Read the notes, then try the practice. It adapts as you go.When you're ready.
Session Length
~17 min
Adaptive Checks
15 questions
Transfer Probes
8
Security studies is an interdisciplinary academic field focused on the nature, causes, and prevention of threats to the safety and survival of states, societies, and individuals. Rooted historically in the study of military strategy and interstate conflict during the Cold War, the field has expanded dramatically since the 1990s to encompass non-traditional security challenges including terrorism, cyberwarfare, environmental degradation, pandemics, human trafficking, and economic instability. Security studies draws on theories and methods from international relations, political science, history, sociology, criminology, and increasingly from computer science and environmental science.
The field is organized around several competing theoretical traditions. Realists emphasize the anarchic international system and the centrality of military power in ensuring state survival. Liberals highlight the pacifying effects of international institutions, democratic governance, and economic interdependence. Constructivists argue that security threats are socially constructed and that shared norms, identities, and discourse shape what actors perceive as dangerous. Critical security studies, associated with the Copenhagen, Aberystwyth, and Paris schools, challenges the state-centric focus of traditional approaches by asking whose security is prioritized, how issues become securitized through speech acts, and how everyday practices of security affect marginalized populations.
Contemporary security studies grapples with a rapidly evolving threat landscape. The resurgence of great power competition between the United States, China, and Russia exists alongside persistent challenges from non-state actors, the weaponization of information in hybrid warfare, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and the destabilizing effects of climate change on food and water security. Scholars and practitioners in the field work across government intelligence agencies, defense ministries, think tanks, international organizations such as NATO and the United Nations, and the private sector, applying analytical frameworks to anticipate, deter, and manage threats in an increasingly interconnected world.
One step at a time.
A process by which an issue is framed as an existential threat through speech acts, moving it beyond normal politics and justifying extraordinary measures. Developed by the Copenhagen School, particularly Barry Buzan, Ole Waever, and Jaap de Wilde.
Example: After the September 11 attacks, terrorism was securitized in U.S. political discourse, justifying the Patriot Act, extraordinary rendition, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.
A realist concept describing how states form alliances and build military capabilities to prevent any single state from achieving hegemony, thereby maintaining systemic stability in an anarchic international order.
Example: During the Cold War, NATO and the Warsaw Pact represented opposing alliance blocs that balanced each other's power across Europe, preventing either superpower from dominating the continent.
A strategy aimed at discouraging an adversary from taking an unwanted action by threatening credible and severe retaliation. It relies on the adversary's rational calculation that the costs of aggression outweigh the benefits.
Example: Nuclear deterrence during the Cold War rested on mutually assured destruction (MAD), where both the U.S. and Soviet Union maintained second-strike capabilities ensuring that a nuclear first strike would result in catastrophic retaliation.
An approach that shifts the referent object of security from the state to the individual, encompassing freedom from fear and freedom from want. It includes economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, and political dimensions.
Example: The United Nations Development Programme's 1994 Human Development Report argued that famine, disease, and environmental pollution threaten more people worldwide than interstate warfare, redefining what counts as a security issue.
A situation in which actions taken by a state to increase its own security, such as building up military forces, inadvertently threaten other states, provoking counter-buildups and reducing overall security for all parties.
Example: India's nuclear weapons tests in 1998 were partly motivated by perceived threats from China, but they triggered Pakistani nuclear tests in response, leaving both South Asian states arguably less secure.
A strategy that blends conventional military operations with irregular tactics, cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, economic coercion, and proxy forces to achieve strategic objectives while maintaining plausible deniability.
Example: Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 combined unmarked special forces ('little green men'), cyber operations against Ukrainian infrastructure, propaganda campaigns, and economic pressure on energy supplies.
A system in which states agree that an attack on one member is an attack on all, committing to a collective response against aggression. It differs from alliances by aiming to include all states rather than balancing against a specific threat.
Example: Article 5 of the NATO Treaty enshrines collective security, and was invoked for the first time after the September 11, 2001 attacks, triggering allied participation in operations in Afghanistan.
Efforts to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons, to additional states or non-state actors. It encompasses treaties, export controls, inspections, and diplomatic pressure.
Example: The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), signed in 1968, established a framework where non-nuclear states pledged not to acquire nuclear weapons in exchange for access to peaceful nuclear technology and a commitment by nuclear states to pursue disarmament.
More terms are available in the glossary.
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