CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VII (1, 2) Contemporary-Eurasia-3new | Page 23

TINA KHARATYAN
security for human beings. Consequently, if a state is the main nexus to
ensure individual security, elaboration, and development of the concept of
national security remains a task of vital importance.
Since the 1970s, however, emerging economic interdependence and
multi-dimensional character of international aff airs caused a division
within academia. On the one side, traditionalists (narrowers) continued to
insist that security is a derivative of power connecting it with the contain-
ment of war and ability of military statecraft. Wideners, on the other side,
came to claim that security is multi-dimensional phenomenon including
not only military warfare but other layers as well (political, economic,
military, societal and environmental). 2 Although the Widener approach
installs security as a multi-dimensional and multi-vector concept appro-
priate to the complexity of the modern era of interdependence, it does not
answer the question why the military aff airs are still at the core of states’
national security paradigms.
Constructivism as a framework for analysis:
The process of securitization
Up to the 1980s, the security paradigm was studied from two main
angles: realism and idealism. If realism considered security as a tool of
survival directly connected with a state’s capabilities to project its pow-
er, idealists were quite romantic describing “security as a consequence of
peace”. 3 Despite the fact, that the concept of security was profoundly in-
vestigated from the perspectives of above-mentioned standpoints, all of
them did not pay attention to the cultural component in conducting and
projecting security. As a result, at the crossroad of diff erent approaches
constructivism came to the stage describing security as a “socially con-
structed” phenomenon based on shared values. 4
The social constructivist framework created a baseline for formation
and articulation of the term securitization in the 1980s by the Copenha-
gen School of thought. 5 If politicization of an issue means the inclusion
of particular issue in policy discourse of governing elites, securitization is
2
3
4
5
Barry Buzan, Ole Waever and Jaap de Wilde, SECURITY: A new framework for analysis,
(London: Lynne Rienner, 1998); Buzan, People, States and Fear.
Buzan, People, States and Fear.
Jef Huysmans, “Defi ning Social Constructivism in Security Studies: The Normative Dilemma
of Writing Security,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 27, no. 1 (2002): 41-62; Buzan,
People, States and Fear; Buzan et al., Security; Matt McDonald, “Securitization and the Con-
struction of Security,” European Journal of International Relations 14, no. 4 (2008): 563-587.
Thierry Balzacq, Sarah Léonard and Jan Ruzicka. “Securitization revisited: Theory and cas-
es.” The Institute for Strategic Research (IRSEM), (2015): 494-531; Buzan, People, States
and Fear; Buzan, et al., Security.
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