Wheller and Booth: The Security Dilemma

Wheeler, N. & Booth, K., 1992. The Security Dilemma. Dilemmas of World Politics: International Issues in a Changing World, 29-60.

“Any serious school or theory of International Relations must have a conception of the security dilemma. This is because the security dilemma gets to the very heart of politics among nations: the existential condition of uncertainty in human affairs” (1).

The authors then explore the etymology of “dilemma”. Evidently, in logic, a “lemma” is something that is valid. Therefore, a di-lemma represents a situation where someone must choose between to substantively valid options (or in the case of the security dilemma, two options that are valid in their disagreeability). “What puts the lemmas into the security dilemma are two apparently inescapable predicaments in international politics. The first is the inability of the decision-makers in one state ever to get fully into the minds of their counterparts in other states, and so understand their motives and intentions with confidence…The second is the inherent ambiguity of weapons. The policy-planners of one state can never predict with complete certainty when and how weapons might be employed by other states” (4).

The authors then separate the dilemma into two dilemmas: there is initially the dilemma of interpretations, which is an attempt to divine the goals of the other country, and secondly there is the dilemma of the response, which is a decision about how best one should respond. “When leaders resolve their dilemma of response in a manner that creates a spiral of mutual hostility, when neither wanted it, a situation has developed which we call the security paradox” (5).

“The inquiry we are undertaking into the meaning, significance and implications of the security dilemma is organized around three a priori logical positions” (10). First, there are the fatalists who believe that there will always be insecurity in the international realm. Next, there are the mitigators, those who believe that security dilemma type situations can be ameloriated over time, but never totally erased. Finally, there are the transcenders, or those who believe that we can become what we want to be through contingent action.

The authors are very clear that they are not interested in categorizing people as being representatives of any one of these “ideal-types”, but rather are most interested in characterizing ideals.