*This article also appears as a chapter in the 2023 KCIS Conference volume that was published Nov. 2024

Throughout the issues of International Security published in 1990, a series of interventions—largely centering on John Mearsheimer’s controversial argument that the end of bipolarity would lead to a violent scramble for power in a multipolar Europe—explored the shifting sands of a post-Cold War world. Basing his analysis on an assumption that timeless logics of the “distribution and character of military power are the root causes of war and peace,” Mearsheimer concludes that “if the Cold War is truly behind us, the stability of the past 45 years is not likely to be seen again in the coming decades.”[1] Others, however, disagreed with Mearsheimer’s pessimism about what lessons should be drawn from universal and timeless concepts of war and peace.[2] All interlocutors agreed that times were changing, but many conceptual models developed during the Cold War era proved to have enough elasticity and resilience[3] to remain central to the core debates of international security and world politics as the “unipolar moment”[4] arose. Whether by the adjustment of existing conceptual models or the introduction of addenda, the field of security studies recognized that the moment of shifting polarity demanded conceptual attention be paid to the changing world order.

It is hardly controversial to suggest that we are once again living on shifting sands. As Kim Nossal[5] has recently argued, the increasing isolationism driven by conservative-nationalist trends in American foreign policy coupled with increasing Chinese assertiveness and Russian revanchism is leading us away from the American order of the post-Cold War world. The Russian invasion of Ukraine emerged as a key comparison point for the early 1990s: reviving the script of Russia-versus-the-West, returning conventional conflict to European soil, and even featuring Mearsheimer[6] at the heart of controversy.

In response to this changing security environment marked by the shift to a new multipolarity, there is increasing attention on the readiness of our conceptual tools. Undoubtedly, some of the conceptual tools developed for the post-Cold War era will be tinkered to fit the post-post-Cold War era,[7] while other new concepts may replace ones that appear outmoded. Changes in the security environment often result in changes in security studies. Yet, in both cases, change is coterminous with continuity. It is for this reason that I suggest that the (un)changing nature of security finds its corollary in the (un)changing nature of security studies; never is this tension of continuity and change more evident than in moments of shifting polarity when scholars break the glass of conceptual reimagining to make sure that our understandings of security are fit for purpose at the dawn of a new era.

In an effort to understand the present moment, we can turn to the themes of the 2023 Kingston Consortium on International Security conference as a guide. The (Un)Changing Character of War called attention to an “inflection point in history” where “the challenges to the current rules-based international system and the potential impacts of its downfall on partnerships, globalization, and global operating environments are widespread.”[8] Rapid advancements in technology, economic shocks following from the Covid-19 pandemic, international ideological movements, Russian aggression and Chinese assertiveness, and a whole host of additional uncertainties produce an undeniable atmosphere of change. However, at the same time, many of the key concerns of today are far from new. For example, ground operations in Europe were normal defence concerns for centuries; and although the specific technological developments of today may be novel, the idea that new technologies would be implemented in military operations is a truism. The (un)changing character of war, then, identifies a tension that exists at the dawn of the post-post-Cold War era, just as it existed at the dawn of the post-Cold War era. In times of shifting polarity, we break the glass and pull the “theoretical debate” lever, to explore what concepts remain useful, and which new ideas must spring forth.

In this chapter, I suggest this moment of conceptual reckoning should include a dialogue with the contemporary inheritors of the “broadening and deepening” debate that arose in response to the “break glass” moment at the end of the Cold War. Although conventional and critical security studies have largely remained in their own lanes over the past three decades, there are conceptual bridges that can be made between the two. To offer a proof of concept for the value of this debate, I will highlight three concepts discussed at the 2023 Kingston Consortium on International Security conference that have long histories in the field of critical security studies: human security, gendered security, and ontological security. The remainder of the chapter proceeds in three parts. The first section introduces the field of critical security studies by providing a brief disciplinary history. The second discusses the three conceptual bridges of human, gendered, and ontological security. The conclusion reflects on the prospects for cross-camp debate and dialogue. At this moment of shifting polarity, we have broken the glass to re-evaluate the conceptual tools we use to understand the world around us; let us ensure we cast a wide net for dialogue partners.

A Brief History of Critical Security Studies

Accounts of defence, security, and conflict can be found stretching back thousands of years to texts such as Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, the epic Mahabharata, the engravings of Ancient Egypt, among others. Some works of military history and strategy—such as Carl von Clausewitz’s On War, which was the most cited work in the KCIS Executive Summary—remain frequent references centuries after writing. But to refer to security studies as a formal field of study, we must turn to the early twentieth century. In the wake of the Second World War, a first generation of civilian scholars of international politics turned their attention to issues of security and defense. This era—which Stephen Walt (1991) called the “Golden Age”[9] of security studies—saw the emergence of the first and second waves of deterrence theory[10] as well as debates on the conceptual specificity of “national security” as a concept for scholars and practitioners.[11] Through the 1950s and early 1960s, the Golden Age saw a burst of scholarship that was largely realist, rationalist, and deterrence-focused. This research community would eventually fizzle, with Walt identifying three primary factors: a dead-end in the research projects with no obvious successor, the absence of a “next generation” of scholars after many PhDs of the 1950s and 1960s left for consultancy and foreign service, and the unpopularity of the Vietnam War.[12] As security fell out of favour, economic analyses rose to displace it in academic circles.

With the end of the Vietnam War and a new wave of academic institutions established, what Walt calls the “Renaissance” of security studies[13] began in the mid-1970s and saw a rapid growth of scholarship interrogating the nature of defence and security issues. The renaissance lasted until realist security studies scholars were surprised by the end of the Cold War. Indeed, the debate cited in the introduction of this chapter must be understood not as part of the Renaissance but the Reckoning of security studies, as realists responded to their failure to foresee the end of the Cold War.[14] While realists dealt with the Reckoning, a parallel conversation—the “broadening and deepening” debate—saw new theoretical influence launch the project that became critical security studies.

The “broadening and deepening” debate drew together two unique challenges to conventional security studies. The broadeners sought to “include a wider range of potential threats, ranging from economic and environmental issues to human rights and migration” while the deepeners challenged the state-centric ontology of neorealist security studies “by moving either down to the level of the individual or human security or up to the level of international or global security, with regional or societal security as possible intermediate points.”[15] With the world moving past the Cold War model of a bipolar global order described in state-centric terms, where “security” meant the protection of the state from military aggression, these scholars sought new uses and applications for the term. Early “schools” of critical security studies were identified with research centres in Copenhagen, Aberystwyth, and Paris,[16] and although not all scholars were European—Canadians, in fact, played and continue to play an outsized role in the development of critical security studies[17]—the continental context is significant. An ocean away from the reckoning of realism, the “Copenhagen School” emerged directly out of a project on non-military threats to European security,[18] Ken Booth’s landmark articles on emancipation were lectures given to thoroughly British audiences,[19] and critical security studies’ flagship journal Security Dialogue was published in Norway.[20] In the decades since, critical security studies has matured as a research community with a robust suite of theoretical, conceptual, and methodological approaches[21] applied to a host of case studies and subjected to rigorous philosophical analysis. While a fulsome review of an entire research program would far exceed the scope of a single chapter, it is my hope that the introduction of work on human, gendered, and ontological security from within the field of critical security studies will spark future dialogue that may engage any number of the research projects currently existing in critical security studies.

Three Bridges: Human Security, Gendered Security, Ontological Security

The concept of human security is notable not because the idea is shared between practitioner and academic community, but because the widely circulated version of the concept originated on the practitioner side. A series of references throughout KCIS 2023 confirmed the concept’s currency, but it is also one that requires rethinking to ensure human security is fit for purpose. Senator Patterson’s opening keynote called for a human-focused version of security to guide the development of a whole-of-state approach to government and military efforts. A panel featuring contributors to Evolving Human Security[22] considered challenges the concept of human security has encountered in its operationalization, while panels on emerging technologies and on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda both featured reflections on what human security has not yet captured. With the terminological uncertainty caused by competing institutional definitions, it is difficult to know where a theoretical debate on the meaning and promise of human security should begin. As our first bridge into critical security studies, I suggest that the decades-long conceptual debates on human security in Critical Security Studies can provide a new wellspring of innovation for considering the scope and stakes of human-centered security analysis.

The Aberystwyth school of critical security studies has consistently emphasized human security as a cornerstone. However, in theorizing the security of the human, early scholarship in this tradition moved away from a narrower conception of security as “the absence of threats” towards a view of security as emancipation, understood as “the freeing of people (as individuals and groups) from those physical and human constraints which stop them carrying out what they would freely choose to do”—with the explicit understanding that “war and the threat of war is one of those constraints, together with poverty, poor education, political oppression, and so on.”[23] The operationalization of this model of human security calls for a broadening of what counts as a security consideration, but also for a positively defined emancipatory freedom to live rather than a negatively defined freedom from particular harms or threats thereof. This is a more open system, replacing a checkbox of guarantees with an ethical orientation towards replacing vulnerability with human flourishing.[24] This is the first contribution that critical perspectives on human security make: a call to replace a narrow vision of challenges to remove with a longer-term and more open vision for a world where the removal of barriers permits human flourishing.

In addition to offering a higher vision for human security, critical perspectives have also highlighted issues with the practice of human security as traps to be avoided when using the concept. These relate to the scope of human security, the use of “security” as the privileged path to achieve the aims of the project, and the understanding of “human.” Keith Krause argued that one of the trade-offs of the formalization of commitments to the notion of human security was a narrowing of scope to ignore hunger, health, and other non-military threats to human dignity.[25] On the notion of “security” as means, Annick Wibben and others have questioned the necessity of security in human security discourses, noting that harnessing the “alarm bell” function of security comes with risks by removing issues deemed to be security-related from fulsome political debate and limiting the potential solution set to security solutions.[26]

Finally, there is a long-running critique of the tendency within human security discourses to assume a single, universal, Western subject as being the “human” in “human security.”[27] Especially when human security rhetoric is mobilized by one country as a framework to guide a mission in a different country, the intervening country’s assumption of subjecthood as universal leads to an imposition of values, norms, and culture. In addition to the danger of Western-centric biases creeping in to the notions of the “human,” critical feminist approaches have called attention to the dangers of universalizing a masculinized “human” in ways damaging to women, girls, and gender-diverse people.[28] These lines of inquiry offer a second contribution to human security discourses: practitioners wishing to consider human security as a concept must be reflexive in their use of the term. Universalizing one’s own cultural or gendered assumptions of what human individuals are, defaulting to security as the sole tool in the toolbox, or narrowing the scope of human security to more easily be operationalized all serve to limit the emancipatory potential of the concept of human-centric security.

The second bridge to critical security studies connects to discussions of gender and security and feminist security studies. The 2023 KCIS conference considered the relationship between gender and security from a number of angles, including an important focus on the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda. Although the WPS Agenda has been identified as a policy priority for Canada as a state as well as NATO as an institution, often the operationalization of WPS and gendered security principles result in a watering-down of the strongest systemic changes.[29] The KCIS panel on Women, Peace and Security captured both the current state of gendered security practice at NATO while also pushing to explore how a focus on gendered insecurity can help bridge the impasses of national interests, call attention to the disproportionate impacts of climate change, and unpack violent extremist discourse online. These discussions highlight that within debates on gender and security, formalized frameworks like the WPS Agenda or feminist foreign policy[30] provide important starting points, but as of yet these projects are incomplete from the perspective of addressing gendered insecurity.

An important success of the WPS Agenda, feminist foreign policy, and other policy movements has been the development of a better understanding of security through the mainstreaming of gender considerations. However, as von Hlatky notes in Deploying Feminism, this focus on operational advantages can lead to a watering down of the strength of gendered lenses.[31] Feminist security studies as a research community stands starkly opposed to the instrumentalization of women as a variable without recognition of how gender contributes to the production of (in)security. Particularly in the case of critical feminist scholarship, this has involved a “challenge to mainstream international relations and security studies…tendencies to simply ‘add gender and stir.’”[32] By foregrounding the role of gendered roles, identities, norms, constructs, structures, and other forces, critical feminists raise a range of questions around how security and insecurity arise, often drawing on interdisciplinary traditions of feminist thought.[33] Such scholarship has drawn on diverse insights that call for a broadening of the WPS Agenda,[34] but debates have also expanded to every conceivable empirical and theoretical corner of security studies.

To offer one example of how critical feminist perspectives may help to expand assumptions of how gender contributes to the production of insecurity, I will call specific attention to Laura Sjoberg’s analysis of gender hierarchy to demonstrate the new considerations that emerge for researchers and practitioners.[35] Sjoberg argues that there are multiple, complex, and nuanced ways in which hierarchy is produced and enforced through gender; attending to different relationships between gender and hierarchy can help us to understand how those hierarchies produce insecurity in gendered ways.[36] These hierarchical orders produce unequal distributions of power, agency, and status even in conditions of anarchy where realist accounts may expect functional equality of units.[37] Rather than limit gender to serve as a demographic variable, Sjoberg’s feminist account highlights how gender operates in three distinct ways to structure hierarchy:

The first is to see some hierarchies in global politics that are organized around gender – gender hierarchies. The second is to see other hierarchies in global politics that are organized around some other factor, but are either expressed in gendered language or enforced with gendered tactics – gendered hierarchies. The third is to see hierarchy in global politics as itself always and everywhere gendered – gendered hierarchy.[38]

Gender hierarchies are—at least to some extent—the most visible of the three forms, encompassing glass ceilings, wage gaps, rape culture, and gender-based violence.[39] Gendered hierarchies, which emerge through processes of association with gender, include the feminization of enemies in order to communicate their subordinate status, as well as broader efforts to assert power over others through de-valorization.[40] Finally, Sjoberg argues that even where hierarchies do not explicitly organize or categorize women, “hierarchy in global politics works on gendered logics.”[41] As applied to a security agenda, this tripartite typology of gender and hierarchy indicates that a fulsome understanding of the production of gendered insecurity can only be achieved if we account for insecurities that are produced through social relations structured by gender, insecurities produced through the assertion of social relations by association to gender, and insecurities produced through the hierarchical ordering of gender. In conducting an analysis of the security dynamics of a given situation, this triple-lens framework radically extends the potential avenues for identifying threatening, violent, conflictual, oppressive, and otherwise harmful forces. If the WPS Agenda and feminist foreign policy movements have put gender on the agenda, then reengagement with critical feminist perspectives can help to extend the scope of these conversations.

The third bridge that I wish to introduce is that of ontological security theory; this is an outlier of the trio as its key term was not spoken at KCIS 2023, and yet its explanatory power is directly related to the uncertain case of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the “failure of deterrence” discourse that surrounds it. Two years into the invasion, the origin nevertheless remains somewhat counterintuitive because—as Antulio Echevarria stated in the early days—“half of the explanations” for the decline of armed conflict in recent decades “functioned as accelerants rather than deterrents for Putin’s act of aggression against Ukraine.”[42] Echevarria’s commentary at the time suggests that there was a miscalculation of changing technologies, perceived force imbalances and capacities, a decoupling of compellence from deterrence, and other strategic factors,[43] and this strategic questioning of “what we missed” continued through KCIS 2023 in a virtual panel discussion. Panelists suggested that NATO’s failure to perceive expansionist strategy and underestimation of the risk and cost tolerance of Russia were substantial oversights that informed ultimately insufficient economic and political sanctions.[44] If an incomplete assessment of Russian motivations undermined the effectiveness of NATO’s deterrent efforts, then taking a broader view of Russia’s understanding of the security environment may help to discern why political and economic actions were insufficient. My suggestion is that ontological security can help us conceptualize the missing piece of the puzzle, as a theoretical framework that seeks to understand how actions that appear irrational in terms of physical security may be comprehensible in terms of identity and stability-seeking behaviour.

Beginning in the early 2000s, International Relations scholars interested in the role of identity in shaping interests and decision-making processes borrowed the concept of ontological security from sociologist Anthony Giddens. As states navigated the post-Cold War world of globalization and interconnectedness, these scholars noted that reaffirmation of identity became an increasingly important priority, but also turned to the historical record to demonstrate how security-seeking in terms of identity often accompanies physical security-seeking behaviours.[45] The argument for ontological security theorists is that in addition to physical security, states seek a secure sense of identity by routinizing and stabilizing relationships with other states; by finding stability, states can impose a cognitive order that minimizes the uncertainty of policy outcomes.[46] From time to time, ontological security and physical security come into conflict. For example, although enmity and kinetic engagement obviously produce greater physical risks to a state than cooperation, the certainty of enmity may mean that explicitly conflictual routines provide greater certitude than potential or uncertain cooperative possibilities. As Jennifer Mitzen summarizes:

Ontological security tells us that rational agency relies on a platform of routines, which suppresses uncertainty and makes the world knowable. Because routines that perpetuate physical insecurity can provide ontological security, states can become attached to physically dangerous relations and be unable, or unwilling, to learn their way out.[47]

Ontological security theory thereby provides a valuable addition to strategic explanations that rely primarily on traditional understandings of interests. Despite military risks, economic hardships, and political dangers, there may be situations where states feel that greater certainty in decision-making can be achieved through the adoption of a conflictual posture. This stability is an end in its own right, as it shores up the state’s ontological security.

Ontological security theory now provides multiple modes of engagement and methods of analysis. These include models that assume a unitary state actor as well as more diffuse conceptions based on a variety of actors or units with internal disagreements.[48] But another important trend has been to recognize how increasing global tensions have produced an “age of anxiety” and a “politics of fear”[49]—both forces lead to increased perceived risks and thereby contribute to uncertainty becoming riskier. This creates a perverse feedback loop where a perception of increased danger increases the justification for suboptimal decisions from the perspective of physical security, because the valuation of relational certainty increases the desire for ontological security. Strategies that rely on rationalist models—including deterrence and compellence—stand to gain a more holistic perspective on the calculations informing decisions by foregrounding ontological security. It is not only a willingness to accept physical risks for the sake of physically defined gain, but also the potential subordination of physical security to ontological security that may upend rationalist models of state behaviour. Accounting for ontological security therefore promises to improve understanding of others, while also recognizing potentially perverse incentives in our own decision-making processes.

Conclusion

I began this chapter with reference to the debates in International Security that sought to apply the conventional wisdom of the early 1990s to the changes of a post-Cold War world. In closing, I turn to another journal to consider the possibility for dialogue crushed by the wheel of history. In that same year—1990—a special issue of International Studies Quarterly on “dissident thought”[50] brought together constructivist, critical, and feminist approaches to international relations to argue for the importance of considering economics, narratives, identities, discourse, and subject-formation.[51] The promise of engagement with critical perspectives on security is similarly a broadening of the security studies agenda in ways that offer a rich and robust account of how insecurity emerges. The three bridges proposed in this chapter are not the only potential connections between the silos, but I would suggest that there is reason to believe that these conversations have fewer barriers to entry than other dialogues may. As we enter a time of shifting polarity in which the glass has been broken and the tools of reconceptualization released, let us begin by taking stock of existing theoretical tools.

End Notes:

[1]. Mearsheimer, John J. “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War.” International Security 15, no. 1 (1990): 5–56.

[2]. Hoffmann, Stanley, Robert O. Keohane, and John J. Mearsheimer. “Back to the Future, Part II: International Relations Theory and Post-Cold War Europe.” International Security 15, no. 2 (1990): 191–199; Russett, Bruce M., Thomas Risse-Kappen, and John J. Mearsheimer. “Back to the future, Part III: Realism and the realities of European security.” International Security (1990): 216–222; Snyder, Jack. “Averting anarchy in the new Europe.” International Security 14, no. 4 (1990): 5–41; Van Evera, Stephen. “Primed for peace: Europe after the Cold War.” International Security (1990): 7–57.

[3]. For the example of “sovereignty,” see Krasner, Stephen D. “Abiding sovereignty.” International Political Science Review 22, no. 3 (2001): 229–251.

[4]. Krauthammer, Charles. “The unipolar moment.” Foreign Affairs 70 (1990): 23.

[5]. Nossal, Kim Richard. Canada Alone: Navigating the Post-American World. Toronto: Dundurn, 2023.

[6]. Mearsheimer, John J. “The causes and consequences of the Ukraine war.” Horizons: Journal of International Relations and Sustainable Development 21 (2022a): 12–27; Mearsheimer, John. “Why the West is principally responsible for the Ukrainian crisis.” The Economist 19 (2022b).

[7]. I borrow this tongue-in-cheek term from Paris, Roland. “We’ve reached a new post-Cold War era. What follows may be even more dangerous.” The Globe and Mail, 21 March 2022.

[8]. The KCIS. Executive Summary: The (Un)Changing Character of War. Kingston Consortium on International Security.

[9]. Walt, Stephen M. “The renaissance of security studies.” International Studies Quarterly 35, no. 2 (1991): 211–239.

[10]. For a summary of the first three waves of deterrence theory, see Jervis, Robert. “Deterrence theory revisited.” World Politics 31, no. 2 (1979): 289–324.

[11]. Wolfers, Arnold. "‘National security’ as an ambiguous symbol." Political science quarterly 67, no. 4 (1952): 481–502; Wolfers, Arnold. Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press

[12]. Walt, “The Renaissance of Security Studies,” 215–216.

[13]. Walt, “The Renaissance of Security Studies.”

[14]. Lebow, Richard Ned. “The long peace, the end of the cold war, and the failure of realism.” International Organization 48, no. 2 (1994): 249–277; Wohlforth, William C. “Realism and the End of the Cold War.” International Security 19, no. 3 (1994): 91–129.

[15]. Krause, Keith, and Michael C. Williams. “Broadening the agenda of security studies: Politics and methods.” Mershon International Studies Review 40, no. Supplement_2 (1996): 230.

[16]. C.A.S.E. Collective. “Critical Approaches to Security in Europe: A Networked Manifesto.” Security Dialogue 37, no. 4 (2006): 443–487.

[17]. Salter, Mark B. “On exactitude in disciplinary science: A response to the network manifesto.” Security Dialogue 38, no. 1 (2007): 113–122; De Larrinaga, Miguel, and Mark B. Salter. “Cold CASE: A manifesto for Canadian critical security studies.” Critical Studies on Security 2, no. 1 (2014): 1–19.

[18]. Huysmans, Jef. “Revisiting Copenhagen: Or, on the creative development of a security studies agenda in Europe.” European Journal of International Relations 4, no. 4 (1998): 479–505.

[19]. Booth, Ken. “Security and emancipation.” Review of International Studies 17, no. 04 (1991a): 313–326; Booth, Ken. “Security in anarchy: Utopian realism in theory and practice.” International Affairs (1991b): 527–545.

[20]. Wanneau, Krystel. 2016. “Security Dialogue on the Edge of International Security Studies: Uncovering a Process of Innovation.” In Political Science in Motion, edited by Ramona Coman and Jean-Frederic Morin, 129–154. Bruxelles: Editions de l’Universite de Bruxelles.

[21]. Aradau, Claudia, Jef Huysmans, Andrew Neal, and Nadine Voelkner, eds. Critical security methods: New frameworks for analysis. Routledge, 2014; Salter, Mark B., Can E. Mutlu, and Philippe M. Frowd, eds. Research methods in critical security studies: An introduction. Taylor & Francis, 2023.

[22]. Lewis-Simpson, Shannon, and Sarah Jane Meharg (Eds.), Evolving Human Security: Frameworks and Considerations for Canada’s Military (Kingston: Canadian Defence Academy Press, 2023).

[23]. Booth, “Security and Emancipation,” 319.

[24]. Nunes, João. “Security, emancipation and the ethics of vulnerability.” In Ethical Security Studies, pp. 89–101. Routledge, 2016.

[25]. Krause, Keith. “Critical perspectives on human security.” In Routledge Handbook of Human Security, pp. 76–93. Routledge, 2013.

[26]. Wibben, Annick TR. “The promise and dangers of human security.” Ethical Security Studies: A New Research Agenda (2016): 102–115.

[27]. Shani, Giorgio. “Human Security as ontological security: A post-colonial approach.” Postcolonial Studies 20, no. 3 (2017): 275–293; Chandler, David. “Human security: The dog that didn't bark.” Security Dialogue 39, no. 4 (2008): 427–438.

[28]. Marhia, Natasha. “Some humans are more Human than Others: Troubling the ‘human’ in human security from a critical feminist perspective.” Security Dialogue 44, no. 1 (2013): 19–35; Howard, Elise. “Whose Security are We Protecting in a Time of Climate Change? How Gender Bias Affects Human Security for Pacific Women.” Geopolitics (2023): 1–23.

[29]. Stéfanie von Hlatky, Deploying Feminism: The Role of Gender in NATO Military Operations (Oxford University Press, 2023).

[30]. I have previously analyzed Canada’s quantum policy from the perspective of its failure to live up to feminist foreign policy goals. See Murphy, Michael P. A. “Canada’s approach to quantum in security and economics: Feminist foreign policy or tokenizing #WomenInSTEM?” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal (2023): 1–14.

[31]. Stéfanie von Hlatky, Deploying Feminism.

[32]. Maria Stern and Annick T.R. Wibben, “A Decade of Feminist Security Studies Revisited.” Security Dialogue. Introduction to Virtual Special Issue, 2014, 2.

[33]. Annick T.R. Wibben (2014) Researching feminist security studies, Australian Journal of Political Science, 49:4, 743–755.

[34]. Basu, Soumita, Paul Kirby, and Laura J. Shepherd. “Women, peace and security: a critical cartography.” In New directions in women, peace and security, pp. 1–26. Bristol University Press, 2020; Henry, Marsha. “On the necessity of critical race feminism for women, peace and security.” Critical Studies on Security 9, no. 1 (2021): 22–26.

[35]. See also Enloe, Cynthia. The curious feminist: Searching for women in a new age of empire. Univ of California Press, 2004; Peterson, V. Spike. “Sex matters: a queer history of hierarchies.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 16, no. 3 (2014): 389–409.

[36]. Sjoberg, Laura. “Centering security studies around felt, gendered insecurities.” Journal of Global Security Studies 1, no. 1 (2016): 51–63.

[37]. Sjoberg, Laura. “Gender, structure, and war: What Waltz couldn't see.” International Theory 4, no. 1 (2012): 1–38; Sjoberg, Laura. “The invisible structures of anarchy: Gender, orders, and global politics.” Journal of International Political Theory 13, no. 3 (2017): 325–340.

[38]. Sjoberg, Laura. “Revealing international hierarchy through gender lenses.” Hierarchies in world politics (University of Cambridge Press, 2017): 112.

[39]. Sjoberg, “Revealing international hierarchy,” 96–102; “The invisible structures of anarchy,” 331–333.

[40]. Sjoberg, “The invisible structures of anarchy,” 334–335; “Revealing international hierarchy,” 102–107.

[41]. Sjoberg, “Revealing international hierarchy,” 107.

[42]. Echevarria II, Antulio J. “Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine in 2022: Implications for Strategic Studies.” The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters 52, no. 2 (2022): 22.

[43]. Echevarria, “Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” passim.

[44]. See The KCIS, Executive Summary.

[45]. Kinnvall, Catarina. “Globalization and religious nationalism: Self, identity, and the search for ontological security.” Political Psychology 25, no. 5 (2004): 741–767; Kinnvall, Catarina. Globalization and religious nationalism in India: The search for ontological security. Vol. 46. Routledge, 2007; Steele, Brent J. “Ontological security and the power of self-identity: British neutrality and the American Civil War.” Review of International Studies 31, no. 3 (2005): 519–540; Steele, Brent J. Ontological security in international relations: Self-identity and the IR state. Routledge, 2008; Mitzen, Jennifer, “Anchoring Europe’s Civilizing Identity: Habits, Capabilities, and Ontological Security,” Journal of European Public Policy 13, no 2 (2006: 270–285.

[46]. Mitzen, Jennifer. “Ontological security in world politics: State identity and the security dilemma.” European journal of international relations 12, no. 3 (2006): 341–370.

[47]. Mitzen, “Ontological security in world politics,” 342.

[48]. Kinnvall, Catarina, and Jennifer Mitzen. “An introduction to the special issue: Ontological securities in world politics.” Cooperation and Conflict 52, no. 1 (2017): 3–11.

[49]. Kinnvall, Catarina, and Jennifer Mitzen. “Anxiety, fear, and ontological security in world politics: thinking with and beyond Giddens.” International Theory 12, no. 2 (2020): 240–256.

[50]. Ashley, Richard K., and RBJ Walker. “Introduction: Speaking the language of exile: Dissident thought in international studies.” International Studies Quarterly 34, no. 3 (1990): 259–268.

[51]. George, Jim, and David Campbell. “Patterns of dissent and the celebration of difference: Critical social theory and international relations.” International Studies Quarterly 34, no. 3 (1990): 269–293; Der Derian, James. “The (s) pace of international relations: Simulation, surveillance, and speed.” International Studies Quarterly 34, no. 3 (1990): 295–310; Klein, Bradley S. “How the West was one: Representational politics of NATO.” International Studies Quarterly 34, no. 3 (1990): 311–325; Shapiro, Michael J. “Strategic discourse/discursive strategy: The representation of ‘security policy’ in the video age.” International Studies Quarterly 34, no. 3 (1990): 327–340; Chaloupka, William. “Immodest modesty: Antinuclear discourse, lifestyle politics, and intervention strategies.” International Studies Quarterly 34, no. 3 (1990): 341–351; Weber, Cynthia. “Representing Debt: Peruvian Presidents Belaunde’s and Garcia’s Reading/Writing of Peruvian Debt.” International Studies Quarterly 34, no. 3 (1990): 353–365.