International Security: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) Read Online Free PDF Page A

its nuclear deterrent would also be used to guarantee its allies’ security Britain developed its own bomb in 1952, with France following in 1960. Similarly, feeling threatened by both the USA and a deteriorating relationship with the Soviet Union, China tested a nuclear bomb in 1964. This threatened India, which felt impelled to respond, with Pakistan following on behind. Horizontal proliferation, however, was accompanied by ‘vertical proliferation’ as both the USA and the Soviet Union raced to gain parity/superiority over the numbers and types of nuclear weapons they possessed. Come the 1980s around 70,000 nuclear weapons were in existence, the vast majority in the USA and the Soviet Union ( Figure 1 ).

1. Nuclear military balance during the Cold War
    At one level the fact that this represented enough firepower to destroy humankind several times over can appear the height of human folly. However, it also indicates how the security dilemma exists as a state of mind, a matter of perception of the nature of the security environment, rather than a simple question of absolute numbers. There are, though, contending explanations regarding what factors might contribute to the fear and mistrust central to the development and endurance of security dilemmas. For realists the security dilemma is the inevitable consequence of the anarchic structure of the international system, which they see as forcing states into competitive strategic mindsets. In contrast critical approaches to security, which emphasize the constructed nature of security environments, suggest thatalarmist zero-sum thinking is not inevitable but a self-fulfilling outcome of the tendency of political and military elites to unthinkingly accept realist worldviews, one element of which is often an emphasis on calculating relative military capabilities (e.g. numbers of tanks, planes, boats, missiles, and nuclear bombs). Coupled with this the secrecy which typically surrounds national security issues can easily foster suspicion and enhance uncertainty amongst others.
    Finally, questions of identity may also be important. Multiple studies suggest that identifying threatening enemies is often central to crystallizing a sense of purpose, community, and identity. As such, the enemy may even be something to be cherished and cultivated. The Cold War provided an excellent example of this insofar as the conflict produced a clear sense of purpose and direction around the ideas of ‘East’ and ‘West’. Indeed, with its end, and with the enemy defeated, the question arose of what the West’s purpose, role, and identity was in the new context. For some the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001 provided an answer, with fundamentalist Islam assigned the role of the West’s new constitutive other—an idea crystallized in proclamations of the so-called ‘clash of civilizations’. However, it is also important to note that once enemy images take hold they can become self-reinforcing, such that all actions (and non-actions) of the enemy become implicitly suspect. Such was the case with Saddam Hussein’s relations with the West throughout the 1990s until 2003.
Back to the future?
    The security dilemma raises the question of whether the mistrust, fear, and uncertainties inherent within it are insurmountable. Realists/neorealists suggest they are. This is because, for them, their negative view of human nature and their belief in the self-help competitive logic of international anarchy militates against longer-term cooperation between states. So, while statesmay build temporary alliances in response to specific threats they must always be concerned about how the material benefits of cooperation are spread and that this will not disadvantage them later. For example, following the Cold War’s end realists widely predicted that, with the Soviet Union vanquished, Europe would revert to the traditional competition and power balancing that had characterized much of the