Booth: Theory of World Security

Booth, K., 2007. Theory of World Security, Cambridge University Press.

Booth claims that we live in a world that is quite different from the worlds that had existed before. We have the capability to destroy on a larger scale than is easily conceivable. We have the ability to work with precision in our destruction. All of this operates within a milieu of globalization, regionalization and generally conflictual trends.

The author claims, echoing EH Carr’s famous text, that we are living in a new Twenty Years’ Crisis that he calls The Great Reckoning. “If a series of key decisions about world security are not made in the first two decades of the century, and are not made sensibly, then by mid-century human society faces the prospect of a concatenation of global turmoil unlike anything in the past” (2). “In other words, a critical theory of security seeks to be both realistic and emancipator” (2). “The framework of the theory to be elaborated derives from a body of ideas I call critical global theorizing” (3). “…world security refers to the structures and processes within human society, locally and globally, that work towards the reduction of the threats and risks that determine individual and group lives. The greater the level of security enjoyed, the more individuals and groups (including human society as a whole) can have an existence beyond the instinctual animal struggle merely to survive. The idea of world security is synonymous with the freedom of individuals and groups compatible with reasonable freedom of others and universal moral equality compatible with justifiable pragmatic inequalities” (4-5).

The book consists of four sections: Context, Theory, Dimensions and Futures. In the first section, the author expands upon the concept of the Great Reckoning and how this relates to Carr’s earlier work. In the second section, Booth explores in more depth what is meant by critical theory of world security. In the third section, the theory is applied empirically, specifically as a critique of US power, violence, human security and the state4 of nature (6). In the final section, there is a call for urgent action to mitigate the dilemmas highlighted.

Ch. 1:

“This chapter introduces six themes that carry through the book: a world that is not working for most of its inhabitants; a body of regressive ideas that continue to dominate politics, economics, and society globally; a growing world crisis that is not being attended to by the globally powerful; a particular set of challenges resulting from the convergence of traditional ideas and new material conditions created by environmental despoliation and population expansion; a regressive realist hegemony in the way policymakers and academics think about security; and the need to reconceptualise world security in the light of a self-consciously critical perspective with an emancipator orientation” (12).

Ch. 2:

“The previous chapter identified where a critical theory of security should start…A radically different world politics is conceivable, though is complete achievement may ultimately elude humankind. International politics must become the art of the impossible, for the alternative is almost too unpleasant to contemplate. With this in mind, the present chapter begins to sketch a map of sites of ideas to help create the political conditions for a more secure future. These ideas are not to be found in the national ghettos of realism, but in the cosmopolitan spirit of the unfinished work of the enlightenment” (37).

The following represent the core of a critical global theory: universalist, inclusive, normative, emancipatory, progressive and critical (38-9).