I'm very excited by Praxis' soon-to-be published book on Cyberwar, Netwar, and RMA:

The end of the Cold War ushered in a new phase of global security in which new threats and challenges emanate from non-conventional sources, and in which the weapons and means to prosecute war harness new technology. By the mid-1990s terms such as cyberwar and netwar were being used to explain a new way of thinking about war. The intervening years have seen the development of new defence policies, such as the US military Vision for 2020 and the Revolution in Military Affairs, whilst the threat of terrorism has become a painful and sad reality. The period has also seen the development and deployment of a range of new technologies for military operations ranging from new smart mechanisms to deliver weapons to surveillance and communications technologies that can change the very nature of warfare and security. This book attempts to consider this balance between the technologies and policies deployed to respond to terror and the need for human and civil rights.

The editors are Dr Eddie Halpin, Dr Philippa Trevorrow, Professor David Webb & Dr Steve Wright

Rostow’s seminal work on the Stages of Economic Growth was subtitled, a non-communist manifesto’

Merger of security and development is often presented as something new. However, Western (imperial) development policy has always had a security dimension. According to Duffield : As far back as the 19th century. During the Cold War the security functions of aid (albeit traditional security functions) were clear with development serving as a tool to prevent newly independent states becoming security threats to the west, either in their own right or as allies of the Soviet bloc.
For example in setting out the Truman doctrine President Truman noted in 1947 that the poverty experienced by half the world’s population was a handicap and threat to both them and the prosperous areas’

Reducing the Global Incidence of Civil War: A Discussion of the Available Policy Instruments

Paul Collier
Professor of Economics
and Director
Center for the Study of African Economies (CSAE)
Oxford University, United Kingdom   more »

Mark Duffield: Abstract:

Development today is a radical and intrusive endeavour. Reflecting the interest of homeland security, it is embarked upon transforming societies as a whole within the global borderland. In attempting to secure the future, however, it is reaching backwards to reconnect and rejuvenate earlier colonial modes of governing the world of peoples. This article is a modest attempt to recover part of this genealogy. The concept of biopolitics is introduced and defined in relation to the differences between developed and underdeveloped species-life. In distinction to the life-supporting technologies associated with mass society, development is a biopolitics of population understood as self-reliant in terms of basic economic and welfare needs. The security function of such a biopolitics is that of bettering self-reliance as a means of defending international society against its enemies: it is the art of getting savages to fight barbarians. To give historic depth to this strategization of power, such a manoeuvre is demonstrated in the relationship between colonial Native Administration and insurgent nationalism. It is then used to provide a critical commentary on the interconnection between development and security, in particular, the relationship between sustainable development and internal conflict that shapes current perceptions of global danger. The conclusion briefly considers the cost of this episodic inheritance: a small part of the world's population consumes and lives beyond its means within the fragile equilibrium of mass society while the larger part is allowed to die chasing the mirage of self-reliance. Rather than addressing these divergent life-chances, the securitization of development is further entrenching them.