Security Issues In International Relations

The official academic field of international relations is a recent field of study, beginning after the end of World War II, in the political sciences. While the academic field is fairly new establishment in the political sciences, the issues at the core of the discipline have been discussed for hundreds of years. One of the issues that is central to the division of international relations is the idea of security. The topic of security contains many different aspects all of which can be addressed differently depending on the theory. When discussing security there are four main questions: what is security, whose security is being discussed, what counts as a security issue, and how can security be achieve. In the field of international relations …show more content…
There are six categories of threats identified by the United Nation are economic and social threats, inter-state conflict, internal conflict, nuclear, radiologic, chemical, and biological weapons, terrorism, and transnational organized crime. While each of these categories are of some importance different theories give more importance to some and less to others. This impacts how issues are ranked and then set in an agenda. Realists would typically focus on the issues that need to be addressed for them to gain more power. Whether that is addressing poverty to build stability in the nation itself or tackling international organized crime in order to be seen as powerful for working on such complex issues, if the category in any way generates more power for the nation on the international level it is an issue of high importance. The other theory of liberalism looks at issues that are impacting the relationships of that country. Literalists can also want to focus on issues of poverty and transnational organized crime, but for different reasons as realists. For example, a realist may focus on transnational organized crime in an attempt to be seen as a powerful nation who has the necessary force to address this issue. Addressing the same issue of transnational organized crime a liberalist may want to tackle the issue in order to assist an ally, attempt to create a new ally, or working towards stopping a perceived