Peace, Power, and Security: Contending Concepts in the Study of International Relations

This article compares the merits of three concepts — peace, power and security — as approaches to the study of International Relations. It argues that peace and power offer only partial, and significantly flawed, views, and yet that thinking within the field has become locked into an excessively polarised framework which is dominated by the opposition between them. The necessity for a new framework arises from the intellectual exhaustion and restrictiveness of this prevailing orthodoxy. Security is put forward as an alternative frame work which is capable of encompassing most of what is useful from the other two, plus much of the middle ground that is obscured by them.The argument proceeds by comparing the quality of insight which each of the three concepts offers into two of the most fundamental elements in international relations: 'the anarchy' and 'the arms race'. The case is made that each of these elements consitutes a highly durable feature of international relations, but not that is either immutable within its form, or necessarily malign in its effect. Power and peace are seen to give only narrow and incomplete views of the anarchy and the arms race. Both result in excessively rigid and negative interpretations, with power leading to an over-emphasis on the inflexibility of both elements, and peace leading to over-optimism about their removability. Security is seen to offer a more balanced perspective. It takes into account the durability of the anarchy and the arms race, but does not lead to necessarily negative views of them. It opens up the considerable scope for positive change which exists within the two elements, and so provides the basis for a synthesis of realist-idealism.