Security: Some critical observations about concepts and policies

Since the end of the Cold War, a heterogeneous group of actors — states, international organisations, and non-governmental organisations — increasingly has pursued and promoted interventionist policies under labels such as post-conflict state and peace-building. The terror attacks of 11 September 2001, and the subsequently proclaimed ‘war on terror’, gave a further boost to this interventionist tendency in international politics. From this crucial point onward, the Bush administration, which once assumed office on a rather non-interventionist foreign policy agenda, began participating in this new trend and even added the goal of regime change to it. Linking international security, state-building, and development, a number of scholars and pundits have engaged in justifying this new United States foreign policy agenda that Mark Berger labelled ‘democratic imperialism’ (Berger 2006: 7).

Related Subject(s): Democracy and Governance