The Insecurity dilemma

With the end of the Cold War, the world is seen by many as an increasingly safe and secure place. In the Third World, however, people continue to be at risk, often from their own state authorities; these regimes in turn, beset with challenges to militarization and repression. What exists is not a ""security dilemma"" in the traditional sense, but instead ""insecurity dilemmas"", in which national security, defined as regime security by state authorities, becomes pitted against the incompatible demands of ethnic, social, and religious forces. This book addresses the problems and prospects for security in the Third World in the 1990s. The authors advance four lines of argument: first, there is a need to rethink the traditional realist notions of states, national security, territorial threat, and war. Second, the security dilemmas of Third World regimes are bound up in the process of statebuilding and in the practical implications of political development. Third, the repressive underlying logic associated with the regime holders' interest in their short-term survival prospects. And finally, radically altered relationships and conditions in the international system mean that the security interests of Third World regimes and peoples will be viewed differently in the futue by both super-powers and middle powers; and the consequence may well be that traditional regional powers will attempt to (re)assert their security priorities and claims to dominance.