INT204: International Security

I have always been more inclined towards the theoretical aspects of my courses, and when I got  this assignment of analyzing a security issue through the lens of a Realist, Liberalist and Constructivist approach to anarchy, an image began to appear in my mind. For the purpose of this blog post, I am personifying these theoretical approaches, and analyzing a security issue through their point of views. The security issue that I have chosen to analyze is the privatization of the military and its role in conflict zones.  I recently stumbled onto articles about this phenomena, and how Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) are playing an increasingly large role in proliferation and distribution of small arms and engaging in conflict zones. PMSCs started emerging in the 1990s for a myriad of reasons. After the Cold War, the world order was shifting to a unipolar system, and the need for a massive military presence was not as important, because no big war was looming in the future.

Artwork by Anika Vijapur Ken Booth’s ‘Reflections of a Fallen Realist’ made me rethink how far I myself had fallen from the mainstream understanding of security. My first encounter with Security Studies was in 11th grade Political Science class, although I am sure I had unwittingly engaged in discussions about security long before that. I was fascinated by the Realist understanding of security, the strategies of war, until I learnt about the concept of Human Security in 12th grade, which felt like a groundbreaking idea to me at the time. It was only in my second year at college that I realized that even the academic literature that veered away from the mainstream understanding of Security, still seemed restrained in its exploration of the dimensions of security.  Mead’s concept of ‘Me’ vs ‘I’ had a profound impact on me. ‘Me’ is a student of International Relations, with a keen interest in the gendered aspect of security, but has barely scratched the surface of what ‘gender’ means. It