related to the different commitments attached to the facts.

d) The Crandall-Stokes debate was premised on the assumption that one can never prove or disprove arguments with reference to facts or to events because you need to explore the fundamental assumption which gives meaning to those facts, to their social and political construction in the policy community, and also to the cross cutting subjective patterns

Question 9

In What ways does the securitization approach inform us about military security?

a) The referent object, that which is to be secured, of military security is usually the state although it can be other political actors. Indeed the armed forces can see themselves as the referent object. Military issues can move up or down the security, political and non-politicized issue spectrum.

b) Military security has become increasingly global since the end of the Cold War. Weak states can produce a wider or international focus for military security as actors fighting for control within a territorial border may involve some outside intervention or assistance. The scope of security in securitization moves military issues from the local/regional sphere to an elevated political dimension of the international system of states.

c) The third dimension of the securitization framework poses three issue categories for security analysis; political, security and non-political in which the military sector can be related to other sector types and issues at varying levels. Military security, however, always operates within the securitized sphere.

d) The securitization approach offers a framework of analysis in which normative understandings can be detached from the referent object. Security and military issues as the referent object to state survival is an objective conceptual pursuit. Militarization of other sectors of analysis is an intentional consequence of objectifying military security, military security being the constant unit over a period of time.

Question 10

How can military security be studied? What significance can we draw for the present context of military security?

a) The military agenda can be examined empirically by examining trends and patterns in resource allocation. Resources spent on military expenditure worldwide equates to $162 per person and 2.6% of world economic activity

b) In deciding how to study military activity is to treat the arms trade in social scientific terms to demonstrate that a relationship between principal arms trading states and a large number of purchasing states in NATO or in areas of tension and conflict exists

c) Data can be used to show the extent to which military security still dominates. Military security can be analyzed in terms of empirical patterns and rends for example, to show that post-Cold War there was a downward trend in armed conflict contrary to popular opinion. However, to this it must be added that the study of military security, identity and practices in world politics are all mutually constitutive.

d) All of the above.

Oxford University Press, Online Resource Centre, Chapter 08.

Chapter 08

Instructions